Redheaded Ramblings
Paige's Diary Entries...
Early Regency Solace/Worth Vialle/Fortunes/Pattern Daeon/Twins/Lilly Coronation/Pregnancy Motherhood/Marius Lucas/Xanadu
On Vialle
(After Martin's departure for Ygg)I guess I've never written what I've seen, what I've supposed that was once between them. I stop and wonder if Random knows� one would think, but to a Prince of Amber, what's one year of love? Look how easily I threw away near a decade, and I've much less years than even the youngest of the brothers.
�She's actually pretty sweet. She's also blind, which is why she couldn't find a man to marry her, which is unusual in Rebma, where women pretty much run things.�
That was the first idea of her I ever had from his lips, but the touch between them the very next day belied a different feeling. Revulsion. He couldn't stand her touch, and he wouldn't tell me why. I suppose with all the other things I tried to press out of him, I should've tried more. This one seems like it's going to effect us all, more than Martin's �flower� in town ever could. Even then I knew, but had nothing to act on. I don't have reason now, not really. Just my intuition. The cards may be making sense again, but I'm loath to ask them much of anything until things settle down a bit. I'm not objective enough yet.
She once offered to help make me more attractive to marrying men.
"You don't have to be a whore any more if you don't want to."
Even in a drugged haze I knew not to draw her wrath, but it couldn't control my tongue.
It's guesses, nothing more, but young men, of marrying stock in Rebma, like Martin, well� I suppose the term used is �Trophy Fuck�. I know, I know, that there had to have been something between them, but that had to be years before Random's forced marriage. Was it that relationship that led him to walk the Pattern as an escape from that place?
And now Vialle knows how Folly feels about Random. To the point that he's warned Folly and Solange to watch for danger. I suppose he thinks I'm too impulsive or �don't have the head� for such things, but Folly trusts me.
Women rule beneath the waves, but not here in Amber. So why can she back the tradition bound biddies that scoff at broadsheet cartoons of the Ladies' Revolt? How can she be the prime supporter of something that seems to go so much against how she must've been raised?
Is it politics, winning whom she can to Random's side, before she ever knew that he would ascend to the throne? I don't think her deep enough, but perhaps I underestimate her.
I'm interested enough that perhaps I'll make a trip with Conner, if the King allows it, when the ways are opened again. I'd like to hear the story that will put some many other things in context.
Paige
On The Fortunes
(Ideas from Paige�s sketchbook speculating on which Fortunes might represent members of the family until she paints Trumps for them)
- The King
Authority� tyranny� Random? I just can�t see him as a tyrant, but there were Vialle�s tears. Reversed it might still be Grandfather�s influence.
- The Priestess
Understanding mysteries� impracticality� Perhaps Cambina. Aunt Fi�s the scholar of mysteries, Cambina just is.
- Sowing Stones
Fruitless labor and ceasing same, well� its damn well got to be those sheep or Jerod�s Shadowpath
- Trickery
Deceit� Same revealed� Jerod� Martin? No, he never meant to deceive me. Lord Jewel, the Princess�s Charge, Grandfather? It was by his hand that all things changed�
- The Hermit
Wisdom vs. isolation, Benedict or Master Dworkin� Perhaps Aunt Llewella
- The Fool
Freedom or lack of connection. Hmm, Folly? Although she�s nobody�s fool� Ossian
- The Peasant
Simple strength or lack of vision, while Gerard comes to mind, it�s tied to Venus, and love, perhaps Brita or Robin? Uncle�s vision is as long as any of his brothers.
- The Smith
Productivity against evil effort� Vere? I�d shudder to see this reversed in any reading if it were Vere
- The Satyr
Indulgence� Moderation� Lucas, or myself as Folly has my self Trump
- The Griffin
Valor over Cowardice� From the stories, cousin Jovian a being of Fire and Air
- Death
Change or Stasis, Uncle Corwin, death�s man in his sable suit.
- The Lion
Uncle Gerard, reversed as well as upright.
Paige
On The Pattern
(Written on a napkin during the family dinner)Shadow flows like a tapestry, cut of the finest velvet, lush and innumerable in its strands, it�s weave stretching as far as the eye can see. Lay upon the center the embroidery, the blazon of the Royal House, vert, a unicorn rampant argent, in a stunning array of vibrant threads, secured to weft and weave with Dworkin�s deft strokes of fire, blood and lyre.
Echoed closely are the reflections of his masterful artistry, the smoke and light of Tir N�Og, bound by the same tracery of light and the dark depths of Rebma, secured in the ocean�s deep.
And the Maestro comes, the splendor blinding his eyes to all but greed, slashing the arms, and spoiling the image in fits too dark to draw or even speak. An artist hoping to be a weaver, instead of a weaver that created Art.
The owner of the tapestry, King of all he sees, argues with the weaver over its repair, but eventually cuts the arms from the cloth, trying to make it whole. He falls to the despairs loosed by the Maestro, and the velvet weeps at his passing. His hand had saved the arms, but it was forever marked, and perhaps forever lost without the bright threads to hold it fast.
The reflections could see the holes from the stitching, and the darker velvet that had been denied the light beneath, waiting, anticipating the return of the unicorn. And the unicorn could see the holes in it�s own fabric, like stairs to other places she had once walked, but now the fibers beyond were strange, different.
Without the threads to hold her shield to the center, the paths she found seemed to go astray or lead to places other than she remembered or hoped. More evident still was that where the blazon lay, it gave the impression of just another bit of fabric being pulled this way and that atop the tapestry.
Hoping to find someone to restore her to the proper place, she recovered the fallen King�s needle and thread and chose his youngest son, the tailor, to take up his place. Not a weaver, not redheaded apprentices like the Maestro, but a son of the King that had delighted in the play of the cloth and had learned its secrets. To him would be the task of laying the blazon atop the vacant tapestry and reattach the sundered threads, to restore the tapestry to its original beauty.
Last updated 08/09/2002 - Editing. Comments?
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