Bad Dream

The next morning came all too quickly for Yang’s liking but she sat up and sighed. She knew she couldn’t miss acolyte training if she wanted to make a good impression on them. Usually it didn’t start until about nine thirty or ten, so she had some time to eat breakfast with the Belladonnas then head down there. She left her robes behind because she didn’t need them right now. She’d grab them after she ate breakfast and headed on down to the chapel. She hoped today would be better, but she knew that it wouldn’t be. There was no point in hoping for it to be better. She couldn’t fight back or anything like that. All she could do was pull rank and pray to Verana that they would allow her to continue her training there. She really didn’t like any of this, but she had no real choice. She’d head back a lot sooner after lunch than she had yesterday, but she wanted to get in as much training as possible. She found her way down to the dining area and sat down at the table. “By the way… Tell Elana I’m sorry that I missed lessons yesterday.” She’d just been so exhausted after dealing with the blatant racism that she really hadn’t had anything left to give. She didn’t even want to talk to Blake, Kali, or her own mother. Yes, Summer had raised her more than Raven ever had, but…there was still kinship there. Raven was kind and warm and supportive even if they weren’t the closest. But right now, it felt like the best thing in the world to have the woman there as support. Of course, she didn’t really go anywhere aside from the palace, but even being able to come back to her was nice. Blake shook her head. “Don’t worry about it, Yang. I explained the situation to her. When do you plan on coming back today?” “Probably around two or three. After lunch but before dinner. I just wanted to get as much training in as I could yesterday.” She wouldn’t make that mistake again. She would end up behind but she knew the scriptures pretty much by heart at this point. Training went basically all day after breakfast until dinner with a half hour break for lunch so they could keep their energy up. She just… Ugh, all of this sucked so much. She could stay in the palace if she wanted to, but she felt like getting to know at least one population was worth it. The people would want their future queen-consort to be involved from the sound of it. Even so, they didn’t wanther. She was human. She was trying her absolute best though. She just… She got why they were so hateful but it didn’t make it any easier. She really, really was trying. And she’d hopefully learn the language soon enough so she could go interact with people on their level. She really hoped that day would come sooner rather than later. “All right then. I’ll tell Elana to be ready around then.” Yang nodded and let out a breath. All she could do was steel herself and prepare for the treatment she was unfortunately getting far too used to. It wasn’t like she’d chosen this life. The king of Vale had been the one to force them on them. Blakeshould’vebeen able to choose someone she wanted to marry, someone she loved and wanted to be with above all else. The same should’ve been true for Yang herself. But King Ivan was a terrible man and wanted only monetary gain for his kingdom. With how much of a spice producer Chiole was, he stood to gain once their woes were over. Spices were big business, so yes, he would gain massively from them once he stopped sending supplies to them and would gain from their spices. She hated noble politics so much… She was caught between being a commoner and a noble before… Now she was actualroyaltyand could command great power. “All right.” Yang offered a tired smile. She felt bad if Elana had waited all day for her to come and get her language lessons. She had been the one that had been so adamant about starting them, but then she didn’t even come to them yesterday. She was trying to balance her own wants and needs with that of the kingdom already. She just wanted to be the best princess-consort for the kingdom she possibly could be. It was just hard when pretty muchliterally everybody hated her. They wanted nothing to do with her and refused to see past the fact she was human. She had done nothing personally, but they placed all of humanity’s evils and trespasseson her. “So, what are some tenets of the High Mother?” Maybe she could pull on some of their scripture or beliefs to help convince them that how they treated her was wrong. “Well… It depends on what version of the High Mother a person worships. And you’re at a chapel of Verana… Do you think High Mother tenents are going to work in your favor for believers of Verana? Use yourownscriptures if that’s what you want.” Blake wasn’t being aggressive; she was just pointing things out. Which was entirely fair, she supposed. Whywouldthe High Mother work with the believers of Verana? But that wasn’t the only thing she wanted… “Don’t most people outside of the Valian enclave that live in the main city believe in the High Mother? That’s more what I was trying to get at.” “Oh. Sorry, I misunderstood your intention.” Blake rubbed the back of her neck. Yang shrugged. It happened. Even aura reading wasn’t an infallible thing. It was usually the most accurate way to deal with somebody and to get to the bottom of what they were thinking and feeling, but it wasn’t always reliable. She just wanted to see if she could get beliefs of the High Mother down and use the scriptures from there to back her up. She just wanted the racism toend. She was trying. She really was. It was just so hard to deal with this on a daily basis… She hated how people could get away with it even though she was now a member of the royal family. She really couldn’t deal with this much longer. And she wanted to know the language but that would take time… Ugh. “Thankfully we do have translated scriptures… You could read those if you want. But again, the High Mother takes three distinct forms and you don’t know which version a person will worship. They don’t have names, but there are three distinct versions: the loving mother, the protective mother, and the avenging mother. They don’t all have