Ah, I thought it was obvious... I mean the main character struggles with the stairs and has to sit halfway through. And then they get to the top, and it says light. And then it says it's a character test. And then it explicitly describes sound. Then it marks off what *other* ADHD people would do in the situation without naming the condition, iunno how to make it more obvious without stating it.
BTW, only one person perked up at hearing about presentation part and got that the gender categorization is different. TT Am I missing opportunities?
Her stated gender is that she feels like she has to present as a woman because of cultural pressures, but she's in the I don't care about my body gender category, which isn't quite agender. And she has no issues presenting her gender differently in the external culture because it's not her culture, though kinda feels uncomfortable because she finds it rigid. (which I suppose throws her into NB-ish, but maybe more trans*?) But if she's forced to present as a different gender from within her culture then she gets dysphoria. Yeah, I know, it's complicated, but I broke it down nice and slow. The entire culture could be called NB, but the gender categorization still exists. Messing with gender.
The HSP part is harder since people don't know what that is. But indications run to her being sensitive to taste, sound, light, high empathy and kinda absorbing people's emotions a bit too much, so I think if people know, they know.
CHAPTER 1
Rruen Rwa’rli had a debt to pay. For her people, a debt ignored was worse than death. She was determined with every cell of her body, she was going to pay it. But looking up the mountain, and seeing the thousand white steps carved into the side, she wondered if she should have found a different way to expel her debt.
The guards at the bottom of the mountain grumbled and frowned to see her fumble with her consort candidate tag. After a year of preserving the tag her guarantor had given her, she was glad it was still legible. She bowed at first the Lryari way, bending her knees and folding her hands before her chest, and then remembered she was in the middle of Kiainuo.
After a week of being here, she still was not used to their way of bowing. She corrected herself, and bowed with her hands parallel to each other, bending at the waist. Before she straightened, she remembered her debt required her to present as a woman and corrected herself again, and put her right hand over left before she straightened, but hoped she would be forgiven.
The guards inspected the pass. She could already hear Lru Guarantor scold her for not having the best start.
Her hands shook as the doors moaned open. She stepped over the threshold of the doors, careful not to trip, only to realize how many stairs there actually were on the other side. The dizzying amount caught her breath. How did the people who lived here get up and down from this mountain on a regular basis?
She groaned. Her debt could not be worth all these steps. She liked running through the fields of her family farm, but she had never imagined that part of her debt would involve climbing up so high. The words from her country came to her head, "Do not take a favor if you are going to begrudge the debt placed upon you. Reciprocity in all things and reciprocity in you."
On either side of the white stairs were various dwarf fruit trees and beyond the plantings were walls. The trees would be her only comfort. Her lessons over and over rang in her head. Patience. Persistence. But she hardly felt any facing this staircase.
She climbed each step, one by one, letting the patter of her footfalls ground her. Her legs burned. She should have brought a water flask. She looked behind her and realized it was far too late to have that thought.
Halfway up, she sat on the warm stone step and looked back at the town below. Her lungs stung from the exercise. Some townsfolk had said that Mehwa had grown threefold since the construction of Mehwa Castle. She could see the true scale from here because there were clearly parts she had not visited when she was in it. She could imagine the people going too and fro, ignorant that she was taking the challenge, or not caring.
Rwa enjoyed this softer moment of caring for them, even if they did not think or care about her.
She gripped the edge of the step. Lru Guarantor said in distant countries people were asked to be good little cogs and not question anything or see through the situation in front of them. They thought that conflict was the point of living, so they never questioned the system they lived in because they were too busy fighting each other and only thinking about themselves. That must be oppressive. Rwa could not imagine living under a system where you only cared about yourself and never could reach out to others or take a moment to reflect like this. Such a country must think humans were emotionless and useless, only good for what they could produce. That had to be lonely.
Lru Guarantor had said such societies regretted the past by rewriting it, feared the present by ignoring it, and dreaded the future by not preparing for it. This was not a good way to live. Lryari culture taught that one had to look for connections into unseeable things like feelings, emotions, and other people’s circumstances even when facing ones own problems. The Emperor and Empress wanted someone Lryari for this reason. The expanding town below her reminded her that she was here for other people, too, not only herself and that lifted her spirits.
