Work Text:
Snowfall scowled as she sat on top of the Great Ice Cliff. Lynx sat next to her, smiling for some mysterious, inexplicable reason. As much as Snowfall tried to get rid of her by yelling and telling her to just go away , Lynx clung to her like bits of walrus meat stuck between her teeth.
Snowfall continued to scowl. “Go away,” she said. “I need some me time.”
“But I can’t leave you alone, Your Majesty,” Lynx said. “I need to tell you something important!”
Snowfall groaned. Why did Lynx use flattery so much? “What is so important that it needs my immediate attention?” she asked, turning to look at Lynx.
“Your Majesty, I must tell you that the gift of order sucks and you should get rid of it right away! Even though I haven’t shown you a single bad thing about it and you, as a privileged queen, have no reason to get rid of it!”
Snowfall’s ears slicked back. “And why are you telling me this, even though you and your relatives benefit from your Circle status and if it weren’t for the gift, you and your disgusting family would continue to be low-class shmucks barely above the peasants you preside over?”
Lynx flinched, but didn’t go away, as Snowfall hoped. “You see, Your Majesty,” she said, “the Circle rankings only exist to contrast against Winter. Now that Winter’s gone off to take therapy, the Circle rankings are no longer necessary.”
“You’re making no sense.” Snowfall lashed her tail, and she continued to scowl. Yes, scowling was good. “The rankings have been around for millennia, and were created by the animus Evergreen to facilitate order during a time of coups, countercoups, endless plots, and civil war.”
Lynx sighed and shook her head. “Oh, Snowfall, that’s what the bourgeoisie tell you. But I’ve been granted a vision by the one true goddess of this world.”
“You mean the Spirit Queen?”
“Ha! Not that pretender.” It seemed that with every passing second, Lynx only grew more irritating. “I was granted a vision by the RainWing goddess Tui.”
Lynx’s god was a RainWing ? Maybe Snowfall’s idiot companion should go to the other end of the continent to live with those lazy fruit-eaters if she loved them so much. Snowfall rolled her eyes. “ Right .”
“It’s true!” Lynx said. “Tui is real, and she made this world to advance a motive I cannot understand. But she has told me I must persuade you to believe that the gifts order and defense should be destroyed for some reason.”
Well, that explained why Lynx clung to her so closely, why she used flattery so much. Lynx was advancing her own goals! Hmph. “The gift of defense, too?” Snowfall asked. “Why?”
“I dunno why Tui wants this,” Lynx said with a shrug. “I mean, it protects our southern border from invasion, freeing up valuable troops to be placed elsewhere, and it doesn’t hurt to have, since no one trades with us anyway and no one who isn’t an IceWing would ever want to live here.”
Snowfall turned away to look out at the distant horizon, where she could see the fringes of the Kingdom of Sand. Why did the world feel so small all of a sudden? Why did Snowfall feel the need to become a nice person right this second? Why were the kingdom names so boring and unimaginative?
Suddenly, it all made sense.
“Oh!” Snowfall said. “It all fits!”
“What fits?” Lynx asked with a frown.
“Everything! Your annoying personality, my short temper, the fact the bad guy is a sentient plant that shouldn’t be smoked! It all fits into a greater motive! You and me, this entire world一we’re in a story, and Tui is the one writing the script! Don’t you see it, Lynx?”
Lynx only shook her head; she stood up, her talons crunching on the snow. “You know, Your Majesty, you should come back when you start making more sense.”