Allen1996
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Chapter 7: Petrichor
🕑 Added 2024-07-14 19:13:33 +0000 UTCI could see all of Astapor from where I was standing. I could see their joy, their happiness. I could hear them celebrating, losing themselves in sweet revelry. The sun was hidden, replaced by the moon that cast a silver hue over the grass of the gardens I was in, a gentle breeze rustling the leaves. The place was almost empty, save for myself, Nileyah, Greyworm, and some of his Unsullied.
This place felt both like a part of and something that wasn’t from Astapor. This place, at the peak of one of the remaining pyramid, had been the home of some of the ‘good masters’. I could kind of understand how they could so easily separate themselves from the atrocities they committed if when from here, they were nothing but background noise.
It still didn't excuse at all the suffering they created. It is something that could never be excused.
This place, Astapor, my Astapor, those people who believed in me, who believed that I could protect them, who saw me as a godlike figure.
I had been so close to failing them. I was strong. They weren’t. The freedom they had wasn’t something given but something taken, which meant that it could easily be taken back from their grasp.
It was a mad world, sorcerers, magic, yet why did it feel as if the greater obstacle was the need people had to keep a world where others were subjugated?
What kind of world could accept cruelty so easily? I wasn’t a good person. I don’t think I could be called one when it was so easy to revel in the blood I made slavers and the Dothraki spill, yet I was a saint to most of those people.
Me, a saint because I had done the easy thing. Me, a saint because I simply didn't choose to keep my power only to myself.
One breath, one breath and I could be gone from this city. One breath, alone, in a place devoid of danger and expectations, a place devoid of the ugliness humans could so easily display.
One breath and I would be leaving them. One breath and all their smiles would disappear. One breath and all their hopes, all their laughs crushed by absolute despair, yet it wasn’t the reason why I was still here with them.
This wasn’t the reason I hadn’t left on my own when they honestly only brought difficulties and problems.
I was still here because of the way their eyes lit up when they saw me. I was still here because while I despised the responsibilities, the drawbacks that came with Astapor, the smiles, the joys, the hopes shining in them when they looked at me made me feel good.
It made me feel worthy. It made me feel as if I was the eighth wonder of the world. This feeling, I didn't want to lose it.
Call it pride, selfishness, or whatever else, I never said I was good enough. I just didn't want this to stop, but maybe this was enough.
Maybe I didn't need to be a saint. Maybe this world didn't deserve one.
I kept my gaze on the city below as I felt her step to my side. My magic ensured that I knew who she was, that she wasn’t a possible enemy, but even without it, the fact that Nileyah, Greyworm, and the others hadn’t reacted negatively told me everything I needed to know.
We both stayed silent, a gentle breeze creating a canvas of white at the corner of my eye. I wondered for a brief moment where her hair and mine began and stopped.
“Hi, Aegor,” she finally spoke, the distance between the two of us minimal, yet it felt as if it came from the edge of the world.
“Hi Daenolla,” I greeted her back, and the old hatred came back at the sight of her, hatred at the girl who looked so much like me, or maybe it was the contrary, that it was eerie, almost as if we were full-blooded siblings.
Kraznys had chosen her for a reason, after all.
I looked away from her, back to Astapor to appease the dredges of hatred I could feel flowing inside, to try to ignore the memories of those moments assaulting my mind.
“I can leave if you want,” she told me softly, her voice barely a whisper.
“We're free,” I shrugged, even if I wanted her to do everything but be in my presence.
“This place is as much yours as it is mine,” I told her.
This was the truth. The pyramids, the entire city had once been owned by the good masters, but the good masters were dead, and the harsh truth was that the world could only be owned by the living.
The people of Astapor may have called this part of the red pyramid mine, but the truth was that it was as much mine as it was theirs.
Each and every one of them could come here, and I would have no right to stop them, but the little neat thing was that they didn't.
Some because they were grateful, because they saw me as a divine being even if it was the last thing I wanted to be seen as. Gods didn't change anything. Men did, and I was nothing but a child of man.
Others didn't simply because those places were only mementos of bad moments for them and because there would be no point in doing so.
