for pearls, cirilla fiona elen riannon
via https://ift.tt/lB0Y3vM
I got wayyyy off my schedule, not just because of farm work and
Thanksgiving travel and such, but also because I have like. An embarrassing
number of side projects I’m not officially working on AND YET.
But. here I am, and I have managed a chapter update AND know what the next
chapter is going to be and have also written an embarrassing amount of
material for what, it turns out, was not this chapter or the next. we’ll
see how it all fits together.
MEANWHILE we are joining Ciri et al shortly after her first arrival at the
City of the Golden Towers.
Golden Towers, chapter 3, on AO3
https://archiveofourown.org/works/42597816/chapters/109302543
Could be better but it could be worse, Ciri thought, gazing at her own
nude form in the enormous mirror adorning the wall of the dressing-room of
the Emperor’s private baths.
She was in better condition than she’d been in years; these last couple of
weeks of travel had been much easier than the prior several years, and
she’d lost some of the sharp hungry edge she’d gained during her endless
period of pursuit. Her boobs were almost worth the name, now, she thought
with some delight, shimmying a little to see that there was actually spare
flesh there now to jiggle, but the delight immediately turned to glumness:
she’d get soft now, if she couldn’t think of a way to keep her exercise up.
And it wasn’t like it would be such a bad thing, to put on a little flesh,
but she feared being out of shape the next time something horrible was
chasing her.
Being the Crown Princess to an Empire didn’t mean there were no more
horrible things chasing her. She knew better than that.
But she also knew how to enjoy herself. The baths had been decadent and
luxurious, and if she was being offered expensive and exquisite oils and
unguents to anoint her various scabby bits and scars, she’d take it. She
used the beautiful little mother-of-pearl-handled nail scissors to get her
toenails into shape, and filed her fingernails with the delicate, tiny,
matching rasp set out for the purpose. Afterward she put on a ridiculously
fluffy robe and delicate little house slippers, set out for her and
surprisingly accurately-sized to her feet, and made her way back to the
suite of rooms the Emperor had set aside for her, finding that her scant
luggage had been brought in and there were already sets of new fine clothes
waiting for her there.
It wasn’t that she’d never been treated like this, or that she hadn’t grown
up accustomed to these sorts of things. It had just… been a long time, and
she’d lost the knack.
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