A gentle spring breeze caressed her face. She looked at the fruit tree next to her and said, "Oh, hello?”
The tree whispered to her as its branches rustled in the wind.
"Oh yes, your branches are not trimmed properly. Your leading branch should be independent instead of double pronged. It’s a shame you grew this big and they didn’t notice. You’re growing haphazardly."
She got up and looked at it closer, rubbing its smooth leaves between her fingers. She looked this way and that under the branches.
"Yes, I think you should probably have some of the branches around your leading branch cut as well. I will inform the castle owners. Would you like that?"
The tree seemed reluctant.
"Well, it will be better for you and then you would not have to bend at odd angles," Rwa said.
The tree waved in the wind.
She touched the tree. "Be patient, my friend. I’ll make sure you are better."
The tree straightened some of its branches under her touch. She kissed the trunk. "Good tree. I’m sure I’ll see you later."
She returned to the step she was before and felt a renewed sense of peace. This was what her education was for. She needed to find peace in her hardships as Lru Guarantor said. Besides, she was here to pay back the Emperor and Empress for her education even if she didn’t choose to become consort. She began climbing again.
Even in her old age, Lru Guarantor had moved gracefully. Here, she was known as the Emperor’s mother and Kan Docheojyeo, the former First Concubine of Kiainuo. But Lru Guarantor was originally from Lryari. Rwa remembered Lru Guarantor’s few black hairs streaking through the silver, still styled often like that of the old Kiainuo court with hair pieces to match. Lru Guarantor’s wizened face twisted into her usual sour expression as she described the price of Rwa’s debt and what Rwa should do if she were to continue to stay even after the debt was released.
"Kiainuo must not go back to slavery," Lru Guarantor said.
This was the responsibility she must finish if she should stay. The Emperor and Empress could no longer handle the last tasks to end slavery and Rwa was trained to help.
As she reached the top, she could see two maids waiting. She forgot what she was supposed to say in Okusaeji. All of the words had flown out of her head. She panted and managed to bow properly and pushed forward her token. She barely remembered the High Court Okusaeji before she said, “Selection.”
The maids seemed confused. Maybe her pronunciation wasn’t clear enough. Lru Guarantor had said her pronunciation could use some work, but she didn’t think it was that bad. No, her inflection was wrong and maybe her sudden lack of grammar command had swallowed her head whole. She wiped her brow.
“Consort Selection,” she said.
She bemoaned the fact she’d been given a specific phrase, but for some reason she could not remember it after all those stairs. She briefly wondered if there was a spell on them, or she simply had not trained and worked hard enough to climb them.
The maids nodded, their butterfly buns fluttering in unison, finally seeming to understand. Even though Rwa had spent most of her life learning both languages, she could not remember what she was supposed to say next.
The castle servant removed her shoes before entering the building, so Rwa did also, and then put her shoes on the shoe rack besides the maid’s.
Making no comment, the maid silently guided her to a room which had several mats, a window, a closet on each wall perpendicular to the window. The floor had a simple set of mats on it and nothing else.
The maid left the door open and left.
Rwa took a seat, facing the closet closest to the entrance. The light shifted from the window, telling her that two hours had passed. No one came to test her.
She slowly realized this must be the test. The stairs had tested her patience and character to persist which was something that Lru Guarantor often told her she needed to have as consort.
One needed both logic and emotions and to use those to be observant. Once she remembered that, unease filled her. This test had too many contradictions already.
She cleared her mind and then listened to the water clock. It beat out the time for her. The clock had to be made out of bamboo. In her mind’s eye she could see the water drip into the hollow tubes slowly before it knocked forwards and emptied its contents before rocking back.
She frowned. How could anyone select a consort so narrowly? This was already two strikes against Lru’s grandchild since the flaws in the test were not about who a person was at all.
The light changed through the paper windows, casting the shadow in the room differently than she expected.
This disappointed her further. This was clearly a part of the test, but it reflected even more poorly on the person who set it. This was not what Lru Guarantor had said her grandchild was like.
