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maxwell-grant · 1 year

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Hi. Just found your blog--greatly enjoy your writing! Now, a question: Are there any popular female pulp heroes? What were they like? Thx in advance.

Thanks! Well, popular is a strong word, most people start with asking "were there any female pulp heroes? like, at all?", the answer to which is, Yes!...Nowhere as much as there were male ones, and not in the traditionally accessed avenues for "pulp heroes", but yes, there were, I wrote a bit about them here. Not counting the female sidekicks of male pulp heroes because that's cheating, the most popular female pulp heroes are the ones that exist by proximity to that American pulp hero “scene”, which I must stress again, doesn’t really have that much to do with what pulp fiction was actually like during it’s heyday, but rather that amorphous concept of what people imagine a pulp hero to be like.

In that regard, a popular female pulp hero would have to be a character that managed to break through in some form and inhabit that pop culture archetypal space in some form, or at least linger around in some noteworthy fashion. To an extent, this is something that was achieved more by female villains, in particular H.Rider Haggard’s Ayesha as well as other characters like Shamblau, Black Margot / Princess Margaret of the Black Flame, and Irma Vep who made for memorable, impactful villains of popularity and status approaching that of the male heroes.

With that in mind, upfront I’d argue that there’s at least six unambiguously popular female pulp heroines, and those would be:

The Domino Lady, a masked Gentleman Thief who was a rare example of a female masked vigilante who was actually published in 1930s American pulp fiction. The Domino Lady is, predictably, the least popular of these, but she’s historically significant and fairly popular in her own right and usually featured in stories or images that place all the masked avengers together.

Pat Savage (illustration by Dan Schkade), Science Adventurer Doc Savage’s rowdy tomboy cousin, and Dejah Thoris, the famous princess of Mars from the John Carter saga (key progenitor of the Planetary Romance subgenre), who are kind of on the sidekick side of things, but there's been enough solo outings for them, and the two of them being fairly significant and influential characters in their own right, that I’m obviously not gonna leave them out.

Red Sonja (illustration by Donato GIancola), famed badass of Sword-and-Sorcery. She’s maybe the most famous by far pulp heroine of them all, the only one of these for sure that you could reasonably expect most people to at least know by name or imagery. And she is a 1970s Marvel Comics character who borrows her name from an unrelated character in a non-Conan Robert E. Howard story and her characterization from C.L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry (1934). Another character we can add to the ever-growing pile of “characters who define the term pulp hero despite never actually appearing in pulp fiction” next to The Spirit, Buck Rogers, The Phantom, The Green Hornet, etc.

Sheena, Queen of the Jungle: Here also standing for the general popularity of Jungle Girls in general who usually take after her in some ways or inspired her in the first place they all just kinda blend together at some point

Barbarella: (no idea what archetype taxonomy I could use for her). You all know or have heard of her at some point and she gets grouped with these characters so often I couldn’t really omit her either. I’ve never seen the movie but I know it is an Italian production based on an erotic French comic that shoots for an American comic book style, and that strangeness is part of what made it fairly memorable. I’ve read a couple of Tales of the Shadowmen collections that feature stories with her as well.

Having named these, I’m also going to name six other pulp heroines who do not follow that mold so strongly and don’t overlap with these, and who were popular and significant in different ways:

Hunterwali: Hunterwali is one of the most significant action heroines in film history, as she was the premier starring role for Fearless Nadia, the most iconic action hero of 1930s Indian cinema and the archetypal action actress for Indian films, really one of the earliest and most significant action movie actresses period. Inspired by the Douglas Fairbanks Robin Hood serials, Hunterwali (1935) was a record-breaking blockbuster, with the character said to be “the most popular character of its time” and listed as "Bollywood's best loved character" in 100 years of Indian cinema by CNN-IBN”.

The character is a swashbuckling princess who dons the guise of Hunterwali, "protector of the poor and punisher of evildoers", to become a swashbuckling Masked Avenger bent on rescuing her father and beat up the evil prime minister villain. She runs around on horseback performing stunts like jumping over moving carriages, jumping a horse from a bridge onto the top of a moving train, and defeating 20 soldiers in one sweep with her whip (Fearless Nadia did her own stunts, mind you).

