Sorrowful Ruby

An account from Lintha Gajui Mother Người-Triều: “Sorrowful Ruby had skills that would have put her above other serfs in utility but was defective in other ways. Fortunately, her uses outshined her defects. And indeed they were defects. Sorrowful Ruby was technically a demon-blooded but designed to look as ordinary as possible. She was part of a proposal to create bodyguards, tailormade to specifications set by a summoner to a neomah and raised to serve Gajui. For the sake of modesty, the children meant to eventually serve female Lintha were women so they could enter anywhere with their charges without taboo. For example, Sorrowful Ruby was the one that scrubbed Xích and Xuyên after their baths. It was not initially her family’s project but Gajui knew a good idea when they saw one and they had a stock of flesh available for the experiments. Of course such experiments used no Lintha blood. Even the thinnest blood of Kimbery was not meant to serve. She heard some had outcaste flesh, whether that was acquired willingly or unwillingly was unknown. But the idea of one of them becoming a bastard of Gaia was hilarious to Người-Triều. The maid was a mix and match of many things but she was on the surface level no different from other nobloods but had at least some cloud arsenal in there for a knack for combat and fortune-telling to make sure her charges were safe. But the more complicated and specific a design, the more likely it seemed for there to be a flaw within the flesh-woven child. Whatever thoughts sifted through that skull of hers were incompatible with a human face. Her lips rested in a blank expression with equally inexpressive eyes. Sorrowful Ruby was not a demon so could not be bound and was not a beast so beating a habit into them was not advised. So, that quirk had to be worked on overtime which her having a blank face made it difficult at first guess what she actually enjoyed for them to give as a reward and what they found unpleasant as punishment. Yet she still had musical talent. That Sorrowful Ruby could sing without any merriment on her face was disconcerting. Mortal fortune tellers seemed to be stumped on the why and the how. Sorrowful Ruby could narrow a fortune down to “You will meet someone at the docks” without having a guess at the significance even before Người-Triều could point out that she meets a lot of people at the dock. But Sorrowful Ruby was good at “when.” She was usually accurate to about a month of when things were least likely to go wrong. She could be inaccurate at times or perhaps she was accurate and somehow things would have gone worse on a different date. Tide considered it little different from asking an old crone about incoming weather, Sorrowful Ruby’s forecasts just happened to factor things no one else would consider or be aware of.”