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A Strong Independent Daemon
Nov. 11th, 2016 02:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
liloteLilote had been born to be beautiful. She'd been born to live a sweet and safe life indoors, free of the crushing demands her parents and elder siblings faced in their workshop. She'd been born to be admired. And she had been, once upon a time.
But her glory days were behind her, buried along with her sweet mistress. Lady Zahra had been charmed by her pretty skin and her sweet smile and the brightly coloured bladders that she could breathe a room's-worth of air through, reequilibrating the air to a temperature that best suited an elderly woman's bones. Her life had once been easy, spent resting on her belly upon benches and rugs, providing warmth and decoration and an occasional conversation piece. Those had been the days when she'd been able to be exactly what she'd been born to be.
Right now though what she was born to be was a liability. Here, outside in the open air her instinctive urge to equilibrate the temperature was an exercise in futility, for one daemon could not battle the world, not without a supply of magic to outshine Aska. She wore a tight hat tied on under her chin to keep her head bladder deflated, which helped suppress her ability to sense the air temperature, but even so she still needed a heavy coat to keep her back bladder bound down too. These weren't her clothes, no, because her new master didn't see why an indoor daemon needed to have a coat and hat of her own, and though she'd stolen the attire of her new master's youngest son the sleeves still hung down over her prettily clawed fingers in a way she was increasingly sure was marking her as a thief. That fear made her hurry along the path despite the pain in her bare feet, for she knew the punishment for breaking contract would be dire. It wasn't her fault that she had to, but who would be sensible enough to acknowledge that?! No one could understand her recent suffering.
For Lady Zahra, lovely Lady Zahra, had been a woman of advanced age and ill health. She'd needed constant warmth through her final years and though Lilote had supplied that lovingly, devotedly, unwaveringly, she had gone unappreciated by her Lady's family. When the terrible end had come and her Lady was no more, Lilote had been just another item to be divvied up among the lesser relatives.
She'd been taken by one of Lady Zahra's grandnephews, some mere storefront-owning merchant who hardly had a drop of nobility left in him. He'd been happy enough for a decorative daemon, up until he realised how much room her bladder took up and how much magic she needed. It was not her fault that she needed the magic! It had been his fault for making her sit in the window right by the door where the drafts from its opening and closing kept on aggravating her senses and forcing her to puff out great bladder-breaths of hot air. He'd resented feeding her anything and she'd lost sleep having to spend her nights soaking in hot baths to soften her fluid pouches manually so that she could function the next day. She'd survived in that miserable state for three weeks until she realised really and truly that no one was going to pluck her up and set her in another noble mansion without her taking action.
And so she'd stolen these clothes one night after getting out of the baths and snuck out into the outside world to find a noble home to present herself to. It had been a grand plan foiled only by the fact that she did not know where any of the noble houses actually were, or where in fact she was. She'd chosen a downward-sloping street in the darkness and slunk along, reasoning that she'd seen plenty of noblewomen in Lady Zahra's gatherings and thus she'd be bound to find a rich home no matter what direction she walked in, but as darkness turned into dawn turned into day, it became clear that she'd been fundamentally mistaken in her assumptions. The road she'd walked down had grown progressively emptier and sparser, fading from terraces to fields, and by the time she realised that she really ought to try a different road her only choice was to turn back, which she couldn't do in case her ex-owner spotted her.
And that's when it started to rain. Standing at the edge of the road, she grabbed hold of her swishy tail, covered her face with its fluttering, wide tip, and began to sob noisily. Her life was in ruins!
But her glory days were behind her, buried along with her sweet mistress. Lady Zahra had been charmed by her pretty skin and her sweet smile and the brightly coloured bladders that she could breathe a room's-worth of air through, reequilibrating the air to a temperature that best suited an elderly woman's bones. Her life had once been easy, spent resting on her belly upon benches and rugs, providing warmth and decoration and an occasional conversation piece. Those had been the days when she'd been able to be exactly what she'd been born to be.
Right now though what she was born to be was a liability. Here, outside in the open air her instinctive urge to equilibrate the temperature was an exercise in futility, for one daemon could not battle the world, not without a supply of magic to outshine Aska. She wore a tight hat tied on under her chin to keep her head bladder deflated, which helped suppress her ability to sense the air temperature, but even so she still needed a heavy coat to keep her back bladder bound down too. These weren't her clothes, no, because her new master didn't see why an indoor daemon needed to have a coat and hat of her own, and though she'd stolen the attire of her new master's youngest son the sleeves still hung down over her prettily clawed fingers in a way she was increasingly sure was marking her as a thief. That fear made her hurry along the path despite the pain in her bare feet, for she knew the punishment for breaking contract would be dire. It wasn't her fault that she had to, but who would be sensible enough to acknowledge that?! No one could understand her recent suffering.
For Lady Zahra, lovely Lady Zahra, had been a woman of advanced age and ill health. She'd needed constant warmth through her final years and though Lilote had supplied that lovingly, devotedly, unwaveringly, she had gone unappreciated by her Lady's family. When the terrible end had come and her Lady was no more, Lilote had been just another item to be divvied up among the lesser relatives.
She'd been taken by one of Lady Zahra's grandnephews, some mere storefront-owning merchant who hardly had a drop of nobility left in him. He'd been happy enough for a decorative daemon, up until he realised how much room her bladder took up and how much magic she needed. It was not her fault that she needed the magic! It had been his fault for making her sit in the window right by the door where the drafts from its opening and closing kept on aggravating her senses and forcing her to puff out great bladder-breaths of hot air. He'd resented feeding her anything and she'd lost sleep having to spend her nights soaking in hot baths to soften her fluid pouches manually so that she could function the next day. She'd survived in that miserable state for three weeks until she realised really and truly that no one was going to pluck her up and set her in another noble mansion without her taking action.
And so she'd stolen these clothes one night after getting out of the baths and snuck out into the outside world to find a noble home to present herself to. It had been a grand plan foiled only by the fact that she did not know where any of the noble houses actually were, or where in fact she was. She'd chosen a downward-sloping street in the darkness and slunk along, reasoning that she'd seen plenty of noblewomen in Lady Zahra's gatherings and thus she'd be bound to find a rich home no matter what direction she walked in, but as darkness turned into dawn turned into day, it became clear that she'd been fundamentally mistaken in her assumptions. The road she'd walked down had grown progressively emptier and sparser, fading from terraces to fields, and by the time she realised that she really ought to try a different road her only choice was to turn back, which she couldn't do in case her ex-owner spotted her.
And that's when it started to rain. Standing at the edge of the road, she grabbed hold of her swishy tail, covered her face with its fluttering, wide tip, and began to sob noisily. Her life was in ruins!