Brigitte “Baby” Montfort: Brigitte Montfort was a highly popular Secret Agent pulp fiction character in Brazil, probably the most straightforward “pulp hero” we have as the star of cheaply printed pocket edition books that arose in the 60s as an alternative to the paperbacks. Brigitte is the daughter of a 1940s feuilleton character (yes, the feuilletons were published here as well) named Giselle Montfort, a Mata Hari-esque spy who bedded Nazis for intel and was eventually killed via firing squad. Brigitte was a globetrotting reporter who secretly operated as a cunning, cutthroat CIA agent, a bikini-clad James Bond. The stories went so in-depth that it was a common rumor at the time that they were written by a CIA agent employed by the editors, and Brigitte lasted about 30 years with circa 500 novels to her name, making her one of the most long-lived pulp characters.

Ethel King: Ethel King was a rare, prototypical Great Detective who debuted in German dime novels and was subsequently published all over Europe for the following two decades. Driven to fight crime by the loss of her father and fiance, she was referred to as “the female Sherlock Holmes” as well as “the female Nick Carter” for French and Italian publishing, and she takes after the two of them in a way.

Like Holmes, she employs brilliant reasoning and goes around with a wisecracking assistant (in this case her governess), and like Carter, she’s also assisted by a younger sidekick (an orphaned cousin she raised on her own), she gets into gunfights and has a tough attitude, and she deals with a massive Rogues Gallery of horrid villains with wild names and even wilder characters (including three evil doppelgangers). She would go on to become a formative influence not just on future female detectives, but also the German hefteromanes that spun out of the dime novels.

Nila Rand: Perfume, pistols and mystery in one package, she was created by Hedwig Langer under a pseudonym, one of the only two characters in this list created by a woman. Nila Rand was a thrill-seeking adventurer Femme Fatale featured in Scarlet Adventuress who dabbled in arms dealing, smuggling of stolen goods and gunfighting.

"She did not know which intrigued her the more, the alluring promise of exotic love, or the threat of terrible and violent death. The last was as necessary to her as the first. Nila Rand had played too long for high stakes and it needed the element of danger to make the game a thrilling one." - The Shanghai Stakes (1935)

Nila is a key example of what separates the femme fatale in the pulps from the films (far more frequently protagonists, rarely the sidekicks or girlfriends but instead solo operatives or leaders of their own gangs, rarely deliver on actual sex and instead manipulate men's desires to their advantage), but far more important than that is the fact that she was openly acknowledged to be bisexual, which goes without saying was extremely rare in any form to find in the pulps in any form.

Even in these spicy/erotic pulp magazines that were all about sneaking stuff past the radar (and thus a place where, for better or worse, writers could play around with topics other magazines would shy away from and would be unthinkable outside of pulp magazines). Finding a queer pulp hero from any period prior to the 1970s, let alone a protagonist and not an outright villain, is bordering on impossible, but it exists and here she is.

Lu Siniang: A lot of Wuxia/Nuxia storytelling is born from similar undercurrents of working class escapism and anger and desire for justice that led to many of pulp fiction’s most prominent heroes, and Lu Siniang is a particularly powerful embodiment of that. She was spun out of real life circumstances involving the execution of Lu Liuliang and his entire family for “literary crimes” against the Qing government, and the subsequent death of the Yongzheng Emperor, and said to be Liuliang’s daughter who had managed to survive away, learn martial arts and join/form a group of revolutionaries in a mission of revenge that culminated in her skewering/beheading the emperor. No Wuxia/Nuxia protagonist had dared to go that far before.

The story was reprinted several times following it’s inception, becoming particularly popular in the 1910s-1940s as the character would star in the Lu Siniang / Fourth Madam Lu serials starting in 1940, that comprised the first Chinese film franchise and film series about a fictional character, as well as one of the first action film series focused on a female protagonist alongside Hunterwali mentioned above.

Pussy Fane: The only other character in the list created by a woman. She was created by prolific romance writer and editor Jane Littel, who was repeteadly stressed to be the "longtime companion" of another pulp romance writer Margaret Wallace (one of the pseudonyms Margaret wrote under was called "Margaret Littell", make of that what you will), with Pussy Fane being a short-lived attempt to combine crime and romance.

Pussy Fane is a Proto-Superhero from 1931, a beautiful escort/party girl who grew up in the circus among jungle cats and is forced to deal with blackmailers and gangsters. She regularly douses herself in perfume to mask their scent, and is burdened with regret and sorrow over her upbringing and nature, repeteadly hearing others refer to her as inhuman and more than half cat. She is also superhumanly strong and athletic, said to have the strength of 20 men, and she also regularly rips off the arms of would-be-rapists.

