Carving One's Future

by **Vanari** on November 1st, 2013, 11:03 pm

Winter, Day 3, 505 AV

A slim figure sat hunched before her impeccable work station, her expression glum, her knees bouncing with furious impatience. It was supposed to be a day of rest after so many hard weeks of preparing for winter, but words like "relax" and "easy" didn't exist in her mother's vocabulary.

"Show me what you've done so far."

Reluctantly, the teen handed over a plate-sized carving, her features growing more and more sour by the tick. Carving was not her mother's forte, clay and ice working were, but the master sculptor still exceeded her daughter in both skill and knowledge. Therefore, as the artistic superior and head of the family, Voria felt it a necessity to educate the heiress herself.

Besides, don't mothers always know best?

"Hmm." Voria studied her daughter's half-finished depictions of the old Whale Tale, her hawkish eyes still razor sharp in her middling age. "I see some improvement, but you're still too hasty with the decor, dear. Emphasizing the story itself is fine and good, but neglect--"

"--ing the embellishments is like botching a painting's frame. Yes, I know, mother. I was just...tired. You know, what will all this endless prep work for winter we've been trapped with for the past season."

Voria tsk'ed, shaking her head. "Always with the excuses, dear. Remember what we live by in this household? The only person you can blame is yourself! Now, let me show you where you've been slacking."

Vanari mouthed her mother's favorite motto along with her then rolled her eyes. It was so incredibly typical of the elder Skyglow to put her oldest through such misery whilst completely neglecting her youngest. Sania was probably off flirting with half of the male population at Iceglaze hold again, and she was only fourteen. Her older sister, on the other hand, was a prisoner at home, flirting with no one. Honestly, how did her mother expect icemaidenhood not be the inevitable fate promised to her within a year or two?

The more she thought about the injustice and stupidity of it all, the more she felt her anger rise in her throat. She could care less about the prospects of marriage, but if her mother was going to keep badgering her about it, at least the godsforsaken woman could lay off with the ridiculous lessons for a while so her daughter could lead some semblance of a normal, social life.

No. That was not her duty. Vanari's responsibility laid within her sole ability to maintain their family holdings and reputation. All hope had been abandoned where ever Sania was concerned, so she bore all the expectations.

Every. Last. One of them.

The Vantha teen fought to maintain her composure. If she blew up at her mother now, she would never be able to leave the house. Instead, she sank back a little against the welcome heat of the fire crackling merrily behind her and exhaled slowly. Voria was now demonstrating how several of the embellishments could be fixed with a simple trick using the V-tool.

Vanari sighed. As resentful as she was of this constant theft of her youth, she couldn't deny her mother knew what she was doing. Her mouth still drawn in a petulant frown, she picked up the knife and followed the sculptor's lead, trying hard not to think about her loneliness.

by **Vanari** on November 2nd, 2013, 6:42 am

Carefully, the young Vantha carved with the grain of the wood, using utmost diligence to follow her mother's curt but effective teaching. A lot could be said of both parent and child, for their mutual hotheadedness and tendencies to blow up at one another, but when it came down to the important things, such as their art, and their bond to one another, there wasn't much that came between them.

Truth be told, Vanari was not as resentful as she made herself sound. Most days she preferred the sanctuary of her warm, familiar home. Unlike her kin, she rather despised the biting, cold weather they perpetually fought to survive in. Sometimes, she found herself imaging what warm air might feel like, or letting the sun touch her bare arms without being simultaneously exposed to frostbite. Sometimes, she would look out the window wistfully at all her old friends and companions romping about during their free time. She felt the ache of loneliness most whenever news spread of yet another pair of youths falling in love, while she sat by herself beside her parents' hearth, honing and perfecting her craft.

But, as sharp as this pain often felt, Vanari knew deep down why she felt no pressing need to remedy it. She didn't like to dwell on the truth too much and preferred to busy herself with practical tasks, but it was there. Try as she might, she couldn't shake it from her psyche.

She was going to leave one day. And all of this would be so far behind her by the time she could be considered a true Icemaiden that such a term would mean nothing to her anymore.

