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Entry tags:
.memory registry
7th year, summer; hunting.
15th year, summer; bargaining and blackmail. [csa]
19th year, winter; the passing of the king, the king's guard, and the rightful heir.
19th year, spring; the first ambush. [animal death]
20th year, autumn; the betrothal to Nousha.
20th year, winter; the birth of Zahra. [depiction of childbirth]
24th year, winter; the second death of Soheil. [infant death]
15th year, summer; bargaining and blackmail. [csa]
19th year, winter; the passing of the king, the king's guard, and the rightful heir.
19th year, spring; the first ambush. [animal death]
20th year, autumn; the betrothal to Nousha.
20th year, winter; the birth of Zahra. [depiction of childbirth]
24th year, winter; the second death of Soheil. [infant death]
20th year, winter; the birth of Zahra. [depiction of childbirth]
"Your Majesty," she says, though she visibly startles when the both of them look over at her. "Your Majesty," she repeats, a little out of breath and still faltering under their looks of curiosity, before she finally manages, "The queen has gone into labor."
"Oh," says Ardashir, round-eyed and slightly stunned. "Thank you for informing me," he answers after a pause. "I'm pleased to hear it. Please come and send word once more as soon as it would be acceptable for me to see her."
"Er, well, in fact," stammers the nursemaid, "she asked that I fetch Your Majesty to go to her right away. But of course there's no need, it's a terrible omen to-"
The woman sat across from Ardashir barks out a laugh. "Go on, then, get out of here." She props an elbow up on the table, rests her cheek against her knuckles, and gives him a wide, crooked grin. Ardashir shoots her a look in return, but she keeps going over whatever he might have said. "Don't you like to console each other over every little thing? Omens be damned, she's going through a hard time as we speak."
His eyes narrow. "And just what do you mean by that?"
"Don't dawdle around here any longer, now. Every minute you waste with me is another minute you're leaving the poor girl to fend for herself," she drawls.
"You can't always expect me to do whatever you say without question, Mother," he clips back.
"I'll just be on my way, please excuse me," mumbles the nursemaid. Ardashir stands so suddenly that the feet of his chair scrape loudly across the floor.
"I'll accompany you. Please take me to Samira."
"Y-yes! Of course, Your Majesty," she nearly squeaks out. Ardashir's mother grins almost tangibly at his retreating back, and without looking he makes a rude hand gesture at her before closing the door behind him and blocking the sound of her laugh.
"Could you explain what my mother meant, by any chance?" he asks the nursemaid as they make their way down the ornate palace hallways. She's pallid in the face and clearly tense, a bundle of nerves whose shoulders jump when he addresses her again.
"That is, I- well, giving birth is- is appropriate to speak of in polite company, after all. Especially when speaking to a man," she dodges, avoiding his gaze. "I-I wouldn't wish to presume what Lady Roshanak meant by her words, in any case."
"It's fine to presume," he drawls flatly.
"Well-" she says again. "Well, giving birth can be... it can be... trying. As well as very, very messy. I hope whatever Your Majesty may come to witness will not offend his sensibilities overmuch..."
"Mm." For a time, they both stare straight ahead as they walk. "I realize we're an unconventional family," he tells her eventually, quietly. "Thank you for putting up with our unreasonable demands, from time to time."
"-Oh," she says, glancing over at him in surprise, then swiftly away again. "Well- of course, Your Majesty. We are all in your service now."
Maybe luckily for the both of them, they finally come to their destination. As the nursemaid opens the door, two midwives look up, and one promptly shrieks at the sight of Ardashir.
"He really came?!" exclaims the other, situated at the foot of the floor-bed, while the first desperately flings a blanket over both her partner's head and the pregnant belly of the woman lying before her.
"I can assure you I've seen it before," drawls Ardashir, which does less than nothing to assuage the horrified faces of the nursemaid and unconcealed midwife. The woman who must be Samira, clearly younger than the midwives and Roshanak but also notably older than Ardashir, heaves for breath while struggling to prop herself up on her elbows, and he crosses the room to kneel beside her, hurried at the sight of her flushed and covered in sweat. "I'm here, Samira," he says, worry nearly edging into his voice, and takes her hand when she reaches out for him.
"Finally," she pants, and drops herself back onto the pillows. He kisses the back of her hand, just before she throws her head back and starts screaming.
"Push," urges the woman whose head is still hidden by the blanket, and Samira squeezes down fiercely on Ardashir's hand.
"Ouch," he mumbles, but not very vehemently. In the midst of Samira keening between her teeth and tensing up at the midwife's encouragement, however, he slowly starts to curl over, the edges of his mouth and eyes tightening as his fingers flex helplessly and his voice gradually picks up into a whine despite himself- "Ow. Ow, ow, fuck, Samira, my hand-"
"Oh, would you shut your stupid- tiresome mouth for once in your life-" she shouts over him, strained, and grabs for his hand with her other, wrenching another cry out of him as she grips even harder. "This- is nothing- compared to what I'm going through, you little cocksucker!"
"I'm the cocksucker?!" Instead of an answer, she lets out another ragged shriek, and he bends down further to press his forehead to their interlaced hands with a faint hiss. "It's fine. It's going to be fine, Samira." The second midwife moves to wipe Samira's face with a damp towel, and he looks to her with narrowed eyes. "Isn't it?"
"Yes!" she yelps, and all but skitters backwards.
"This will pass," he says to make sure, and she nods.
"Yes, this is perfectly normal, Your Majesty," she reassures him.
"Both of you shut," Samira manages to strain out but then cuts herself off with a round of nonsensical vulgarity. Ardashir watches, transfixed, as the silhouette of her belly under the blanket incrementally loses its dome shape, and soon enough, after Samira finally loosens her hold on Ardashir's hand, and after her shouting peters out to ragged breathing and sporadic whimpers, the midwife emerges from underneath the blanket with a tiny, wet, crying baby.