Maybe if they didn't have homes, maybe if they were literally sleeping on the ground while I did in a red pyramid, they would, and it would honestly be a justified thing, but homeless people technically didn't exist in Astapor.
I had nipped it in the bud at the first occasion I got. The day after the first terrible, in my opinion, speech I had given to the people of Astapor, I had begun to construct homes, homes made with the same wood of the trees my healing fruits came from.
They were as modern as I could make them, which meant not truly compared to what I had in my last world, but good enough that they would probably have been seen as luxurious in the 30s.
I went while creating them as full solar punk as possible. It had been a helpful exercise in manipulating the magic I woke up with.
Sun-powered basic amenities, fresh and clean water coming from the bodies of water surrounding Astapor filtered through a subterranean labyrinth of hybrid of vines and pipes.
I had tried to explain the reasoning behind those things, but the only thing it seemed the people of Astapor got was that it was magic coming from me to help them, and honestly, it seemed as if it was the only thing they had needed to know.
“Do you want me to stay though, Aegor?”
I thought about telling her how I truly felt about her presence until I remembered that I was in front of someone who went through the same bullshit that Aegor, that I did, and for longer. Someone that would still be considered a teenager from the world I was coming from, not even an adult.
The only difference between her and I, the only difference between Aegor and her was that one of them died and came back. That was all.
“To be honest, I don’t want you to be here,”
I acted as if I didn't see how her fingers were trembling, her fingers, now that I truly paid attention to them, weren’t the perfectly manicured and smooth-looking ones Kraznys had loved so much.
They were now scarred, scarred in a place where my fruit could heal everything. The people of Astapor hadn’t yet found what were the limits of my fruits, and it wasn’t because they didn't try to abuse them.
Things could and went wrong so easily and quickly.
It meant that my fruits either had found a limit, which was a dangerous and interesting thought because honestly, what could be worse than your lower and upper part hanging together only by a thread of spongy-looking flesh, or that, for one reason or another, she chose not to be healed, that she had done it on purpose.
“But I feel as if it’s been a while since we talked. Really talked,” I continued. “We are supposed to work into making Astapor great, but how could we if we can’t even talk?”
“Yeah. I guess you're right, that even before we’ve both been avoiding each other,” she said.
I felt a sigh escape me as I looked out at the towering trees I had created.
“I know that it wasn’t your fault. I hope you know it too. We didn't have any choice. It's just…It’s not something easy to talk about,” especially with you, I didn't say out loud. “But things are changing, we can change.“
Pyat Pree and his masters were proof of that, proof that the world was moving forward, that it wouldn’t wait for me. I couldn’t afford to let myself get stuck in those moments, even if it wasn’t easy.
“I don’t know if you remember it. You were so young back then. We both were. This was before the good masters tasked me with serving them,” she said softly.
“It didn't mean that I was of no use to them, that I didn't have any duty. One of the duties Kraznys gave me was to help with some of the younger slaves he bought.”
The sad thing was that the good masters didn't stop themselves from purchasing slaves of a certain age.
It was a fact, especially when coming from Lys, that you could sometimes be bought even before your birth, that you were literally born because the slaver had paid a generous sum for you to be born with the qualities they desired. You were literally bred for your master.
Aegor hadn’t known his parents, or maybe he did and forgot. Who Aegor had remembered, who I remembered, was Daenolla. She had been the closest thing to a mother figure he ever had.
This is why even though logically Aegor himself had known it wasn’t the girl’s fault before his death, he still hated her, the one who betrayed him.
It was why my emotions were so messed up when it came to her. Logic and emotions didn't always equal each other.
Intellectually, I knew it wasn’t her fault but emotionally it felt as if it was the case.
"You were such q joyous child before, and I was the one to shatter this joy," she spoke, her voice trembling. “You stopped smiling after that first time.”
I was also sure that one of the reasons Kraznys had chosen her was because of how close we had been. It made me regret being so swift with him.
I had learned from Pyat Pree and the warlocks so many interesting things. If only I had known then what I know now, the suffering he inflicted all his life would have been nothing compared to what I did to him.
