Ariet

Ariet was a Fellow-Inquirer of Correct Speech, one of the Palleseen Schools whose agents interrogated Pals and Accessories for disloyalty and pressed local populations on banned religious views. She exercised that authority in the occupied city of Jarokir during the second year of the Palleseen liberation, having relocated her household from the Archipelago to the garrison city. Her husband, a statlos, served as her Accessory, and their daughter Angilly, then twelve, lived under the authority of a mother whose interrogating role the girl resented and questioned but whose underlying premise-perfection as a governing standard-she never challenged. - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 1

Her life as a character in the narrative is compressed into a single chapter and then transmuted into memory. During the Jarokiri deluge season, a curse attack in the form of a supernatural fire poured through the doors of the garrison refectory where Ariet sat at the officers' top table. She shouted orders that accomplished nothing against the advancing blaze, and she burned inside alongside her husband and most of Angilly's classmates. The girl survived only because her father broke her shoulder and forearm forcing her through a narrow window. - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 1

From the following chapter onward, Ariet exists solely as a name and a benchmark. Her sister Aunt Ostrephy, a Fellow-Invigilator who had disapproved of the marriage to a statlos, invokes the dead woman as an absolute standard of excellence from which mere adequacy falls intolerably short. In this way Ariet becomes the origin-point of Angilly's story: the inciting trauma that orphaned her, and the spectral figure whose supposed perfection her surviving family demands she replicate. - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 2

Character

Personality

Ariet commanded authority and expected obedience. She "shouted orders" during the curse attack even as the blaze advanced beyond any human capacity to arrest it, suggesting a temperament that defaulted to command even in the face of helplessness. - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 1 She married a statlos and reorganized the household around her own professional posting in Jarokir, implying a woman who made decisions for the family unit and did not defer to kin disapproval. - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 1, ch 2 The scant posthumous evidence-her sister's insistence that "Ariet was never adequate"-paints a figure held to be relentless, exacting, and unimpressed by the merely competent. - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 2

Beliefs & Motivations

Ariet held and exercised her commission as an agent of the School of Correct Speech, interrogating subjects for disloyalty and pressing locals on banned religious views, operating within the Palleseen apparatus of control over Jarokir. - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 1 She married a statlos and appointed him as her Accessory, a pairing her sister Ostrephy disapproved of but which Ariet evidently defended by choosing it. - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 1, ch 2 The family code as her sister articulates it-no tolerance for adequacy, perfection as the only acceptable register-was a standard Ariet apparently embodied and Ostrephy weaponises against the surviving daughter. - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 2

History

Lives of Bitter Rain

Ariet held a commission as a Fellow-Inquirer within Correct Speech, one of the Palleseen Schools whose Inquirers interrogated Pals and Accessories for disloyalty and pressed locals on banned religious views, and she exercised that authority in the occupied city of Jarokir during the second year of the Palleseen liberation - ch 1. Her husband, Angilly's father, a statlos, served as her Accessory; the household had relocated from the Archipelago to the garrison city, where their daughter Angilly, then twelve, resented her mother's interrogating role and questioned its place in the family hierarchy but never questioned perfection itself - ch 1. The schoolteacher who instructed Angilly's class knew Ariet was the Fellow-Inquirer and had no effective means of disciplining the child - ch 1. During the Jarokiri deluge season, she dined at the officers' top table in the garrison refectory alongside other commissioned personnel - ch 1. When a curse attack struck the refectory, a supernatural fire with "a serpent's body, a lizard's legs" pouring through the door, Ariet shouted orders that accomplished nothing against the advancing blaze; she burned inside the refectory alongside Angilly's father and most of Angilly's classmates, while the girl was forced bodily through a narrow window by her father breaking her shoulder and forearm to push her out - ch 1.

Two years later, at Thorntree House on the Archipelago, where the fifteen-year-old Angilly was in her second year of orphanage custody, Ariet existed only as a name invoked by her sister, Aunt Ostrephy, a Fellow-Invigilator who had disapproved of Ariet's marriage to a statlos - ch 2. Ostrephy struck Angilly across the head for reading the word "Adequate" on her report card and held up her dead sister as the family standard against which mere adequacy was intolerable: "Adequate, is not acceptable. Not for my niece. Not for Ariet's only daughter. Ariet was never adequate. I was never adequate. Our family does not tolerate adequacy" - ch 2.

Relationships

• Angilly - Daughter and mother. Angilly, at twelve, resented her mother's interrogating role and questioned its place in the family hierarchy, though she never questioned perfection itself as a value. - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 1 Ariet's death in the curse attack-dying while her daughter was physically broken and forced through a window-left Angilly an orphan in custody at Thorntree House. Two years later, Angilly must live under the weight of her mother's mythologised excellence. - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 2

• Angilly's father - Husband and Accessory. A statlos who served in the subordinate Accessory role to his wife's commissioned authority, and who broke his daughter's shoulder and forearm to force her through a window during the curse attack. He died in the blaze alongside Ariet. - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 1

• Aunt Ostrephy - Sisters. Ostrephy, a Fellow-Invigilator, disapproved of Ariet's marriage to a statlos. After Ariet's death, Ostrephy invokes her as the family's unattainable standard, striking Angilly for adequacy and declaring the dead sister's name a floor beneath which no relative may fall. - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 2

Notable Quotes

"Adequate, is not acceptable. Not for my niece. Not for Ariet's only daughter. Ariet was never adequate. I was never adequate. Our family does not tolerate adequacy" - Aunt Ostrephy, Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 2

Tags

1. fellow-inquirer · #correct-speech · #deceased · #sister