their own scriptures, but how the High Mother forms is different in different communities… Chiole has its own central church which is what most people follow, but those from other communities in Vacuo, Vale, Mistral, and Mantle will believe differently too…” What a mess. Religion could be so messy and incomplete. She was absolutely trying her best to deal with all of it, but yeah… “Well, if you could give me the central church’s scriptures to study on my own, I’d appreciate it… I know reading a translation isn’t as good as the native language, but until I can learn Chilese…” It’d just have to do. She hoped that even making an attempt to understand their scriptures would help convince them that she did care. In this case, yeah, it was more to buttrace herself with arguments that would hopefully stop the racism, but… If there were three different forms of the same goddess, she had no idea what to do. And apparently, she took many different forms, based on where a person was from. But she was mostly looking to talk to Chilese Faunus, not Valian or otherwise. Vale had so many different gods. She wasn’t sure about Mantle or anywhere else since she hadn’t invested time into learning about their cultures. “That won’t be too hard to arrange. I’ll have someone go get you a copy while you’re down at your acolyte lessons today. But yes, I would suggest pulling information from your own scriptures to try to help with the racism at the chapel…f I can’t say I know much about Verana since Vale has so many gods. Mantle’s beliefs are about as simple as any religioncanbe, I think… There’s one god and that’s about it. Vacuan depends heavily on the tribe. Different tribes have different beliefs, so there’s no real overarching religion in Vacuo. And Mistral is so diverse that, again, there’s no one real way to summarise their beliefs. Even different ethnic groups have different beliefs.” Yang nodded a bit. She was mostly just trying to deal with Chilese people and the acolytes and chaplains at the Verana chapel. It was so frustrating that she had to try to deal with this on her own. But it wasn’t like Blake was an expert in religion or anything… She’d have to spend time studying the Chilese church’s scriptures to hopefully try to pull passages that would support her. But without that inherent cultural understanding… It would be hard as well. “All right. Thank you. Do you follow the Chilese church or your own beliefs? Because I’m gonna need help with understanding the scriptures from someone raised on them… You can read a holy book but that doesn’t mean you’ll understand how they’re interpreted culturally and what they mean to the followers.” She just knew that from visiting other chapels. She studied what followers of other gods believed, but when that didn’t mean she understood the cultural context for them. Yes, even though Vale’s culture was more homogenous than most areas, people raised with a specific god would interpret thatverydifferently than someone not raised with that god. “People can interpret the scriptures how they please, but yes, I do follow the church. I believe in the protective mother more than the loving or avenging mother. I can tell you how we’d interpret things. But again… People have different ideas of the High Mother, so howIinterpret things will be different from howtheyinterpret things. And you’ll eventually want to study things in Chilese rather than a translation.” Yang nodded. “I know. I haven’t ventured much outside of Valian religions, but I know a translation isn’t as good as the real deal in the native language. Though we still have to translate from older versions of Valian to more modern Valian. Is it the same here?” Blake nodded. “Our central church is quite old. The traditional scriptures are written in amucholder form of the language, so we need to have it translated to a more modern version. Onlyreallytraditional priests are ever trained in the older form of the language. We want our faith to be accessible to as many Chilese as possible, so we make sure we have our scriptures available in the more modern form of the language.” That made some level of sense. Religion was something that was pretty much up to the individual in Vale… Some families had long histories in certain chapels, but a lot of people could and often did defect to other gods. Taiyang preferred his more traditional Mistrali beliefs while Summer worshiped Melocan, the god of Death himself. He didn’t have a very big following as far as Yang was aware. Chthonic religions were cults of mystery so not much was written down. Then Ruby didn’t even followanyreligion. It was weird to see an atheist or at least an agnostic but Ruby didn’t follow any god in particular… “All right then. Though a translation of a translation isn’t particularly great either. But for now, it’ll have to do.” She was really just trying to do what she thought was best. She really ought to study the religion to get to know the people and not so much just try to argue with them, but what else could she do? If people used religious-based motivation, maybe she could counter that. She understood a lot of it was just based in past experience and the general attitudes humans showed toward Faunus in Mantle and Mistral. But it still didn’t really make itright. She hoped that she could argue with them in due time that it was wrong to treat people that hadnever done anything wrongpersonally. Blake nodded. “Not ideal, but Chilese is quite complicated to learn. It’s a logographic system like a lot of Mistrali languages, so there are thousands of symbols to learn, often having different readings and meanings.” “Joy.” Yang sighed. “And I know you said it was a tonal language too…” Blake nodded. “Here. Listen.” She repeated the same word about a dozen times and Yang strained her ears to hear differences. Thankfully, she picked up on the fact there were different patterns to how the word was pronounced. “Did you catch the differences?” Yang nodded. “I could hear them. Some were harder than others, but I think I got it all.” She had a good ear for music since Summer had raised her to be a musician. Summer was a