Yes, it’s a tragedy you’re only just now hearing about this character, it’s a damn shame the stinky classy-yet-feral woman who runs around ripping off the arms of grubby rapist gangsters missed her call in pop culture stardom as did so many of these.

So here there are, 12 female pulp heroes all encompassing different archetypes, as well as different genres and countries of origin. There are more, yes. They are difficult to find enough info to write about, yes. Is the effort worth it? You bet. I find it imperative to shout to the world that these characters and others like them existed, that plenty of them were popular and acclaimed in their own right, even in ways that overshadow the American characters and defy our pop culture preconceptions of what pulp female characters all have to look like.

There was no archetype or type of story available to pulp heroes that was closed off to the women, not now, not a hundred years ago when Ethel King established new paradigms for the Great Detective and dime novel fiction before Hunterwali made action film history doing everything Douglas Fairbanks was doing and then some, not even well over a hundred years ago when Lu Siniang was beating The Count of Monte Cristo and all the ensuing dramatic masked avengers to the punch in backstory and over-the-top revenge. We only stand to lose confining these to the dustbins of history and standing by such a shallow perception of what could be done, and what was done, back then with pulp heroines.

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umbry-fic · 9 months

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Ultramarine Hymn

Summary: Vowing to grant her wish, Lloyd embarks on a new journey with Colette.

Fandom: Tales of Symphonia Characters: Colette Brunel, Lloyd Irving, Sheena Fujibayashi, Genis Sage, Presea Combatir, Noishe, Dirk, Martel Yggdrasill Relationships: Colette Brunel/Lloyd Irving Rating: G Word Count: 5205 Mirror Link: AO3 Original Post Date: 10/08/2023