“We went through the same thing, but unlike you, the instrument he used hadn't been someone I trusted, someone I truly cared about. I’ve tried to imagine what you went through. A part of me is thankful that I’ll never fully understand this pain.”
I bit into my cheeks to stop the river of hatred I knew wanted to spill out from my lips.
“Good thing for you,” were the only words I said, the words coming out more bitter than I wished they had.
If I closed my eyes, I knew I could perfectly envision how she had held his, my wrists wrists, holding him down at Kraznys's order while he begged her not to.
It wasn’t her fault, I had to remind myself as I felt my body tense.
The thought came uncontrolled, almost whispered ‘But she was there, she was part of it. How can there be understanding when she is part of the nightmare?’
“I didn’t have a choice, Valonqar,” she spoke, sounding on the verge of crying.
Valonqar was how she had originally called Aegor. The prophecy given in canon to Cersei was that she would lose everything because of a younger and more beautiful queen, because of the Valonqar.
Maggy, a fortune teller, had told Cersei that when she lost everything, the one who would take her life wasn’t the young queen but the Valonqar.
I guess it explained why she hated Tyrion so much, especially considering the fact that the High Valyrian word meant "little brother."
It was a word of endearment, of affection, yet it only made me want to puke. It was as if this world was an onion and each layer was a tragedy.
Her voice was now breaking, devoid of any calmness, yet she continued, almost pleading, almost begging.
“They would have killed me if I had tried anything. I was just a powerless girl and I was scared of death when I shouldn’t have been, when I shouldn’t have been a coward when you called me Mandia.”
Older sister my mind automatically translated.
“You had no power,” I told her as gently as I could. There was nothing she could have done. She would have needed a miracle to survive if she did. I guess I could be called the miracle that came too late.
“There was no way to stop him.”
It wasn’t an erasure of what happened. It didn't stop the feeling of betrayal because feelings didn't always equal logic, but it was better than letting anger consume me against a child who never could have been one.
“I know that I couldn’t have stopped anything. It doesn't mean that I couldn't have done something. I just wanted to apologize because I was never strong enough before to do so, and I don’t expect you to forgive me, Aegor.”
I could feel the anger ebbing slightly. It was still there. It hadn’t disappeared, but it felt less like a wave on the point of swallowing me now.
“I want to forgive you because you honestly don’t deserve my anger and hatred,” I told her quietly.
“I only want to, but I can’t, at least for now. I’ve tried to,” I honestly told her.
“Believe me, I have. But it’s complicated. I know, deep down, that you didn’t want any of it. But that doesn’t make it easier. Just give me… just give me some time, please.”
I could only hope that with time, it became true, that I could find a way to deal with how this new body of mine reacted to some things because Daenolla didn't deserve that.
I could hear her sobbing. She tried to do it quietly, but with my magic and how close we were, there was no chance I couldn’t hear her.
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, Aegor. If there was any way to change the past, I would. I’d give anything to take your pain away.”
“Maybe it was only right for it to happen.”
I opened my palm, a spark of blue magic coming to life and creating shadows before fading into nothing as I crushed it.
“Maybe if it hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have woken up with this,” I whispered.
I honestly would be surprised if me waking up in the body of Aegor wasn’t due to some kind of cosmic entity or system, even if it was a possibility.
If things had been different with Aegor, maybe I wouldn’t have woken up as him.
I gripped the railing before jumping on top of it and standing fully.
“Aegor! What are you doing?! It's dangerous!” shouted the platinum blonde-haired woman.
One step and I would be falling into the void. It was a sure death for anyone who wasn’t me or able to do some kind of freaky magic.
It seemed the older girl had forgotten. I turned to face her to see embarrassment flash on her features as she remembered why I wasn’t in danger.
She looked way prettier when she was smiling. I closed my eyes and smiled, focusing only on the sound of the world around me, only on the sound of Astapor below, only on the heartbeats of the people around me.
“I know that you're trying, Daenolla. They call me strong, but I'm not sure it would be right to call me such when all of you are so much stronger.”
The people of Astapor had chosen to rise for their freedom without any drop of magic at the tip of their fingers.
