450 word drabble: Thin, Unbroken, Green

[attackfish]

Written for avatar_500 prompt #22, Knight.

Warning: Some very very ablist attitudes on the part of the point of view character

Summary: Kyoshi Island didn’t have mothers.  Kyoshi Island had sisters, in a thin, unbroken green line.

Author's Note: I've been sitting on this for a while.  I actually wrote this as a sample drabble for happiestwhen when I was feeling out what they wanted for their help_pakistan  fic.  As such, this drabble is meant to be a companion to the resulting fic, Drink it Down


Thin, Unbroken, Green

Kyoshi Island didn’t have mothers.  Kyoshi Island had sisters, in a thin, unbroken green line.

Suki washed the blood off her mother’s sister’s daughter’s armor and laced it around her own body.  It gapped and pinched and fit her cousin’s body not her own.  But the warriors would teach her how to fix that.

She painted her face.  It’s soft and sticky, made from egg shells, animal fat, and soot, and the tiny red insects that only lived on Kyoshi Island, and it sat heavy on her face.  Strange.  She always thought it would be hard like porcelain.  She had been afraid it would crack.

The pots of face paint had come to her father’s house along with the armor.  Koko asked what she would have done if their mother’s sister’s daughter hadn’t died, but Suki didn’t have to answer.  There was always one warrior dying.  There was always a new one growing up.

She passed her mother’s sister’s daughter on the way to the dojo.  The woman wore the blue tunic and wide pants of a man or a child again, her hair unbound, her face unpainted.  She gave Suki a smile.  “First day?”

Suki shuddered, and swore to herself that when she died on the battlefield there would be no one-legged, still talking body for her sisters to bring home.

The other Warriors saluted her with their fans as she came in, their faces frozen beneath the forbidding mask of their makeup.

Suki had painted fans at home, pretty delicate things she had first learned with.  But the fans she held now were fans that broke fire.  These were fans that cut off heads.

~*~

Kyoshi Island didn’t have mothers.  Kyoshi Island had sisters, in a thin, unbroken green line.

A woman whose daughters could remember her when they were grown was either very lucky, or a coward.  A woman who made it to see her daughters become warriors was probably both.

There were pirates, and Fire Navy ships, and extortionate Earth Kingdom soldiers, and raiders from Chen.  There were warlords, and chiefs, and village murderers.

But the war was over.  Water Tribe ships guarded their shores.  The Fire Navy stayed within their own waters.  The Earth Kingdom soldiers had been sent home.

For a hundred years, no Kyoshi Warrior had ever retired.

There was a rush, a fear, a bond.  No one could ever mean as much as a sister.  Nothing could mean as much as a battle.  Kyoshi Warriors drank, and sang, and lived it up in a desperate need to do as much as possible before they fell.

There were women all over the world who expected to see their grandchildren grow up.

Suki was tired.

Comments

[weirdlet.livejournal.com]

Just read through a goodly number of your drabbles and ended with this- they're all exquisite, but this one leaves me tilting my head a little. It fits with an uber-martial culture, I just hadn't imagined Kyoshi Island- or Suki- being quite that 'death before dishonor, including marring of the flesh'. Thinking of your cousin as a walking body... brrr. But taking into account Kyoshi Warrior culture as presented in the drabble...

Makes me think a little bit of in the later Vorkosigan saga books, where it's mentioned that it'll really be the old Vor matrons who decide how quickly Galactic-technology uterine replicators will be accepted on their planet, whether they'll embrace the new tech or resent the new generation having it when they had to do it the hard way. The situation has changed, and now the way you've lived your life and sacrificed your everything-that-wasn't-focused-on-that-way are irrelevant.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

I actually got the idea while watching "The Warriors of Kyoshi, and noticing that of all the villagers we saw in that episode who weren't Kyoshi Warriors, only one of them was a woman. There were plenty of little girls, little boys, and grown men, but I only saw one woman. Ans since A:tLA is consistently good about having an equal number of male and female extras, I started wondering why. Of course it could just be because it's an early episode and they got better on gender parity later, but where's the fun in that? Plus, all the Kyoshi Warriors are young, and led by someone young. High turnover?

I've never actually read the Vorkosigan books. They've been on my too-read pile for years

[weirdlet.livejournal.com]

All valid points- I need to go back and rewatch that one.

They're good ones- I think I've pimped them before, but they are definitely fun stuff. Space opera, tragedy, romantic comedy, mostly centered around this mad genius of a young man who lives in a martial, mutant-fearing culture as a brittle-boned dwarf. His mom is also Ursa-level awesome, but without disappearing- she's the focus of the first two books.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

They're on my to read pile, seriously. you know I'm a sucker for books about disabled characters.

[weirdlet.livejournal.com]

Alright, alright ^^ *shushes*

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

lol

[ferricent.livejournal.com]

I can in no way articulate how great this is. I've been reading it and rereading it, and: it's stunning, that repeated first line especially. You really captured Suki's mentality---Suki herself, really: a thing (and not unique) born in a world soaked in 100 years of war, clinging to comrades, and burning glory, and a survival that begins to last too long. It's really a fantastic look at the whole world (and message) of Avatar itself, and what war can mean for Sides that turn out to be Cultures and for Warriors that turn out to be People.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'm fond of this drabble, and I put it up there with "Only Truly Dead" as one of the ugliest things I've written. Thankfully, cultures change and people heal.