Princess Hwawan of Ala Ma was looking for her sister-in-law. Her brother Sado had sent her on the mission, and though it may have been beneath her, Hwawan generally tried not to anger Sado.
It had been so nice, when Sado was gone. Jeong might have been King, then, and while he would never have been a great King – anything was better than Sado.
At first, the royal twins had hated Nadine, resented her for bringing their brother back. But Hwawan didn’t blame her anymore, not really. Sado treated her awfully, and even the King could not help her – not with her heathen blood. If she was honest, Hwawan might admit that she found the alien woman fascinating. Her eyes were green, her hair was blacker than night, she wore special devices to see, she was the smallest person that Hwawan had ever seen. She said the most heretical things, things that would have her killed if she were not Sado’s wife. She had no apparent notions of respect, dignity, propriety; she laughed in Sado’s face when she ought to have bowed.
Princess Hwawan wondered what it was like, to be a woman like Nadine.
Her search had brought her near the stables, and she thought that she heard voices. “Princess Nadine?” she called hesitantly, the foreign name sounding strange to her own ears.
“Y – yes! O – oh! – ver heeEEeere!”
Nadine did not usually have trouble speaking, and the way that her words emerged made Hwawan nervous as she came closer to their origin. Whatever she expected to find, the reality was far beyond anything she might have anticipated.
The man who tended the stables was with her, and Hwawan could only see his back, see the slender legs wrapped around his waist and the arms around his shoulders as his body pressed Nadine’s into the wall. Repeatedly. Vigorously. They had not even bothered to go inside the stables, were outside amidst the flowers of the gardens.
Hwawan had never seen anything like it. Had never even imagined seeing anything like it. The very idea of such vulgarity was beyond her; it would no more occur to her than religion to a field mouse. She should have averted her gaze, should have retreated, should have gone and told Sado of his wife’s indiscretions. Instead, she stared. Stared, and felt her face turn hot.
“One mmMmminute,” Nadine sang, and her body was covered almost entirely with that of her companion. “Be riiIiight there – oh god yes, right there!”
Heretical and vulgar and common. Hwawan should not have continued staring. She did. Her ears burned with the sounds of screams and cries and sighs, and when the lovers stopped Hwawan realized that her heart was racing.
Nadine sent the man on his way with a kiss, as if they had exchanged little more than sweet nothings. He bowed to Hwawan as he left, walked backward with his head bent low, and Hwawan marveled that he would worry about etiquette now.
“Now what was it that you wanted?” Nadine asked, as she straightened her skirts. Hwawan tried not to think about what had just happened beneath those skirts, tried not to stare at her bare feet and the short curls that under other circumstances would mark her as musi.
Musi was the nice word for it. Most people just said whore.
“The Crown Prince requested that I find you,” Hwawan murmured, her eyes lowered nervously.
“He won’t let me wear shoes.” Hwawan looked up in surprise, found Nadine placing some kind of stick in her mouth. She wiggled her foot as if to show what she meant, and the feathers that hung from her gold anklets shook enticingly. “In case you were wondering,” she added, before lighting the stick on fire.
She is inhaling common poison.
“That is… unfortunate.” What else was there to say, about a prince who would force his wife to dress like a servant?
“The hair, though – I let that down myself.” She grinned wide, but then, that was the only way she could grin. “Seems to help convincing people to keep me company.” A neat trick; any sensible person would refuse to dally with a princess, but a barefoot princess with hair that spoke of shame? Nadine blew smoke out her nose, adjusted the delicate gold frames on her face.
“Does it taste good?” Hwawan asked impulsively, and Nadine’s eyebrows shot up. “I mean-”
“The cigarette? Eh, not bad. Haven’t smoked in just about forever. Got lucky as hell that smoking’s something people even do on this fucking nonsense planet. If you mean cigarettes in general, though – they taste fucking awful. But in a good way, if you’re that kind of a person.” She sucked on it again, somehow managed to blow smoke in the shape of a little ring.
“Oh. I thought – I thought that it must taste good, to make the poison worth it.” Hwawan felt very silly and very naïve, and she supposed that was because it was true. Nadine looked like she’d be born knowing everything about everyone and caring not at all about any of it.
