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almondinflowerirresistible force paradox
wordcount: 449
notes: erm, more of a demonstration of what happens when I even attempt to get Atobe and Ryoma into the same room, i.e. the conversation fizzles and DIES DIES DIES. Was attempting to answer one of the prompts here, except it just more or less didn't happen.
characters: Atobe, Echizen
On a continent to the east lived two boys, and they were royal.
The first boy thought hard and often about his royalty. In fact he had a very complicated set of ideas about it. He believed, for instance, that 'royal is as royal does', and he had a very low opinion of kings and queens who did not act like kings and queens. And yet he was very proud of his royal blood and sometimes felt like he would be nothing without it.
He was bright of eye and keen of sword and swift of speech, and his people loved him more than they liked to admit.
The second boy did not think about being royal at all. He was a prince from a long line of princes, going back millenia and millenia to the dawn of dirt, and his family had been princes for so long that it never occurred to them that this was anything extraordinary. It was not that they didn't believe in common people; it was that they treated their own royalty the same way they treated sunsets and gravity, which was to say that they counted on its existence without ever thinking about it.
They had two kingdoms, and yet in a sense they had none, since they moved back and forth between the two lands without seriously ruling either of them. (After a while the countries began to operate like constitutional monarchies only without the constitution.)
The sight of a kingdom without a king eventually got on the first boy's nerves (he was the kind of person who went around imposing orders and pyramid hierarchies on everything) and he decided to invade the smaller of the second boy's two kingdoms.
Unfortunately the second boy's family was very good at defending their thrones even though they were not very good at sitting on them (it was why they had stayed princes for so many many millenia), and the first boy's war failed.
This is how the resulting peace talks went:
The first boy looked down his nose at the second boy (He was taller, which facilitated this.) "Well, you're good at military strategy, I'll grant you that."
The second boy appeared not to hear. He had very sharp, dark eyes, and he used them to stare distractedly at the field of fallen soldiers around them. (Retainers from both sides were urgently placing soldiers on stretchers and ushering them into ambulances).
But the second boy did not appear to be looking at the wounded. He did not, in fact, appear to be looking at anything at all.
Eventually he turned to the first boy and said, "You look like a monkey."
wordcount: 449
notes: erm, more of a demonstration of what happens when I even attempt to get Atobe and Ryoma into the same room, i.e. the conversation fizzles and DIES DIES DIES. Was attempting to answer one of the prompts here, except it just more or less didn't happen.
characters: Atobe, Echizen
On a continent to the east lived two boys, and they were royal.
The first boy thought hard and often about his royalty. In fact he had a very complicated set of ideas about it. He believed, for instance, that 'royal is as royal does', and he had a very low opinion of kings and queens who did not act like kings and queens. And yet he was very proud of his royal blood and sometimes felt like he would be nothing without it.
He was bright of eye and keen of sword and swift of speech, and his people loved him more than they liked to admit.
The second boy did not think about being royal at all. He was a prince from a long line of princes, going back millenia and millenia to the dawn of dirt, and his family had been princes for so long that it never occurred to them that this was anything extraordinary. It was not that they didn't believe in common people; it was that they treated their own royalty the same way they treated sunsets and gravity, which was to say that they counted on its existence without ever thinking about it.
They had two kingdoms, and yet in a sense they had none, since they moved back and forth between the two lands without seriously ruling either of them. (After a while the countries began to operate like constitutional monarchies only without the constitution.)
The sight of a kingdom without a king eventually got on the first boy's nerves (he was the kind of person who went around imposing orders and pyramid hierarchies on everything) and he decided to invade the smaller of the second boy's two kingdoms.
Unfortunately the second boy's family was very good at defending their thrones even though they were not very good at sitting on them (it was why they had stayed princes for so many many millenia), and the first boy's war failed.
This is how the resulting peace talks went:
The first boy looked down his nose at the second boy (He was taller, which facilitated this.) "Well, you're good at military strategy, I'll grant you that."
The second boy appeared not to hear. He had very sharp, dark eyes, and he used them to stare distractedly at the field of fallen soldiers around them. (Retainers from both sides were urgently placing soldiers on stretchers and ushering them into ambulances).
But the second boy did not appear to be looking at the wounded. He did not, in fact, appear to be looking at anything at all.
Eventually he turned to the first boy and said, "You look like a monkey."