"It's a girl," she tells them both, shooting Ardashir an uncertain glance as she brings the child to Samira's outstretched arms.
"A girl," echoes Samira.
The midwives and nursemaid continue to hover around uncertainly until Ardashir looks them over and says, "Thank you for your work. You can excuse yourselves, if you like," at which point they file quickly out the door. Samira doesn't pay them any further mind, totally absorbed by the wailing infant cradled in her arms, and for a time Ardashir also lets himself do nothing but stare. Stray locks of her bobcut hair are plastered to her face with sweat, and the kid is red and splotchy from head to tiny, tiny toe.
He finally reaches out to touch the baby's cheek with one careful fingertip, and says, "Those women are never going to look at you the same again."
Samira finds the breath to huff. "If they've ever had kids of their own, they'll understand," she retorts. With some amount of effort, she rolls her head to the side to look at Ardashir's face. "Get that damned crown off your head," she grouses, and he starts to laugh even before she finishes, "You're not allowed to look so put together when I'm such a disgusting mess."
"You don't look disgusting to me," he says, but complies and reaches up to undo the array of chains, unfurling his hair from all its loops and braids until it falls around them like a curtain [longer by far than his appearance in imeeji].
"Better?" he asks.
"Go bald," she complains. He takes a moment to brush her hair back from her forehead with a soft laugh, and she turns her head to look back at the baby once again. "What do you want to name her?"
"Me?" He stares down at them both, eyes a little wide. "I haven't thought about it."
"You haven't thought about it?" echoes Samira with a look, clearly judgmental. "Isn't it important for a king to consider what to name his heirs? King Ardashir." He tips his chin up, just a little defensive.
"What about you?" he returns. "Surely you've had some ideas. Don't most women fantasize about what to name their children one day?"
Samira grimaces and turns her eyes back down to the baby, whose crying has finally started to quiet down. "Of course I did, back when I was a snot-nosed kid. I haven't thought about it in ages, so all those ideas are the downright worst of a slumbrat twelve-year-old's naming sense." Her expression softens out, exhaustion weighing on her eyelids. "I stopped thinking I might ever have something like this."
There's a quiet moment of delay, before Ardashir replies, "You've been pregnant for three seasons."
She shoots him a scowl. "You've had those same three seasons to think of anything, too, you awful brat."
"So we're both idiots."
It takes a moment, but a smile finally breaks across her face. "So we are," she laughs, and Ardashir stares.
"Zahra," he says.
"Zahra," Samira repeats, soft. After a beat, she looks at him, one eyebrow less furrowed than the other. "Isn't that all but Azar without starting with an 'A'? Azar like your dead sister? The one you barely exchanged two words with all your lives?"
"That's not what I was thinking about at all!" he protests, looking affronted. "The meaning is completely different, besides."
Samira looks back down at their child with another faint smile on her lips. "'Radiant,' is it," she murmurs. Struggling to keep her eyes open, she breathes out, "Well, Zahra, would you like a second chance at life?"
Ardashir doesn't protest again.
"Take her from me," says Samira, lifting Zahra up with the very last bit of energy she has. "I can feel myself blacking out and I don't want to roll over and crush her before she's even been alive for a full day."
Ardashir compliantly takes Zahra into his arms and cradles her there as he watches Samira fall asleep.
19th year, winter; the passing of the king, the king's guard, and the rightful heir.
Nobles, guards, servants, dogs and horses alike all file down the streets, bracketed on either side by the wailing people who watch as they pass. Everyone has swaddled themselves in as much white as they own to guard themselves against the chill, but the air is unsuitably dry - no rain, no snow.
At the head of the line are the three cypress-wood coffins, lined with white cloth and carried by four men each. They have no lids, so the people can see the bodies inside, carefully posed as if sleeping. There are only some places where their wounds are hidden under extra fabric, like the cloth wound around their necks to keep their heads from jostling too far away from their shoulders. The first two coffins - a man who strongly resembles Ardashir, and a woman who closely resembles him - are trimmed with a sash of purple; the third, carrying an older, more solidly built man, with a sash of yellow.
Directly following them is a shaded carriage drawn by two horses, carrying Ardashir and his mother as its passengers. Ardashir carries a package in his lap, wrapped in white cloth. A crown of chains and gems covers a good deal of his face, but what can be seen of his expression looks as solemn as Roshanak beside him. People shoot them hateful looks as they pass, but neither one of them ever looks away from the bodies ahead. They're both silent, almost impassive save for their tightly laced hands in the narrow space between them.
Eventually the procession reaches the cypress forest graveyard. A servant girl comes to assist them out of the carriage, sniffling and refusing to meet their eyes. As the purple-marked coffins are lowered in the earth, and the third is carried away elsewhere, it's almost impossible to hear anything over the sound of so many people sobbing, bemoaning the passing of the king, of the princess, but for all the people with their faces buried in their hands, Ardashir and Roshanak go followed by looks as cold as the winter air.
Through getting off the carriage and approaching the graves, Ardashir doesn't let go of her hand until he absolutely has to. She folds her arms while he unwraps the package he was carrying; he lays down the fruit and halva in the coffin first of his father, then of his sister. He keeps and rewraps one orange and two small disks of halva for himself, then steps back and lowers his head to cue the waiting guards to begin filling the graves with dirt. Other servants, some trembling from their own tears, carry over cuttings from other cypress trees to plant on top of the graves.
Ardashir returns to his mother's side and retakes her hand, and surrounded on all sides by the people's loathing, they stand and watch.