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thanidiel · 6 years

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Prompt 7: Outfits. Describe your character getting dressed. What are the individual pieces that they put on? Do any of them hold particular meaning or emotion for your character? What purpose does your character's attire serve, and how does your character feel about that purpose?

Be sure to give special attention to parts of your character's ensemble that don't show up in-game. Little pouches, extra daggers, a favorite scarf, etc. The things that an average person inspecting your character's transmog wouldn't necessarily know about unless you described it.

“...Ren.”

“Highdawn.”

“Ren, this doesn’t work.”

“Mm? This all looks very handsome, no?”

“I— yes. That’s not my point. Something can look handsome and the same thing can not fucking work.”

“Darling, you know I am a woman of little patience. How about you explain yourself for once? Why does it ‘not fucking work’?”

“A military outfit should be… uniform. This isn’t uniform. It’s...—”

“—striking? I cannot help but agree.”

“It’s striking because it’s you. And I can’t have it.”

“Is that not a lovely thing?”

“Not for a gala. A gala for my first military commission. A gala that your father is hosting.”

“It is a gala for you, darling. You should be striking. And it should be bloody clear who else has a stake to you other than your commanders.”

“I’m not looking to flaunt this to your father’s face over wine. Not to said commanders that I’m ran by a little girl, either.”

“‘Little girl?’ Dear, do recall that the same hand that feeds you can, oh-so-easily, gouge through those cheeks of your’s.”

Thanidiel’s eyes turn away from the young woman at her side, back towards the mirror.

She has to admit: Renalays did a better job of making her presentable than she ever could have. She needs to make a day to force the climbing Magistrix to sit down, and run her through these intricacies of dress-and-play with the nobility.

The gold epaulettes, the snow-white coat, its collar, its cuffs, the way its ends evenly fall over her hose; it all situates pristine and perfect on her form like a second skin. A begrudging note sounds through her breast at how marked Renalays’ addition is. Everything is so brilliant and severe just like herself, then there is this splash of vivid crimson spilling all around her waist where the Inquisitor looped silk in mirror of herself.

She distangles the loose tie of the cloth, pulls it free with deliberate resolve and earns the peripheral scoff of Renalays’ derision. A gloved hand reaches to grasp onto the Magistrix’s midarm, steadying her in place.

“Stay,” rolls off of her tongue in growling demand. In answer, she observes (no, feels) the shiver that runs underneath her grip and through the thicket of blood-red hair pouring down the noblegirl. The hand enwrapped in silk rests on a shoulder when the newly-commissioned officer rotates to stand behind Renalays.

“You’re not happy.”

“Of course, I am not happy. Cowardice is a turn-off, no?”

“You know what else is a turn-off, Ren?”

“Oh, indulge me, Highdawn.”

“Having to deal with another prissy noble-brat like you hounding me endlessly. Does that get you off? Dressing and claiming me like I’m a trophy doll on your shelf? It doesn’t work that way. I didn’t come all the way here just to be claimed by anyone else, on my first step to somewhere decent. I’m not your’s, Ren. You’re not any different from any other child that wants to hang off my arm.”

Her eyes remain on the reflections shooting back towards them. The act of observing herself is something alien - mirrors have never been a common commodity where she grew and thrived. Has there always been such cruelty in her face? And such held-back ferocity? Thanidiel feels too young to rightfully possess such things; such things are held by gnarled elves in their centuries, not a twenty-three year old receiving their first officer’s commission.

Terror, though. They all call her that with amusement and pride worked into their lips. Perhaps her commodity is possessed in this too-soon hate of her’s. She recalls once that some Ranger Lord had looked her from toe to head with Lord Dawnhallow’s introduction: he had called her a “precocious Little Terror,” and ordered her to fill his goblet after that.

It is similar to the hate she sees working through Renalays’ form. She can almost hear the grit of teeth from within that squared maw, and the girl’s eyes blaze like dragon’s fire. She feels, more than she sees, the grasp of the Shadows around them - like bursts of air pushing around her feet in the telltale sign of a coming whirlwind. Thanidiel should be feeling like she’s in the center of a dark lion’s den. Instead, the soldier sucks in air like the poised moment before a dive, and leaps in.

With a composed nerve discordant to the brewing argument, the Lieutenant eases the silk of her hands into a loose loop, gently covers the Magistrix’s eyes, and pulls back enough to cause the bend of Renalays’ throat with the jut of her chin upward. Her voice comes out too musing and light,

“One around your eyes and the other around your wrists. Don’t you think that’s so much more striking than making a pet of me?”

A step out of turn; a ruin of the choreography. A pause, no, not something quite so elegant - a stutter. A crack that shouldn’t be there. That is what she sees in the startled freeze of the other’s insult when she does not kowtow to make amends, what she feels as the slithering Shadows die into stillness like a breath cut short. It becomes her turn to scoff into the emptied air, drop the sash, and step away.

The soldier draws near to her belongings resting on the top of the vanity. With a longing, instinctive, ease, she locates the chain of her dog-tags. It is an action done swiftly as Thanidiel takes her own pause to wrap the metal along her wrist, the accessory vanishing under her cuff.

The weight of them pressing against her skin is something grounding, as improbable as she is to admit it. The youth feels claustrophobic; alien and unbelonging. She does not desire this spotlight. Merit is merit. Being paraded to noble after noble, and examined like horsestock to the highest bidders, is another matter. A matter that is beyond her nature and upbringing.

A spike of pain shooting through her tongue reminds her of the bloodletting scrape of her teeth when she has advanced towards the door beyond the Adept’s bedroom.

“...I expect your return here after the gala, Highdawn.”

“We’ll see. I expect you during the gala, Ren.”

The new Lieutenant takes a last moment of study: the noblegirl still consumed by a roiling infuriation, seen through the tense coil of muscle where skin is bared and dress absent, the hawkish intensity of her glare, the prick-back of her ears. At the same time, a strong measure of dignity retains control in the now-cooled set of her jaw and the arrogant, sidelong, high of her chin.

The smirk that cracks through the stoic regard of her own face cannot be resisted.

“Do not fuck this up, Highdawn.”

“Impossible.”

#thanidiel #writing

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