“The poison is what makes it worth it. There a lot of redheads around here?” She gestured with an upward nod to the braids held on Hwawan’s head with pins, and she found herself confused.
“I… I am a twin,” she said uncertainly, as if Nadine had not noticed.
“Yeah, and that makes two – unless you mean that’s relevant? The Venn diagram of twinsies and gingers is some kind of fucked up circle?” Whatever look was on Hwawan’s face must have accurately conveyed her bafflement, because Nadine waved the question away, filling the air with smoke in the process. “No, nevermind, who cares. Just wondering.” She grinned again, and this time it was conspiratorial, predatory. “I’ve always liked redheads.”
Hwawan felt her skin flush as she bowed her head, basked in the indirect compliment. “Your… friend,” she asked finally, and Nadine snorted with amusement. “Do you not worry that Sado will punish you?”
“Honey, I know he’ll punish me – ain’t nothing he’ll do that’ll be new or different. He’d’ve done it, anyway; might as well do the crime, if I’m gonna do the time.”
“I suppose, but… what about him? If he cannot punish you, he will punish him.”
“You speaking from experience, girl?” Hwawan recalled faraway, childish fantasies of romance; recalled the sound of the boy’s screams. Could Nadine see the memory in her eyes? “Lemme let you in on a secret: that guy? The guy who was balls-deep just now? I do not give a flying fuck about that guy.” If Nadine could tell how flustered her sister-in-law was at her language, it didn’t seem to stop her. “Sado wants to lock that dude in a dungeon and cattleprod him for a while? Shit, ain’t nothin’ worse than he does to me, and I can handle it fine. I know your dad’s not gonna let any decapitating happen up in here, so what the fuck’s he gonna do? Besides, that dude knew damn well what he was doing. Shit, he probably knows the risks better’n I do. If he thinks it’s worth it, who the hell am I to tell him he’s wrong?” She shrugged, sucked on her cigarette contemplatively.
“I wish I could be fearless,” Hwawan confessed, and it came out more petulant than she’d intended.
Nadine’s eyes raked over her sister-in-law, and then she seemed to come to a decision. “A’ight, let’s do this – it is em-effing bonding time, population princess.” She seemed to collapse, fell to the ground carelessly so that her legs were splayed in front of her and her back rested against the wall. She patted the ground next to herself. “Sit yourself down, Hwawan, let us have ourselves a talk.” Hwawan hesitated, and Nadine rolled her eyes. “How you gonna be fearless, you can’t even sit in your own yard?” Hwawan seated herself more delicately than Nadine had, legs curled daintily to the side under her skirt.
“You will teach me to be fearless?” she asked hopefully, hopes dashed almost immediately when Nadine scoffed.
“Fearless is a mental illness. You don’t wanna be fearless unless you wanna be dead. What I have is a similar, but distinct illness called gives no fucks, as well as its codependent cousin spiteful asshole. Spiteful asshole is more trouble than it’s worth, and I couldn’t teach you that anyway. Gives no fucks, however, is easy.”
“How do I learn to… give no fucks?” Nadine cackled at this, and Hwawan felt both shy and bold.
“That, for starters. Sit in the grass and say bad words. Mostly, though: you break the rules, and realize the world didn’t end.” She gave Hwawan a secret sort of a smile, and her heart fluttered in response.
“What sort of rules?”
Nadine considered the smoke billowing up from her hand thoughtfully. “When I kiss you, inhale.” Then she sucked on her cigarette and pressed her lips to Hwawan’s. Hwawan, too surprised to do anything but as she was told, inhaled as the taste of smoke filled her mouth. Almost immediately, she collapsed into a coughing fit.
“That was awful!” she accused, but Nadine only cackled again, took a drag and kept it to herself.
“My kissing’s that bad, is it?”
“No, that was wonderful – I meant the smoke, I don’t know why anyonewould do that on purpose.”
“Wonderful, you say?”
Hwawan flushed again, averted her gaze. “I thought so. I am admittedly not an expert in such matters.”
Suddenly Nadine was sliding into her lap, and the cigarette was gone. It was a startling reminder of how small she was, how light. “Hwawan,” she said seriously, running her fingers over the other woman’s jawline. “I have thought of a much better way to break the rules.”
Nadine Pascal-Said 