Work Text:
Asha was the truest friend Ragna had ever had. She liked spending time around Asha, her friendship was important to her and the sex was great. Asha was a considerate bed-partner, unusually so in Ragna’s experience. Ragna was glad for her.
Even Asha, though, didn’t quite understand what it meant for Ragna, to be the daughter of a salt wife. Freeborn, but never quite equal. To have spent her life picking up after everyone else, expected to be meek and grateful, not only because of her womanhood but because she was lesser by birth. To have known her whole life that her mother had been kidnapped and forced into marriage, eventually dying at the hands of the man who had done it. Not only knowing, but having heard it boasted about. To have been compared to that woman, and know it wasn’t entirely a compliment.
She thought of Maron as her brother, for all he didn’t care for her, but she would always be his half-sister to him and his mother, with the emphasis on half. Ragna had watched him grow up, and stepped in to do what others didn’t wish to, cleaning up messes with never a word of thanks. No-one thanked women like her.
Asha’s life hadn’t been easy, and Ragna admired her courage and tenacity. Nonetheless, her dear Asha had always known herself to be born to power. Not like Ragna.