ROSES TO RULE ME
Written on September 10, 2021 (♍︎︎)
Author's Notes: Written for Suzume for Press Start 2021. The title from from William Hunnis' "A Nosegay Always Sweet," and the idea of sprinkling water/barley on sacrificial animals comes from classical Greece, where the point was apparently to get them to bow and look like they are consent to the proceedings (Ovelia, by the way... is a Taurus).
Alma could not pinpoint at what instant it had been where she and Ovelia had realized that marriage would someday be expected of them—when they understood that ladies and princesses must wed even outside of fairy tales. Once it dawned on her, however, she did her best to dismiss it. She decided that if two decades' worth of brothers had escaped the altar, there would be some means of escaping it herself.
Ovelia, when she recognized men were speaking already of her prospects, felt the weight of it much more heavily. Despite Simon’s assurances that there were a great many companionate marriages throughout history, Ovelia imagined a husband to be much the same ordeal as Orbonne itself: a gentle prison whose foremost appeal is the nobility of enduring it.
"They say you might be queen someday, you know," Alma said one lazy summer as she ignored whatever tasks had been assigned her. "It may well be that you can rule no marriages to be necessary—although I hope you’ll grant me a pardon after you absolve yourself."
Ovelia smiled. Her voice was very soft. "Marriage is the province of the Gods and the pope, I think? Not queens."
"Appoint me pope then. I’ll have a bull. That’s how popes do things, right? With bulls?"
Ovelia said nothing, and returned to her own chores—being too timid to trust Alma's insistence that nobody was about to punish a princess for a little sloth. One of the brethren needed herbs that grew by the meadow’s edge: long purple flowers with deep-lobed leaves. It was little bother—she told herself—to pick flowers out of obligation rather than in sport.
There was dirt under her nails and grass on her gown hem by the time she felt the prick of a stem being plaited into her hair. She did not turn around, as Alma wove whatever it was through her braids, but she did go still. Her hands absentmindedly crushed a blossom while she waited for the tickle of a finger brushing her neck, for the whisper of hair dragged against her cheek. The summer air vibrated with the leap and flutter of insect life while she remained unmoving, letting herself drink in all the sensations of her friend crowning her in red.
"There, all done up like a sacrifice to Duma," Alma said softly. "They used to do that in ancient times, didn’t they? Garland bulls and sprinkle barley on them."
Ovelia didn’t say anything as Alma dropped a handful of clover over her with pagan solemnity. She did not explain that she wasn’t sure how kings and popes ruled one another or that it probably wasn’t that sort of bull they had.
She blushed, and when Alma turned her face towards her, she felt very silly for blushing.
"I don’t think they let girls be popes," she stammered out eventually.
"I’ll have to try and become a God then," Alma replied as she kissed her on the nose.
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