Vanari stopped working abruptly, her eyes growing a bit misty. She sniffed once, blinked rapidly a few times, and then commenced fixing her sloppy handiwork from the night before. If her mother noticed, she gave no signs that she had.

Ever so carefully, the teen carved tiny slivers away from the handsome wood. Each time a slice fell away, the embellishments grew crisper and more appealing. She had picked the wood herself at her mother's prodding, and ended up quite pleased with it. It had a lovely color, warm as honey and its grains thin and delicate like graceful rivers racing all over its smooth, well-sanded surface.

Vanari hated splinters. They were the most troublesome and petty hazards in this line of craft.

By the time Voria was satisfied, her daughter was running low on her usually bottomless patience. Only after much persuading and pleading was Vanari finally released from her obligations and allowed to spend some time outside. Feeling as though a huge stopper had been unplugged from her lungs, she breathed in the sweet scent of freedom and charged through the doors, eager to make the most of her time away from her duties.

" "

by **Vanari** on November 3rd, 2013, 2:04 am

Vanari bit into her meat pie and closed her eyes in ecstasy. Her mother, always twenty steps ahead, had stuffed one in her pack before the teen bolted out of the house.

It was snowing lightly, and Vanari had to keep brushing tiny flakes from her steamy pie. One, two, three more ticks and she finished devouring the little treat, licking her fingers a bit before throwing her gloves back on.

Everything for leagues all around was finely dusted in a layer of powdery snow. As her feet crunched their way down the cobbled streets, Vanari wondered for the hundredth time what it would be like to walk through a city in one of those mythical evening gowns she had heard travelers speak of, cut low at the neck and back with jewels and finery the likes of which she had never seen, would never see. Wearing impractical little shoes with heels that clicked and clacked against stone, perfume on the neck that left mesmerizing trails, and a gloved hand wrapped around some dashing fellow's chivalrous arm.

It was, of course, a bit ridiculous in the Vantha teen's mind. After all, she'd never seen such things for herself, only drawings in books occasionally lent by a kind traveler passing through in exchange for tidbits of advice on where to get the best prices for supplies.

Vanari sighed, her heart full of wistful, bittersweet longings. She was born and bred amongst a hardy lot and dared anyone to claim as much pride as she possessed for her people. Yet, a small, nagging part of her inside yearned to see what lay beyond their icy walls. Longed to see the world, to suffer through an adventure, to fall in love...

A gaggle of miscreants tumbled out of some alleyway, laughing themselves silly over some prank or other that only boys seemed to enjoy. One of them caught Vanari's disapproving glare and extracted himself from the puerile group. His handsome, olive face cracked into a foolish grin as she walked briskly by, rather hellbent on not making eye contact.

"Hey Vee, where ya off to?"

The girl shrugged. "Somewhere."

Aiden jogged up to her, his breath creating puffs of white mist that danced at the edge of her peripheral. "Can I come with?"

Vanari slowed a bit, sliding him a suspicious look. "What for? Another one of your stupid dares?"

At this, the boy jumped in front of her with a look of possibly genuine concern on his face, forcing her to stop walking altogether. "Hey, look, I said I was sorry, didn't I? It was dumb, I know. And like I said before, I only agreed cause--"

"--you thought I was pretty. Yes, I remember," Vanari finished for him, her tone as dry as ash. "What do you want, Ade. The sooner I pry it out of you, the sooner I can stop being forced to look at your stupid face."

"Playing hard to get, I like it," Aiden winked. Vanari's eyes rolled so far back she was half afraid they'd never come down again. "Nothing, believe it or not. I just wanted to talk to you for a bit. There's no crime in that, right?"

The teen stared at him dubiously. "No, I don't suppose there is..."

by **Vanari** on November 4th, 2013, 7:44 am

The two walked side by side, their light banter flowing on with surprising ease and pleasure, the latter of which Vanari would be loathe to admit. Ade had always been nice to her, for some reason, despite the occasional idiocy that seemed to plague most boys his age.