Notes: This is set after The Celestial Fox. It's a fluffy fic that let me slip in a bunch more lore I missed from the original. Title from Ultramarine Hymn by Eve.

~~~

Verse 1: Sheena

After the night when Colette had carried him through the skies, bringing him so close to the stars that he could have reached out and brushed his fingers against their never-ending brilliance, Lloyd had vowed to grant the wish she had entrusted to him with everything that he had. They would travel this vast world together, seeking out its every hidden corner. Along the way, he would point out every detail he had learned from his own journey, his heart never failing to swell in his chest at the bright smile that graced her face each time he did so. An endless deluge of curious questions would spill from her mouth, and he would answer every single one as best he could as she attentively hung on to his every word.

He hoped he could visit every person who had guided him to where he was now, who had provided him with a listening ear and not instantly turned him away for being a naive child who clung too tightly to dusty legends. And… He wished to show those he trusted the incredible girl who trailed stardust with each step she took.

Their first stop was Mizuho - a village tucked away in the depths of a dark forest, almost impossible to find if one wasn’t paying careful attention. He had spent the better part of a month there, learning all he could about the Celestial Fox. Mizuho was one of the last places to have full faith in their existence, refusing to relegate them to nothing more than a rumour that had spiralled out of control. They were revered and featured everywhere in the village. As patterns sewn onto protective charms, as a graceful presence on sliding doors, and even as wooden charms fairly similar to the one he had crafted himself and still sat on his bedroom shelf.

He wanted to thank those who had shown him hospitality - mainly Sheena, who had kindly offered him a place to stay and had regaled him with all of the exciting tales she’d heard from the Elder since she was young.

His other objective was to procure a disguise charm that could hide Colette’s ears and tail from prying gazes. He didn’t trust that no one would attempt to take advantage of the power that lay within her if someone were to figure out just who she was, but it didn’t seem fair for Colette to have to keep a hood on at all times. Her ears couldn’t breathe under all that cloth, no matter how many times she reassured him that she was fine with the current arrangement, her thumb running over the fox he’d stitched into the fabric.

“Um, Sheena? You alright?”

Frowning, he waved a hand in front of her face. Not a word had left her mouth for the last minute or so - she’d just been blankly staring at Colette ever since she’d pushed down her red hood to reveal a pair of furry ears, twitching under the scrutiny. Not that he had any room to judge. The first time he’d met Colette, he’d been just as dumbstruck. Being incapacitated by a sense of wonder that clutched one’s heart in its grasp… It was simply what happened when met with a being one had been convinced would never exist outside of bedtime stories.

“You… You’re…” Sheena finally snapped into motion, stumbling over her words. Disbelief, followed by awe, flitted across her face in rapid succession. “But that can’t be…”

“Hi!” Colette called out cheerfully, reaching for the other girl’s hands as her ears perked up. “You’re Sheena, right? Lloyd’s told me all about - Ah!”

In trying to get closer, Colette had inevitably tripped over a loose floorboard, kickstarting a chain of events which saw her crashing into a table, causing the vase sitting atop it to wobble and tip over. With the terrible sound of porcelain slamming against a solid surface, the vase shattered, scattering sharp shards and an assortment of flowers.

“Oh,” Sheena exhaled, all the breath leaving her as she crumpled to the floor so quickly that he didn’t have time to react, let alone catch her.

This had rapidly veered into the territory of a disaster.

“Sheena? What’s going on in there?”

Lloyd stiffened instantly, resisting the urge to scream, having recognised just who that voice belonged to. For all the days for him to make the long trip from Meltokio to Mizuho, did he have to pick today?

“Why’s there fur all over the…” The voice trailed off as a head of red hair poked through the entryway. Zelos, for once in his life, appeared to be at an utter loss for words as his gaze roved over the room, which looked as if a tornado had run through it and thrown everything into chaos, before finally landing on the unconscious woman on the wooden floor. “Sheena?!”

“Sorry! I’m so sorry!” Colette squeaked, lifting her head off the floor, hair falling into her face. Lloyd could spy no cuts on her exposed skin, but there was a daisy in her mouth that she’d already begun to unconsciously chew on.

Groaning, he buried his head in his hands.

Verse 2: Presea

“No paw pads…” Presea intoned, gaze trained on the very-much human hands in her grip.

“I’m sorry,” Colette replied, Presea’s disappointment leaking into her own voice, her ears flattening against her head. She never could bear to see someone disappointed.

Sitting at his desk buried in paperwork, Regal failed to suppress a smile, while Lloyd, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, barely restrained his laughter from escaping his throat.

Presea was the same as ever. When Lloyd had told her about Noishe the last time he’d been in Altamira a year ago, her eyes had lit up with a rarely-seen sparkle. For a bit, he’d thought that she would dash out the doors of the office and head straight to Iselia in record time, fuelled by her desire to touch Noishe’s paw pads.

“Hm…” Colette bit her lip, her frown turning contemplative. “Oh, I know!” Dropping Presea’s hands, she strode over to the window and threw it wide open to reveal the moon, hanging round and high in the night sky. Its light, currently at its strongest, spilt into the room, painting all in its glorious silver. “You’re in luck! Tonight’s a full moon!”

Lloyd blinked, arms falling slack to his side as he realised what it was she was trying to do. “Colette, you don’t have to…”

“It’s alright, I don’t mind.” Her eyebrows scrunching together, she shut her eyes, going completely still. Even her tail, perpetually in motion, came to a stop. Deep in focus, she resembled a statue, carved to perfection and lovingly painted.

