I'm quite interested in this one! While I've read enough vaguely European fantasy stories for several lifetimes, by medieval standards or otherwise, the aesthetics and vibes of this particular offering seem to rely less on your usual adventuring knights-and-mages staples (at least until Nat uses the Sylpheed to dice some monsters up at an appropriate stage in the tale for sword lesbian heroics) and more on that whimsical, charming, melancholy, sylvan and dryadic atmosphere I associate generally with a lot of shoujo-flavoured tales from 90s and noughts (though it is still very much alive and continues to furnish a ton of witch-centric media especially), with its dedication to the poetry of nature, the questions of fate as whispered by the stars and the night, the quest for a guiding and heartening spirit in the wilds of the world, and a fierce love for life itself in every form and feeling. It's an excellent spirit to conjure, cast and animate a work with, and especially so for queer narratives, which I find at their most charming when they're effusive and eloquent and melodramatic and maudlin, singing of deep old pains and autumn memories, breathing odes in the trail of an eye and elegies to fleeting smiles, ruefully Romantic. Here too, there's glimpses of that fae-feathered flair, lucent in Natty's gasping incantations and arcane in Sister-from-another-Twister Sara's musings on the will of the wind gods or whatever delightfully pagan end she's appropriating those crosses for (Nat's face when Sara coquettishly says they're in a Class S situation and leads her behind the chapel away from the eyes of the Koala God only to reveal she was in fact talking about the gear ranking of the magic sword in her soul).
Speaking of divinities and assorted other sapphic icebreakers, I also feel like this chapter sets up a pretty interesting thematic tension between free will and determinism insofar as they pertain to the prevailing ideas and institutions of this setting's culture? Nat's misgivings and uncertainties about her capacity to rule due to her inability to consistently enact the rituals and images of a traditional series of royal performances forms a fascinating contrast with Sara's conviction in her divine role and value as established by a series of powers whose specific directions she knows little about (though "Locate Beautiful Brooding Rich Local Women and Offer Emotional Support and Magic Massages" seems as good a place as any to begin). The story's central image of wind beautifully expresses this ambivalence, being as it is at once a herald and force of nature, shaping the lay and lore of the land across seasons, and yet often as sudden and striking as a dervish or gale rippling through moments stifling or sedate, a potence and promise that responds at once to a ruler's call and yet blows many a favorite son away, buffeting poor Nat with neither-head-nor-tail winds that have deposited nevertheless a destiny in her arms (or vice/virtue versa). In a world where swords can bloom from hearts and the hands of fate are as breaths in the trees, perhaps the only certainty lies in the warmth of kindred hands (along with a good night's sleep). The royal and the religious are my two least favorite types of people, generally speaking, but the abundant breeziness of this premise keeps them from being too stuffy, and if their tale runs long and hard enough to truly channel the spirit of all the woodsy fae yarns it reminds me of, then I'm sure Estates One and Two will suffer enough arboreal atrocities on the route to their cottagecore leafily-ever-after to have thoroughly endeared themselves to me.
%20(1)%20(1).jpg?1654150865)
