Summer challenge: Women of Summer: Noin
Title: In Excelsum
Author: ingvild
Characters: Noin
Rating/Word Count: PG, 506 words
Summary/Disclaimer: Not mine. Noin does not like the situation she is in, caught in this revolution and forever following others.
Once you get down to it, Noin just wants to fly.
The rest of it - joining Oz, having a military career, giving orders, training soldiers, fighting, perhaps killing - it is all just a necessary evil. That is why she does not strive as hard as Zechs does to get that coveted position as a fighting commander. She could beat him, if she tried hard enough. She knows that. Zechs is weighed down by his past and the knowledge that he must either betray those who made him who he was, or those who made him who he is, or perhaps betray them both. Noin has no such weighs on her. However, she lacks his ambition. She does not care for medals and honours - she only wants to fly, unfettered, free.
Perhaps, one day, she may even break free of gravity itself and head into the vastness of space.
But there is no such thing as a completely free human being. All humans are bound somehow, by duty or responsibility or tradition or custom. The beggar on the street corner is bound by poverty and the need to get hands on the next meal. The children playing in the part are bound by the voice saying “come home, bathe, eat, sleep, and grow into a respectable member of society”. Royalty, perhaps, are the least free, for they are bound not only by the duties of their position, but also by the thousands of eyes that are on them every day.
And what of Lucretzia Noin, child of a lemon farmer, lieutenant of Oz, instructor of soldiers, currently in the middle of a revolution?
She is not free. She will never be free. She is bound by her loyalty to a friend from her adolescence, her duty to his Excellency, her memory of her students, dead in her arms...
And she is bound by the words of that boy with the black eyes and the mocking voice. Weak. She is weak. She thought she could have her cake and eat it, too. She thought she could fly without ever thinking about putting her feet on the ground, the ground which is soaked through with blood. Hers? That of her students? Or that of her victims?
She swears to Zechs that she will back him up through anything because the bonds that bind her to him are forged of friendship and so are the least painful ones, but she knows that there will be a time when he will have to break those bonds and fly a different trajectory. What then? Can she convince him to fly with her, or is she just trying to keep from facing the truth by staying so close to him?
Even birds must come home to roost. Noin does not like this nest she has helped make for the world.
All fledglings must leave the nest some time. Is she strong enough? Will she be able to navigate the currents of the air, or must she always be lost in someone else’s backdraft?
Author: ingvild
Characters: Noin
Rating/Word Count: PG, 506 words
Summary/Disclaimer: Not mine. Noin does not like the situation she is in, caught in this revolution and forever following others.
Once you get down to it, Noin just wants to fly.
The rest of it - joining Oz, having a military career, giving orders, training soldiers, fighting, perhaps killing - it is all just a necessary evil. That is why she does not strive as hard as Zechs does to get that coveted position as a fighting commander. She could beat him, if she tried hard enough. She knows that. Zechs is weighed down by his past and the knowledge that he must either betray those who made him who he was, or those who made him who he is, or perhaps betray them both. Noin has no such weighs on her. However, she lacks his ambition. She does not care for medals and honours - she only wants to fly, unfettered, free.
Perhaps, one day, she may even break free of gravity itself and head into the vastness of space.
But there is no such thing as a completely free human being. All humans are bound somehow, by duty or responsibility or tradition or custom. The beggar on the street corner is bound by poverty and the need to get hands on the next meal. The children playing in the part are bound by the voice saying “come home, bathe, eat, sleep, and grow into a respectable member of society”. Royalty, perhaps, are the least free, for they are bound not only by the duties of their position, but also by the thousands of eyes that are on them every day.
And what of Lucretzia Noin, child of a lemon farmer, lieutenant of Oz, instructor of soldiers, currently in the middle of a revolution?
She is not free. She will never be free. She is bound by her loyalty to a friend from her adolescence, her duty to his Excellency, her memory of her students, dead in her arms...
And she is bound by the words of that boy with the black eyes and the mocking voice. Weak. She is weak. She thought she could have her cake and eat it, too. She thought she could fly without ever thinking about putting her feet on the ground, the ground which is soaked through with blood. Hers? That of her students? Or that of her victims?
She swears to Zechs that she will back him up through anything because the bonds that bind her to him are forged of friendship and so are the least painful ones, but she knows that there will be a time when he will have to break those bonds and fly a different trajectory. What then? Can she convince him to fly with her, or is she just trying to keep from facing the truth by staying so close to him?
Even birds must come home to roost. Noin does not like this nest she has helped make for the world.
All fledglings must leave the nest some time. Is she strong enough? Will she be able to navigate the currents of the air, or must she always be lost in someone else’s backdraft?