I may have set ablaze one of the pyramids of Astapor and killed Kraznys, but they were the ones who made the streets take a more than scarlet shade with the blood of the good masters.
They were the people who actually went through horrors after horrors for so many years. They were the ones without magic, without the help of the divine, who didn’t break. I had just been the spark.
“A part of me will always care,” I told her. The opposite of love wasn’t hatred. It was apathy, and I hadn’t inherited apathy toward her. “You’re my… you’re important to me.”
I had wanted to say "older sister," but the words didn't want to come out. I guessed it wasn’t something I could do yet.
I turned my gaze away from her back to Astapor, to my Astapor, to their smiles and laughs. I had made this, and it was a sight I found soothing.
“I understand you. I care about you. If you need time and distance, I understand.”
I could feel her try to make her voice as emotionless as possible, yet the way it continued to break with each word showed how she truly felt.
“Good night, Your Grace,” she said softly. This was a farewell, what this body had wished since the beginning. It was the end of our conversation, yet words came flowing from me, from Aegor.
“Do you think we’ll ever be okay? That I’ll ever be able to look at you without seeing… those nights?” I murmured, yet I felt her stop. I knew she had heard me.
“I hope so. But I know it will take time. Maybe a lifetime. But I’ll wait. I'll wait until the last day I have, until the last breath I take. I’ll be here, no matter what. And even if then, you haven’t forgotten me, I would be fine with that.”
“You’re truly a strong person, Daenolla. Maybe it would have been better if it was you who had woken up with this magic.”
“I don’t think so, Aegor. You’re the one who is strong. You’ve survived so much already. We've all survived because of you. I believe in you. We believe in you. Even if you don’t believe yourself worthy, I believe you to be.”
I looked at her, meeting her eyes for the first time since we began talking. Maybe that was a start. Believing in the me that they believed in. It was something, at least.
“Hey, Daenolla,” I told her as I sent a flare of magic above into the clouds, asking, no, commanding the weather to change, and it obeyed almost as if alive, almost full of eagerness.
“Look above.”
She did, just for a snowflake to fall on the left side of her face.
“Is this snow?” I heard her say in a tone full of wonder.
The world I had been reincarnated in was truly weird when it came to seasons, especially when you consider the fact that more than being forces of nature physically, they were also metaphorically and probably metaphorically.
It was technically always winter in the north of Westeros, even if it happened that they had summers that would still be considered harsh winters in my ancient world, except for Canadians, of course.
The more you moved away from the north and came south, the less you encountered winters.
The northernmost part of Essos was only longitudinally even with the Vale. Slaver's Bay and Qarth were even further south than Dorne, the southern tip of Westeros.
It meant that while Braavos would be quite cold during the winter and occasional snows would hit most of the continent of Essos, Qarth and Slaver's Bay, however, had a fairly warm climate throughout winter, which meant you barely felt that it was winter and that you never saw snow.
There were slaves who had been born, worked, and died in Astapor without ever seeing snow all their lives.
When Aegor was younger, before he became Kraznys’ favorite, before everything went wrong with Kraznys, Daenolla used to tell him stories about the wonders of the world.
She would tell him of white snow. In a place like Astapor that could literally turn into hell on Earth in summer, such a thing sounded like a dream.
Aegor and Daenolla, Daenolla and I, would speak of seeing it for ourselves. Seeing and touching snow.
It was foolish, but it had been a way for us to dream of freedom, of a place that wasn’t Astapor with its horrors and cruelties, of a place without good masters.
I felt a smile bloom on my face at the screams of excitement I heard coming from below. The snow meant only one thing.
“We are free,” she whispered as she finally realized.
When I smiled at her, I didn't have to force it.
“We are, Mandia,” I told her and this time the world didn't feel as poison in my throat.
This time, she couldn’t attempt to hide the sob that came from her. It looked undignified.
I couldn’t say it though, when I could feel the snowflakes melt and stream down my face.
Comments
allen 1996
This chapter was supposed to b way longer but I honestly think that a chapter of 8K where two people only talk wouldn’t be fitting in that part of the story for now. Tell me what you like or didn't like