In the blink of an eye, the girl before the window vanished from sight. In her place was a petite fox that barely reached their knees, fur rippling as she opened her maw to yawn, stretching her stiff limbs.

Presea gasped in delight, rushing over and dropping to her knees. Picking up the fox’s front paws, she cooed, a small smile on her face. “So soft…”

“I didn’t know she could do that,” Regal commented, one eyebrow raised. “The legends made no mention of it.”

“Didn’t know until a few weeks ago, either,” Lloyd replied, walking over to scratch Colette behind the ears. Her purrs reverberated through his hand as she rubbed her head against it. “She can only do it on the full moon.”

He’d found out after waking up in the middle of the night to find a fox curled up atop him, sound asleep. Colette, flushing rather furiously and refusing to meet his gaze, had explained that she had difficulty doing it unless she truly concentrated, but that it tended to happen at random when she was asleep.

“It seems that this world is still full of surprises,” Regal commented, expression gentle as he watched Presea and Colette frolic across the room.

“Yeah,” he replied softly, holding out his arms for Colette to jump into. She let out a happy yip, settling into his hold as a relaxed ball of fur, lapping at his offered hand. “It is.”

Refrain: Lloyd

Lloyd’s finger traced the blue line that ran down the map that was spread out across the wooden table, ending its journey on the brown dot that represented the town he called home. By his estimates, so long as he and Colette stuck close to the river, they only had about a week of travelling to go before they reached Iselia. Just a week, before he was back among familiar buildings and all the people he knew by name, before he could see his best friend and Dad again, after over a year of being away. Time certainly seemed to fly while he was out exploring the world and experiencing all the wonders it had to offer with Colette’s hand in his.

He would be glad to return after so long away. He wanted to check in on everyone and see how things had changed. While Dad had made it clear that he should chase his dreams and follow the whims of his heart, he had also knocked it into his head that home would always remain just that. Regardless of where he was in the world, whether he was following the currents of spring or charging recklessly into the unknown, he would always be welcome back home. And despite Dad never making any request of him, he’d promised himself that he would return time and again, to reassure Dad that he was fine.

“Is something the matter?” he asked, rolling up the map now that he was finished consulting it, leaving the inn’s table bare apart from a lone lamp, the flickering flames within it helping to chase away the darkness of night. There were a few more rips in the sides of the map than when it had first been handed to him by Dad, but it was none the worse for wear. “Colette…?”

She’d been weaving in and out of the corner of his vision ever since he’d started planning their route, easily recognisable by the shade of gold that defined her. Even now, he was still getting used to seeing it as he travelled, a wave of joyous wonder threatening to bowl him over each time he caught sight of it. Her hair, swaying in the wind as she laughed and ran ahead of him, her eyes shining bright as she took in the world she’d never gotten the chance to see. The accents on her outfit, the one she’d worn when they’d first met and refused to part with, its billowing sleeves embracing him as she wrapped her arms tight around him. The fur of her tail, soft against his skin whenever it snuck its way into his lap while they rested by a campfire.

“Nothing!”

“You’ve been fidgeting all evening,” he pointed out, turning the chair around so he could face her and figure out what was bothering her. It was unusual for her to not still be out exploring the town - she rarely returned to the inn room before the moon had replaced the sun in the sky.

“It’s… It’s nothing important!” Colette hurriedly explained, inching closer, her tail shifting nervously on the carpeted floor. “It’s just… The fur in my tail has been getting all tangled because of all the rain recently, so…”

Instantly, he recognised her unspoken request. Her fur did tend to get messier when it rained, and over the past week, the heavens had been constantly upset, resulting in a non-stop downpour that they sometimes had had no choice but to run through, their only measly shelter from the rain their hands held over their heads.

“I can do it by myself! It’s… it’s just…”

Without a word, he stretched out his hand, acquiescing. Her voice trailing off, Colette pressed something small into it - the brush he’d personally whittled out of wood for her a few months back.

“You could have asked at any time.” He stood, taking her hand and guiding her over to one of the two beds that were in the room he’d rented for the night.

“I didn’t want to interrupt what you were doing,” she mumbled, red creeping into her cheeks as she laid her tail flat on the bed. A sight cute enough to bring a smile to life on his face as he aligned the tines of the brush with the abundance of her fur.

“I wouldn’t have minded, silly. You can ask me anything you want, at any time.”

Taking his time, he slowly undid the various knots that had accumulated over their travels, taking care to keep his actions gentle so as not to tug at any strands painfully. He hummed as he did so, enjoying the softness of her fur beneath his fingers. The tension gradually seeped from her shoulders, her contented purring filling every corner of the room and flooding his heart. The happiness he experienced with her came not just from the extraordinary, but also from the mundane moments such as these. The knowledge that she trusted him to tend to her fur was enough to light a warm fire in his chest. The ability to spend his life by her side… He could want for nothing more.

Satisfied that every strand of fur had been straightened to perfection, he placed the brush on the bedside stand, noticing that the purring had cut off. He glanced at her, only to find her head drooping onto her chest, eyes peacefully shut.

On summer afternoons long ago, he had occasionally fallen asleep to the buzz of the cicadas, watching the vivid greens and browns of the forest blur before his eyes while Dad dragged a comb through his unruly hair. It had been easy to succumb to his drowsiness when he knew that he was safe, and loved.

