Author: circlejourney

The Taste of Urana Salad

“What do you miss most?”

Dorian turns abruptly in the dimness. “Me?”

Curia smirks back, pulling one foot up onto the drystack. “Who else?”

Beyond their vantage on the wall, ancient insects creak in the night. The barren plains are a dull mirror of the moonlight, sprawled on every side of them.

Dorian could never forget any of this, no matter the years he spends away. He wasn’t expecting to return to his homeland so soon—barely two years since he left—but here he is, brought by new duties, the same duties that are soon to take him away.

Yet, already, there is an awkwardness to the way his heart nestles itself here—a subtle foreignness to everything that tells him he will never be a man of Tyse again. Not now, now that he’s severed that thread and given it forever to the keeping of the Duchess of Diamonds.

“It would be easier to say what I don’t miss,” Dorian finally answers, folding his arms as his eyes cross the unchanged stars. “I miss the very scent of the air. The burning of the wind on my skin. The taste of urana leaves.”

Curia takes this all in with a thoughtful nod, a mellow smile. “I’ve forgotten how urana tastes like, you know,” she replies. “It’s always the small things. And you think you could never forget them, how precious they are, but time always comes out the victor. Scrubs everything away, bit by bit.”

As Dorian listens and gazes upon the scout commander’s face, crow’s feet in the corners of her eyes and greying hair in six braids, he feels as if he were seeing the future.

Thirty years surviving. Thirty years on the move. Thirty years carving spaces for herself in worlds she’s never known before. That’s the life in store for him, and she has already lived it.

“I don’t know if it’s naive of me to hope,” he admits then, glancing down at the sleeping Duchess in the camp. “And I don’t know where this journey is taking us…but the next time we meet, wherever that is, we should find you some urana salad.”

Curia seems baffled, then amused, almost as if she were shaping a retort on her tongue.

But instead she offers a grin and says, “Yes. I’d like that very much.”

Pala, Fen and thoughts on platonic and romantic affection

The only characters I have whom others ship despite their relationship not really being romantic are Pala & Fen, and to be honest, I am OK with that. They do have a lot going that makes it appealing, so I completely get it! And the fact is that if people have headcanons on the matter, then I’d be quite honoured because, to me, it is pretty cool for others to have their own interpretations of my characters.

The truth is, I have complicated and evolving feelings on the matter. See, I know their entire story, past and future, I know how the RD story will shape this relationship and it’s much more than has been revealed anywhere else.

Their bond is very close and devoted, and I could develop it either way, and full disclosure, I love nonsexual romance. But because I hesitated so much on whether it was a romance, I eventually thought to myself, “why do I have to label it?”

Exploring their relationship made me question my own preconceptions on what counts as romantic, what platonic affection looks like. Setting down that their relationship is queerplatonic seems like a natural conclusion—the idea that the strongest bond in my story was not a romantic one felt good. I am deeply invested in the notion that all boundaries between relationship types can be blurred and more examples of such non-normative relationships need to be presented.

Additionally, I have always seen Pala as somewhere on the aromantic spectrum, as it feels right for her, so the conclusion seemed right to me.

Part of me does still like to imagine if I had developed it as a cute first love scenario, and I do have AU headcanons about that. But in canon, this is what I have decided, partly because of feeling and partly because I am conceptually very drawn to the idea.

So, I’m not really unhappy on a personal level at anyone who assumes they have a romantic relationship. It is just always a little tragic that so many have such a narrow view of affection that any affection reads as romantic to them, and I’d love to challenge that in this story.