In the midst of yet another one of his outrageous claims to fame, Vanari snuck a glance in Ade's direction, noting the charming ease of his smile, the graceful curve of his generous, dark lashes. She allowed herself a small grin and looked away, giving the pretense instead of annoyance and indifference.

"I don't know about you, but I've never seen a bear even come close to walking on two legs, let alone dance a merry jig. You sure you didn't have one too many mugs of ale at the feast? I see you chugging those things..."

"So you notice me then?" Ade piped, quirking one, thick eyebrow.

Vanari shrugged. "It's kind of hard not to, oh Master of Imbibement. You're going to get a belly as big as Old Barty, and he's only a recent alcoholic."

"Aw, don't be worried about me, Vee," he laughed, "I'm going to be young forever, didn't you know that? In fact, we both are! I think this calls for a celebration!"

Before she could respond with a dignified snort, Ade grabbed her mittened hands and began leading them into a ridiculous sort of dance, hooting and prancing in the middle of the street. All the while, Vanari wept with laughter, barely able to keep herself standing as they twirled along like a pair of loons, their voices bouncing off the walls and down the empty road.

The younger Vantha begged for rest after a few chimes, her stomach aching from laughter and her face near frozen from all her mirthful tears. Ade obliged, utterly winded himself but grinning ear to ear with his usual mischief. After a few ticks, Vanari looked up, still giggling and wiping water from her eyes. For the first time, her immediate reaction wasn't to insult Ade with whatever came to mind first. She just stared and smiled, suddenly forgetful of her burdens.

Of her circumstances.

"Ooooh, you proposin' anytime soon, Ade?"

The two jumped and turned, as though they had been caught with their hands in the lembaes jar.

"Real lady killer, aren't ya?" another boy jeered. Ugh, Mack, Skyglow's very own, village idiot. Why were these buffoons even Ade's friends?

She was just about to open her mouth, when to her surprise Ade turned and spoke first. "Oy, don't be jealous. Just cause none of you manage to get a pretty girl to talk to you."

The boys scoffed. "Oh, our mistake. Ade was just being Ade."

"Aye, just usin' that face 'o his to reel in some fresh meat. We're goin' to the pond to watch Jerris walk across the ice. He lost yesterday's bet. Wanna come see?"

"Yeah, Ade," Mack chimed in. "Don't leave yer mates hangin'. Unless you got more, er, important business to take care of."

The two boys nudged each other like the pair of imbeciles they were, and it was all Vanari could do not to charge at them like an angry she-bear would a couple, careless hunters who had stolen her cub.

"Don't be stupid, I'm comin'," Ade answered, then started jogging toward them. Vanari watched him go in disbelief. Why did he even bother speaking to her? Ever? Why go through all this trouble, share a moment of wondrous bliss, then leave her standing alone like a fool in the cold, empty street? She couldn't understand, but there was no use in trying. He was going, and there was nothing she could do.

A sudden, inexplicable rage filled the girl from limb to limb. She pelted after him, easily catching up with her burst of speed, and grabbed his sleeve. Ade turned as she tugged, his eyes went wide with golden surprise as he caught her, bearing the brunt of her momentum.

Vanari looked up at him in shades of ruby.

Then she punched him square in the jaw.

by **Vanari** on November 5th, 2013, 6:43 am

The boys "oohed" in sympathetic pain as Ade fell flat on his back. When he groaned in shock and pain, seemingly unable to pick himself back up, they doubled over with laughter, howling in disbelief.

Vanari stood over Ade, angry breaths still heaving from her chest, her knuckles only slightly sore from the force of her punch. Her fist was still clenched and she had to unravel her fingers one by one, making sure nothing was broken.

Mittens were good mitigation of impact; too bad Ade wasn't wearing one on his face.

"Ohhh, Ade that's gotta hurt!" Mack guffawed. The other boy was too busy gasping for breath, his back sliding down the nearest wall as his legs grew less and less capable of holding him upright. "You let a girl knock you flat! Wait till the others hear about this..."

For a moment, she was afraid Ade would be angry. Which was silly, really. What else did she expect of someone she had just socked in the jaw?