Chuckling, he scooped her into his arms and set her down on the other bed, quietly tucking her in. Sometimes, he wondered how she’d managed to carry him while on her voyage through the skies - she weighed almost nothing in his arms. Was she truly constructed solely from the essence of the stars? A substance that would surely slip between his fingers, yet burned so brightly. A miracle that the universe had given form to, that he had somehow stumbled upon.

She made a soft sound when he placed a kiss between her ears, her tail finding its way out from beneath the blanket to wrap around his waist. It had always had a mind of its own.

“Sweet dreams, Colette.”

Verse 3: Genis

“I have to be dreaming,” Genis mumbled for the third time, gaze tracking Colette as she wandered around his room, peering curiously at the various books that lined the shelves. He hadn’t taken his eyes off her, not once, as if certain that she would turn out to be a trick of the light if he did so. “Kick me.”

“Gladly,” Lloyd snorted, slamming his foot into his best friend’s leg.

“Not that hard!” Genis yelped, hopping up and down on his other leg, shooting him his best glare. He didn’t try to retaliate, for despite gaining a few inches in the time that had passed since Lloyd had left Iselia, he was still a full head shorter. Lloyd could easily evade anything he tried to throw at him.

“You two get along well.”

Both of them froze, turning to face Colette. She stood with her hands clasped in front of her, a smile on her face. Perhaps to anyone else, it would have come across as a joyous expression, but Lloyd knew better. He could spot the faint melancholy lingering in her gaze, the slight droop of her ears, the way her tail was wrapping itself around her leg as she made herself smaller.

She’d been alone for years upon years. The easy camaraderie of friendship would have been foreign to her in her self-imposed purgatory, where her only companion had been the whistling of wind between leaves and the clawed embrace of winter’s cold.

“Yeah, well, we’re best friends.” He grinned, slinging an arm around Genis’ shoulder, prompting a disgusted protest from him. “And now we can all be friends.”

“Really…?” The question slipped from her, as a hopeful light returned to her eyes.

“Sure, why not.” Genis shrugged, grinning too. “Would be pretty cool.”

Colette giggled, her cheer restored. “I’d love to.”

“So, ready to admit I was right yet?” Releasing Genis, he leaned against the cabinet that he was fairly certain held Professor Raine’s teaching materials. The smug smirk on his face couldn’t help but grow larger at Genis’ frustrated groan. It was satisfying to finally get something correct that Genis hadn’t - those “childish dreams” he’d made fun of had been reality all along.

“Fine, but only because I can’t deny what’s right in front of me.”

“So, since I won that bet we made six years ago, you have to make one year’s worth of sandwiches for me,” he stated, watching Genis’ eyes widen in horror.

“You - you remembered that? Of all the things to remember -”

“Sandwiches?” Colette’s ears shot up straight in the air, her tail thumping on the floor as she rose on the balls of her feet. “I love sandwiches! There are so many ways to make them with so many different ingredients, and I’m certain I haven’t tried them all! I’d love to try yours, Genis!”

Genis’ protests died in his throat as he was hit with the full force of Colette’s pleading stare. Those wide blue eyes combined with the force of her fluffy ears and tail were enough to crumble anyone’s defences.

“Fine, fine!” Genis threw his hands up in the air, grumbling under his breath as he headed towards the stairs that led back down to the living room of the house he and Professor Raine shared. And more importantly, the kitchen. “Guess I might as well get started now.”

“Yay!” Colette cheered, trailing after him. “Sandwiches! Sandwiches!”

Verse 4: Noishe

Lloyd sighed, glancing worriedly at Colette, walking in silence beside him. She hadn’t uttered a single word since they’d left Iselia to cut through the forest on their way to Dirk’s house.

She’d been all smiles in the kitchen of the Sage’s house, scarfing down sandwiches while leaving tiny crumbs at the corner of her mouth that he’d had to brush away. In fact, she’d been like a ball of energy that could rival the sun, alternating between showering Genis with compliments and listening attentively to any anecdotes he and Genis had to share about growing up in Iselia.

Once they’d taken their leave and he’d begun to show her around the village proper, however, she’d retreated into herself, falling quiet. Shadows had gathered in her eyes as she’d stared, transfixed, at certain landmarks like she knew them just as well as he did. The schoolhouse, or what little remained of it, which Professor Raine had once explained far pre-dated any of them. The circle of trees near the centre of town, the trees within towering above them all, their branches reaching towards the heavens. The well-cared-for graveyard that was often wreathed in fog, the oldest of the gravestones there beginning to crumble, the words that had once been carved upon stone now smoothened by time to the point that they were indecipherable.

It was almost as if she’d grown up amongst them just as he had, which was impossible.

Wondering just what about Iselia had spooked her, he’d taken her hand and gently guided her out of the village, hoping that would be enough to pull her from her shell. Yet it seemed she hadn’t even noticed they’d left, her ears flat against her head as they walked without a word passing between them, the only sound that reached his ears the trill of birdsong. She had tripped over quite a few twigs on the path, but even though he’d been able to catch her every time before she fell to the ground in a heap, there was barely any reaction from her. Even with their palms pressed together, Colette seemed a world away, an air of melancholy clinging to her.

“You alright?” he whispered, brushing his thumb against her hand.

“Hm?” she hummed absent-mindedly in response, glancing around as if finally registering they were in the middle of a forest. “I’m fine. I’ll… Tell you about it later, okay?”

He squeezed her hand, dropping the concerned question that weighed heavily in his throat. If she said she was going to tell him later, then she would. There was no use prying.

A bark ripped through the heavy atmosphere, a blur of green and white bounding its way towards them.