knight, sure, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t have other interests. Summer’s music was more secular than religious but Yang spent a lot of time learning different hymns to Verana as well as other gods. She made sure she knew them by heart and could sing them without needing to open the hymnal. She hadn’t looked at the hymnal in the Valian enclave, but the robes were near identical, so she hoped and prayed that the hymnal wouldn’t be massively different. “That’s definitely good… Faunus who want to live in the main city often struggle with even hearing the tones, so they can’t learn the language very effectively. You definitely already have a head start in that regard.” “Which is good… I know I’ll eventually learn it magically but still…” She was going to learn as much as she could normally before resorting to magical means. It would probably be a massive struggle especially with the writing system, but she would do her absolute best. She just wanted to be able to communicate with the people of Chiole. She was a princess-consort now and she would be queen-consort eventually. She wanted to serve as best she could. But if they didn’t accept her, how could she…? She was trying. She really was. It was just hard when everyone showed her so much hatred. “Honestly, we could probably expedite the progress… Celaecyal just needs you to know a little bit of the language before she can unlock the potential. She’s the Goddess of Potential… If you already know alittlebit of the language, then you have thepotentialto have it fully unlocked… Maybe we can just do a couple days with Elana then have her unlock the rest of it. I know it’s cheating but…” “It’s hard to argue with that. If I can communicate with the people more, I’ll have mobility and won’t need to rely on you for translation and everything else.” “The writing system will probably have to come later. If we focus on getting you speaking with some basic forms and a small vocabulary, then maybe she can unlock at least the spoken word aspect. What do you think?” Yang nodded. “Sounds like a solid plan to me.” How could she argue with that? Yeah, she wanted to learn the language and getting her to speak it in a couple days would be better than taking months and months to teach it. Yeah, it really was cheating, but she didn’t particularly care. The written language wasn’t as important in her mind as the spoken part. If she could speak, she could be free to go wherever she wanted and do pretty much whatever. She still needed to wait for her tiara to be made which was frustrating but if she could put people in their place verbally, it’d help immensely. Granted, she still hated having to do thatat allin the first place, but it was all that theycoulddo for the time being. People needed to be reminded Yangwaspart of the royal family and treating a royal poorly wouldn’t go over very well. “So are you planning to go to chapel after this?” Yang nodded. “I’ll spend some time down there today, then come back for language lessons. Tell Elana to just go ham on me. If I pick it up, I pick it up. If I don’t, I don’t. I don’t mind a fast-paced environment.” She would do what she could in order to pick up whatever possible in the next few days. She hoped it would be enough for Celaecyal to unlock the language in her. Speaking a few basic forms and understanding what was going on behind them would definitely help… A little deus ex machina was going to be her best friend in a couple days, assuming they got her to an acceptable level… “All right then. Elana will probably be reluctant, especially now that you have power over her due to being my wife but…” Yang frowned at that. She hadn’t even considered it. She had no idea what the poor woman had been through other than she’d been taken as a slave to Mantle. There wasn’t much she could do about it, though. Plus, the main reason she’d married Blake in the first place had been to make sure she had power to use over people. But she hadn’t thought about it in terms of the palace… Poor Elana. The woman would really be between a rock and a hard place as far as Yang was concerned. “I really don’t want to freak her out.” Yang sighed. “There’s not a lot you can do about it. She’s so wary of humans because of what’s happened to her.” “I understand. Humans can be real cruel bastards sometimes.” There was no real denying it. Humans could be cruel. But it wasn’t like she hadn’t seen Faunus capable of just as much cruelty as humans. Chiole was the only Faunus-ruled country at this point in history, but the Faunus were definitely capable of the same levels of cruelty as humans were. They were showing it by treating Yang pretty terribly just because she was human, even though she herself was innocent of any crimes. She’d lived in a slave-owning household at one point, but she’d been a literal child and it wasn’t like she’d done anything to the Faunus then. If she had stayed there, though…who knew how she would’ve turned out. People wereverymuch products of their environments. She did understand while the Chilese people were being so cruel, but it didn’t make it any easier. “Not that Faunus are any better a lot of the time…” Blake sighed. “Yeah.” “I really wish there was more we could do to stop the way people are treating you right now.” Blake sighed again. Yeah, she did too. There was only so much they could do when there was so much trauma built up in Chiole due to the ongoing issues of slavery in the human-led world. She couldn’t entirely blame the people here for hating her, but it still wasn’trightto do so. She hated it. She hated having to pull rank to get them to agree to work with her, but there was no other way in order to get it to stop. Not that Yang was very convincing when it came to pulling rank… “Anyway I should probably head out.” Yang got up and brushed her clothes off, smiling at them a little bit. Blake nodded and smiled. “All right then. Hope you have a good day. See you around dinner.” Yang nodded and headed back to her room with her bird’s help, then grabbed her acolyte robes. She stuffed them into a bag and headed down to the carriage garage, then headed out to her chapel.