CHAPTER UPDATE Golden Towers ch 3

[dragonlady7]

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. (Your picture was not posted)