“Noishe!” he cried out happily, before bracing himself for impact. He'd missed the hulking dog that had always been by his side for as long as he could remember, occasionally serving as his mode of transport to and from school. Whenever he felt down, he could always rely on Noishe being there to cheer him up with his silly antics. What he couldn’t exactly say he missed was the way Noishe loved to greet him - throwing his large body at him with enough force to send him thudding painfully into the dirt.

Instead of doing as he’d expected, however, Noishe skidded to a stop a few feet away, eyeing Colette. She eyed him back, neither of them moving a muscle.

Lloyd swallowed nervously, wondering whether he should attempt to break up whatever was going on between them. He’d heard about dogs and cats being natural enemies before, but surely that was just a myth? And surely it didn’t extend to foxes?

With another loud bark from Noishe, the spell shattered, the two of them snapping into frenzied motion as he seriously contemplated throwing himself between them - only for them to start chasing each other in circles.

Colette’s giggles, like the clear sound of silver bells, rose into the sky as she stretched out her arms in an attempt to grab onto Noishe’s tail. Noishe, likewise, had opened his mouth a little wider to try to reach Colette’s tail, a much easier target considering how bushy it was.

The strange game occurring before him didn’t last very long - perhaps the outcome had been inevitable from the very beginning. Colette, not paying attention to where she was going, tripped over a smooth stone, giving Noishe the opportunity to pounce and take hold of her tail in his mouth. He lifted it into the air in triumph, making sure not to get it caught in his teeth.

Laughter bubbled up within Lloyd, forcing him to bend over as it burst out of him, floating to the treetops. The grin on his face was so wide it hurt, relief flooding his heart at the mirth in Colette’s actions.

He was glad to see her smiling again. And it seemed his worries had been unfounded after all.

Colette could never be anyone’s natural enemy… She had far too large a heart for that.

Intro: Dirk

“That tickles!” Colette protested, hands on either side of the giant dog’s head as he slobbered all over her face, his large tongue rough against her skin. It was a markedly different experience from the faded memories she held of her mother grooming her when she’d curled up against her as a tiny fox cub, surrounded by a bubble of warmth.

How glad she was to meet Noishe, another of Lloyd’s closest friends. One who had watched him grow up, who had seen him at his highest and at his lowest, who had a place on the colourful tapestry of his life. His willingness to share all of him with her never failed to light a warm flame within her soul. He had no qualms letting her peer into the depths of his heart, treating her no differently despite who she was.

The last few months she’d spent with him had been the happiest of her life. His gentle touch had brought back the colours that had vanished during the near century of loneliness she had endured, locked away in a forest from the rest of the world as punishment for failing to accept a fate that had not been of her own choosing. She’d been reduced to nothing more than a shrivelled flower, but he’d pulled her back into the sunlight and let her bloom again, whispering in her ear that he’d take her anywhere she wanted to go. And she believed him. He would be the one to grant her wish, through his endless determination and his overflowing kindness.

Iselia had been… disconcertingly familiar. As she’d followed Lloyd down the well-worn paths that weaved through the tiny village, the ghost of memories and fractured slivers of emotions had echoed in her mind, unable to fully escape the fog that choked the time before she’d first awoken in the shrine with her Mother’s kind hand on her head. She would tell him about it later. Perhaps they would be able to get to the bottom of the mystery, perhaps they wouldn’t. She did not need to know who she had been before - she was satisfied knowing who she was now.

Heavy footsteps sounded in her ears, coming from further down the path, prompting Noishe to leap off her. Jumping to her feet, she found that another man now stood before them - short and stout, with a beard that could rival her tail in terms of bushiness. His thick eyebrows were furrowed as he observed her. She swallowed nervously, wringing her hands as she anxiously wondered if there would be any issues with her presence.

This must have been -

“Dad!” Lloyd grinned, but before he could take a single step forward, Dirk strode towards them and gathered them both into a hug that could easily force all the air from one’s lungs.

“Oof! Dad, that’s - that’s too tight!!”

Any and all fear she had harboured in her heart vanished as she sunk into the hug. Its warmth was one she recognised well, even if it had been a long, long time since she’d felt it. Not since quiet mornings in a forest grove, windchimes whispering between the trees, when Mother had hugged her close and combed her hair.

A parent’s love… Lloyd was incredibly lucky, and she was certain he knew that. He would always have a place to return to.

Perhaps one day, it could be a place for her to return to as well.

“I’m glad you made it back home safe, lad,” Dirk chuckled, the boisterous sound filling the forest air. He turned that bushy smile on her. “And it seems you found whatever it was you were looking for. It’s good to meet you, miss…?”

As Lloyd continued to protest in wheezing gasps that his ribs were breaking, she smiled back, happiness blooming in her heart at the prospect of having found a home.

“Colette. It’s nice to meet you too. Lloyd’s told me so much about you!”

Certainly, there would be obstacles in the future. Fate was not so kind as to remove all misfortunes in the path she walked. There would be pain, days where her heart felt as if it was breaking beneath the weight it carried. But there would also be days where airy laughter would escape her, where she felt light as a bird, capable of flying when she jumped off the ground instead of needing a cliff to soar. She would take them both in stride, and together with the courage Lloyd had helped her discover, would use them to write the song of her very own life.

And one day, one day the light that burned so brightly within Lloyd would be extinguished by the river of time.

But that day was far in the future. Right now…

Right now, her journey was only just beginning.

