[ There are always eyes for green hands, for foreign name, and dress, and speech.
So — himself a stranger to the Marches (to four years outside a tower), he's taken the opposite tack: Dark colours, sturdy cloth. Practical. Distinctly not a robe. You could run in it, and make it more than thirty yards before tripping onto the point of a sword.
His best, at least, since Montsimmard. But he's shaved, and the shirt's clean of any healer's stains, and there's a teapot and blanket tucked into a corner of the garden with absolute incongruity to the distant clash of swords, the salt-and-seagull-shit smell of the air. ]
Lakshmibai, [ He stands to greet her, dips head and shoulders and moves to take the plate, clear her path. ] You look positively a sunrise.
[ Closer to noon now, and the bustle of the place stilled a short time, shovels and rakes at rest. The ground here, reinvigorated, blooms in something a touch beyond the summer itself; verdant and swollen with life. Little like the straggling rooftop rows tucked here and there of the city beyond. ]
[ It does not come into her words and her face - but how this makes her ache. Not just for the kind words he gives her, though they are enough to make her smile. A bright smile that belongs to a younger woman, a different woman. One that doesn't have quite so many scars, that gives the plate easily over to him with a soft and pleasant laugh.
But it is the old woman that aches for the younger. She does not belong to this place, she knows that not just because of how she is treated, but because she already knew what had claimed her. Where she owed her whole self too. A place that had gardens like this. Jhansi had been constructed with wildness in mind. A fortress to house elephants and lions. Open stretches of gardens that framed the central mahal and all of its five stories. A soaked fullness that England could never match, not like this place did at present. Down to the training of guards, for a fort was a fort, after all.
Even if the smell of salt and sea air keeps her free of wading too deeply into memories. Keeps her grounded in the present. That, there never had been in the desert. ]
Thank you.
[ With her hands-free, she smoothes back her veil to reveal her face completely. Pausing only briefly at the edge of the blanket he had set out to take off the soft leather shoes she'd purchased in her first days. Bare, mostly, though there is not much left of the henna that had stained her skin before this. Faded deep brown lines on her already brown skin. The red dots that were painted onto the top of her feet and matched the ones on her palms now only just visible.
Settling if nothing else, to admire the flowers, for that alone, it was worth it. Different to lowtown, the rest of this mighty fortress, and even again from Hightown, and for that - she thinks she might adore it. ]
Why, [ He waits until she’s seated to slip down beside, cautious to balance the tray. A passing glance from the tips of her toes and back, to find her face once more. ] Are you thinking to rob me of it?
[ His own smile is worn-in, wry; as ready and waiting as the sleeves of a favourite coat. Shrugged on and off again as need demands, and no less genuine for the way it now crinkles about his eyes.
(No more for it, either). ]
No, if only. The Inquisition tends it. I understand that bringing it back was quite the undertaking — still withered, even a year ago.
[ Once there'd been another woman, another garden; older: Hedgerows, maze, that same pleasant laugh. It had been the work of servants' lifetimes to keep both tidied away. And for what? If there's been magic shed here, time given,
Well. Better company. At least you don't get lost in the bloody thing. ]
I may just, though what do they call it - green thumbs? I have but two hands and not one between them.
[ She is a warrior and a Queen and a mother - but a gardener? No, she had other people in her employ for that.
Not that she ever didn't approve or appreciate it. Appreciated it for just as much an art as the paintings on her walls, or printed on her hands. A happy mystery she was glad to allude to. In summer, the flowers had been full enough that she could wear them in her hair every day, the thick smell of Jasmine like Diwali night itself. The wide open lotuses like Padmavati herself graced the courtyard pulls.
Was Jhansi's now, as he spoke, withered? When the British burned everything, did they flowers at least - grow back. Her husband's oasis in the desert. ]
Well, at least others can see to it then. If neither of us do.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
So — himself a stranger to the Marches (to four years outside a tower), he's taken the opposite tack: Dark colours, sturdy cloth. Practical. Distinctly not a robe. You could run in it, and make it more than thirty yards before tripping onto the point of a sword.
His best, at least, since Montsimmard. But he's shaved, and the shirt's clean of any healer's stains, and there's a teapot and blanket tucked into a corner of the garden with absolute incongruity to the distant clash of swords, the salt-and-seagull-shit smell of the air. ]
Lakshmibai, [ He stands to greet her, dips head and shoulders and moves to take the plate, clear her path. ] You look positively a sunrise.
[ Closer to noon now, and the bustle of the place stilled a short time, shovels and rakes at rest. The ground here, reinvigorated, blooms in something a touch beyond the summer itself; verdant and swollen with life. Little like the straggling rooftop rows tucked here and there of the city beyond. ]
no subject
But it is the old woman that aches for the younger. She does not belong to this place, she knows that not just because of how she is treated, but because she already knew what had claimed her. Where she owed her whole self too. A place that had gardens like this. Jhansi had been constructed with wildness in mind. A fortress to house elephants and lions. Open stretches of gardens that framed the central mahal and all of its five stories. A soaked fullness that England could never match, not like this place did at present. Down to the training of guards, for a fort was a fort, after all.
Even if the smell of salt and sea air keeps her free of wading too deeply into memories. Keeps her grounded in the present. That, there never had been in the desert. ]
Thank you.
[ With her hands-free, she smoothes back her veil to reveal her face completely. Pausing only briefly at the edge of the blanket he had set out to take off the soft leather shoes she'd purchased in her first days. Bare, mostly, though there is not much left of the henna that had stained her skin before this. Faded deep brown lines on her already brown skin. The red dots that were painted onto the top of her feet and matched the ones on her palms now only just visible.
Settling if nothing else, to admire the flowers, for that alone, it was worth it. Different to lowtown, the rest of this mighty fortress, and even again from Hightown, and for that - she thinks she might adore it. ]
Do you keep this place to yourself?
no subject
[ His own smile is worn-in, wry; as ready and waiting as the sleeves of a favourite coat. Shrugged on and off again as need demands, and no less genuine for the way it now crinkles about his eyes.
(No more for it, either). ]
No, if only. The Inquisition tends it. I understand that bringing it back was quite the undertaking — still withered, even a year ago.
[ Once there'd been another woman, another garden; older: Hedgerows, maze, that same pleasant laugh. It had been the work of servants' lifetimes to keep both tidied away. And for what? If there's been magic shed here, time given,
Well. Better company. At least you don't get lost in the bloody thing. ]
no subject
[ She is a warrior and a Queen and a mother - but a gardener? No, she had other people in her employ for that.
Not that she ever didn't approve or appreciate it. Appreciated it for just as much an art as the paintings on her walls, or printed on her hands. A happy mystery she was glad to allude to. In summer, the flowers had been full enough that she could wear them in her hair every day, the thick smell of Jasmine like Diwali night itself. The wide open lotuses like Padmavati herself graced the courtyard pulls.
Was Jhansi's now, as he spoke, withered? When the British burned everything, did they flowers at least - grow back. Her husband's oasis in the desert. ]
Well, at least others can see to it then. If neither of us do.