But when Vanari looked down, the boy was staring back, his eyes still wide but filled with something other than incredulousness. They held their gazes a few ticks longer, both equally stupefied for entirely different reasons.

Then she turned and ran, ripping down the street with reckless abandon. No destination in mind, just running, escaping the ludicrous nature of what she had just done. She ran until her thighs burned and twitched, till her lungs were all but ash. The frigid, Winter air was just as painful as true fire, and it wasn't long before the teen found herself lying face first in a mound of snow, feeling like she was on the verge of death.

Vanari laid there for a while, too distraught and winded to do much else. Gods, how could one person be so socially abominable? Surely, there were plenty of other girls getting rejected everyday who handled things without having to punch someone in the face.

Unfortunately, it so happened that she wasn't one of them.

Sighing into the biting cold, the teen slowly propped herself up, groaning with effort as she did. She brushed the snow from her furs as best she could, then took a good look at her surroundings.

Vanari saw she was in some sort of enclave, with a few rocks and trees and not much else. Not too far from the hold, but far enough that she wouldn't be disturbed for some time. Unwilling to go back after her recent fiasco, Vanari decided to stay for a while, grateful for once of the solitude she often found herself bearing.

Shrugging the pack from her back, she took out her flint and steel, pocketed both, and began foraging for wood. There wasn't much lying about, so she had to break a few off the nearby barren trees. The ones she did manage to find on the ground she had to snap in half to make sure they were dry inside. Fortunately, the snow wasn't too deep, so she was able to dig a hole into solid ground and work from there. Vanari placed the wood as best she could; she was no hunter or wilderness explorer by far, but the basics were common knowledge to those born in Taldera's icy reaches.

As a final touch, the girl dug deep into her pockets to scoop out some lint, then sprinkled her collection over her makeshift fire. Then she took out her flint and steel and struck. Once. Twice. Thrice!

A little flame sparked to life and she blew gently at it, coaxing it to grow stronger. As it slowly began to lick up against the branches, the girl sat back on her haunches, watching it with a sort of distant gaze. It was nice, looking at the merry dance of the fire instead of dwelling on the trials of her short, uneventful life.

She propped her cheek on one mittened hand and heaved another sigh, poking at the fire every now and then to keep it blazing heartily.

And then she heard footsteps, crunching softly in her direction.

by **Vanari** on November 7th, 2013, 9:05 am

When Vanari looked up, she saw the absolute last person she expected to come after her.

"Oh, Ari dear, what have you done this time?"

Voria hunkered down beside her daughter, throwing an arm around the sulking teen in a rare moment of sympathy and comfort. "If this is about that Frostfawn boy, I can already guess. You like him, don't you?"

Vanari scowled fiercely, stabbing her stick in the fire. It was pretty much all the answering her mother needed.

The older Vantha sighed, picking up her own stick to keep that of her daughter's company. "You know, when I was your age--no, listen, this one's worth hearing, trust me."

Rolling her eyes, Vanari shrugged in compliance and went back to prodding her flimsy fire.

"I wasn't very...involved in the whole social scene with my peers. I know, hard to believe, but I was so buried in my obsession for my craft that I thought of little else. And then Rorin came along, and everything changed."

For once, Voria's eldest daughter found herself growing interested. Rorin was definitely not her father. In fact, he was kind of sort of...Aiden's father.

"He was tall, strong, charming, and he had this wonderful laugh. It was kind of silly, but there was a freeness and warmness to it that infected you no matter how much of a sourpuss you were." Her mother slid her a knowing look. " And I bet you know exactly what I'm talking about."

As loathe as she was to admit, Vanari couldn't deny her mother's conviction. Morwen, how she did despise and revere that trying ability of her's to always, always be right.

"Well, Rorin seemed to sneak looks at me whenever he could. I noticed, but I didn't think much of it; he had girls practically lining up at his door. And then one day he marched up to me as I was setting up one of my works out on the front steps, and demanded to know why I kept ignoring him."

Voria giggled at the memory. Her mother actually giggled. "You know, he was just the most perplexing and lovable creature I'd ever met.