~~~

A/N: Thanks for reading! You can find some additional notes on AO3. The section after this is one that didn't fit with the flow of the fic but that I still quite liked.

~~~

Bridge: Martel

Martel stretched, letting out a yawn she’d been holding in since the sun had begun to set, in the world that lay outside the confines of the inn. Welcoming customers could be tiring business, and the bulk of the exhaustion tended to strike in the late afternoon with little to no warning, settling deep beneath her bones and refusing to release its grip. Nothing she wasn’t accustomed to soldiering through with pure force of will and a desire to get paid, but she was always ready to collapse into bed and sleep for ten hours once the day was over.

Stepping out, the cold night air hit her skin in a rush. Goosebumps rose as she wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. She’d forgotten just how low the temperature could drop at night - or maybe, she wasn’t as impervious to the weather as she had been when she was younger, sneaking out of her room once the stars came out to play to sit atop the old clocktower, swinging her legs back and forth as she enjoyed the feel of the wind.

There was nary a soul to be seen on the road. Families were ensconced within the houses along the street, warm light emanating from the windows as snatches of conversation and the giggles of children leaked out from beneath the doors.

It was time for her to head in and get out of the cold, she supposed. Wouldn’t do for her to fall sick, after all. If she did and her brother somehow caught wind of it, she’d be at the mercy of his fussing for… however long it took her to heal. Just the thought was enough to make her shudder. He could be a bit too much sometimes with all the worrying, even if he meant well.

Spying something on the roof of her inn, she came to a stop, squinting in an attempt to pierce through the veil of darkness. It couldn’t be a thief, could it? She was perfectly capable of defending herself with a frying pan, but she’d rather not. She was exhausted.

“Oh.” She heaved a sigh of relief when she realised it was just Lloyd, and the girl that he’d been staying with for the past week. Colette, if she recalled correctly. Lloyd had introduced her, but the poor girl seemed to have a serious case of shyness. She was always hiding under a red hood, the one that Martel was very certain came from Lloyd. “Young love, I guess. I would prefer if they didn’t hang out on the roof of my inn…”

Goodness. She was complaining like an old woman now.

A sudden gust of wind bid her shield her face by throwing her arms up. Through the gaps, she spotted a flash of - ears? Furry ears, twitching atop golden hair…

Letting her arms fall, she squinted once more, but there was no sign of fur. Colette was still hiding securely under the hood, hands gripping onto the edges of it to prevent the wind from blowing it back.

“I really am getting old,” she mumbled to herself, horrified, as she went back inside, rubbing her eyes.

#tales of symphonia #fanfiction #one shot #colette brunel #lloyd irving #colloyd #sheena fujibayashi #genis sage #presea combatir #noishe #dirk #martel yggdrasill #they disabled the old post editor #i had to edit all the section titles individually because the new one doesn't accept h3 tags for some reason???#also WHY does it default to rich text when i edit a post that i started in html format???#:<

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