There was a rumor in town that the consort character test had defeated over one hundred candidates. Some people in town said it really was a thousand. Initially, Rwa doubted such a high number, but facing this puzzle, she realized exactly why.
Some people were likely to rummage the room looking for clues, rather than sit down, slow down, and be observant. She was trained very much to concentrate, be patient, introspect, and then take careful time to plan. This was how any action could have a positive effect. She must respect the spaces she was in, but knowing these opposing things, she felt an increasing discomfort facing this room.
Did they really want to select a consort this way? She did not know if she wanted a spouse that judged people for these reasons instead of giving a true character test.
She gazed at the door, which was still open. She could leave considering that she had changed her mind. She did not want to meet Lru Guarantor’s grandchild afterall. Kiainuo was not her country. They could go towards the path of having no empathy if they liked. But this was not the condition of her debt. She had to clear it.
She stilled herself again and closed her eyes to reset her mind about what was in the room. She opened them, and listened to the clock more closely. There was running water, she imagined from a stream to fill the water clock. As the bamboo tubes hit, the sound was a tad off, and the contents weren’t pouring out as she thought they should.
She held back a sigh. The character test included being able to tell pitch and familiarity with garden water clocks. Annoyance bubbled in her chest again, but it was not useful for solving this.
She looked carefully around the room, and then realized one of the mats was more worn than the others.
There were two maids at the front door of this place, who did not serve her, and two guards at the bottom of the hill. She could utilize them.
She imagined if she were impatient, or a high ranking noble, she would ask the maids to fix it immediately. But was this really what the test was asking of her? She had been told that the Emperor and Empress wanted their child to marry a commoner, not a noble as consort.
There was an obvious tool at her disposal. The mats. If the mat that was worn in the corner, either something was worthy of stepping on in that corner that needed to be retrieved repeatedly, or it had been moved to hide a flaw.
Rwa got up and inspected closely around the window frame. The mat, however, was numbered, and so, she arranged it by number in the correct orientation. The way it was worn told her to face the window. She looked at the window more carefully, tracing her hand along it. Maybe there was a key. There was a hidden latch in the upper left. She unlatched it.
The light through the window did not match the light from outside. This much light through a window that was west facing this early in the day, made no sense. She opened the window.
From the open window, she could see the water clock, and also see that the light had been manipulated. She had not been there for two hours as she originally thought. The tubes were set to ring faster.
Below the window was a stone bench. She could climb through the window, but she had been led to this room and she had been taught one should not trespass into areas one was not invited.
She straightened the room back to the way it was before. When she had finished, she called to the maid. The maid bobbed their head, their butterfly buns bobbing.
"Is there a way to the garden?" Rwa asked.
"The garden is private. I cannot allow you into it."
“Then I would like to inform you that the garden clock is wrong because there are several stones blocking the bamboo pipes from ringing the correct time.”
“Thank you, I will inform the garden master and fix the time.”
“The illusion with the windows was very well done,” Rwa said. “Can you pass that compliment on for me?”
The servant left and Rwa sat down and waited for the sound of the tubes to change.
The maid came back and bowed again. "Is there anything else?"
"The mat in the corner is worn out. Let your householder know that it might need replacing. And there is a tree that needs pruning halfway down the mountain. Other than that, thank you for the invitation."
Mildly surprised at the comment about the tree, the maid still bobbed her head again and disappeared.
Rwa held back a big sigh. She really did not want to see this grandchild. After being regaled with tales of how great he was, how kind, compassionate, and patient he was, she could not imagine wanting to meet him after seeing this character test. Rwa did not want to be married to a person this terrible and she didn’t want to spend a lifetime trying to fix it. She was grateful for all her education, but she had thought that the heir to the crown of Kiainuo would be a better person. She would have to go to her debtors, the Emperor and Empress, to clear her debt.
Rwa put on her shoes and headed for the stairs, briefly bowing to both maids, who bowed with their hands right over left.
Rwa looked down the steps.
“You came all this way and you have no plans to meet me?” a soft tenor voice asked from behind her.
I put ableism into a character test for the character, posted it and no one could spot the ablism... Mon Jan 29, 2024 4:50 pm