"What did you say to him?" Vanari blurted, breaking her vow of silence in a moment of piqued curiosity.

Her mother smiled, eyes crinkling. "I said I wasn't ignoring him; he just wasn't trying hard enough to catch my attention. So every day after that, he would do something more ridiculous than the one before. One time it got so out of hand he actually sprained his ankle jumping from a rooftop."

Vanari smothered a snort of laughter, and her mother only smiled wider. "Yes, he really was a rather thick-headed boy at the time. I was so utterly charmed though; it felt like magic for the longest time."

The girl set her stick down, then looked at her mother with a sort of knowing sadness. "What happened after that?"

by **Vanari** on November 8th, 2013, 7:16 am

"Well, after that, we were engaged."

Vanari nearly choked on her own spit and her eyes bugged from their sockets. "You what?"

Voria laughed, sounding ten years younger than the stern matron that had dominated so much of her daughter's life. "Yes, I know it must be hard to believe, but it's true. Our parents spoke to one another, as was custom, and we were set to marry in Spring. Simple as that."

The younger Vantha fell silent and stared distantly at the crackling fire. To think that her mother had been anything other than her mother was hard enough. To then have to wrap her mind around the fact that she could have not existed at all. That Voria could be sitting beside an entirely different child of hers, leading an entirely different life...

"Alas," her mother sighed, interrupting her depressing train of thoughts, "Rorin and I were about as good for each other as a hawk and a bear. Make no mistake, we were absolutely overcome with joy at first. We loved each other so much...but then, once the commitment and responsibility set in, things started to change.

The older Vantha held the end of her smoking stick up to her sad, tired eyes, her face now more somber and aged than ever. "I was and have always been ambitious. Rorin, on the other hand, was not. He was so carefree; I loved that about him. But we never learned to bend for each other. We were both as stubborn as you and Sania are about being nothing alike. So, the engagement fell through. We never even made it to the fitting of our wedding clothes.

Vanari looked sadly at her mother, seeing her for the first time in a wholly different, curious sort of bittersweet light. It was clear that she had been happy with Rorin, and more in love than her daughter had ever seen her with anyone or anything. But...it seemed they couldn't compromise, and therefore allowed things to fall into disrepair rather than working the opposite direction. "So, as touching as it is to finally know this part of your past, mother...why exactly are you telling me this to begin with?"

The sides of Voria's eyes crinkled once more. "Because, dear, I wanted you to know you're not the only one who has gone through the frustrating, enigmatic force that drives most boys. And, that even when you do, you probably shouldn't punch them in the jaw. I saw what the poor boy had to bring home on his face--can you imagine what his father would say?"

Vanari snorted, and then the two of them burst into giggles, unable to help themselves as they envisioned how Ade would have to explain himself.

"I mean it, though, Ari. I reacted the same way you did when I was younger, except my punches weren't physical. I hurt Rorin so many times in my anger and frustrations; it's never worth it, just trust me on that. Never, ever cut those you love most dear, just because you can't control your own demons."

Vanari nodded, tears welling up in her now inky blue eyes at the sorrow and absolute truth behind her mother's words. As hard as Voria could be, she never once belittled or struck out at her family, as many other parents seemed more than willing to indulge in. The master sculptor was always in control, always bent on doing what was right.

It must have wounded her mother deep, to have one lesson so long ago still have such a lasting effect.

"Thanks, mother," Vanari grinned sheepishly, resting her head against the thick comfort of her mother's furs. "I should apologize, shouldn't I? That was mean of me...and youou know I hate to admit it, but you're right. About everything. All the time."

Her mother lifted a mittened hand and stroked her daughter's unruly curls. "Yes, you should, if only for your own sake. Don't want that resting on your conscience forever, do you? And of course I am--always are, always will be."

Vora smiled again, then helped her daughter stand up straight as they stamped out the fire together. "Mother always knows best, and don't you forget it.

by **Una Tanta** on December 23rd, 2013, 6:38 am

Vanari :

Please don't be afraid to PM me with any questions ^-^

Flashback Carving One's Future