Post by Cass on Dec 6, 2011 13:04:40 GMT 10
To: Pandora
Message: Tee-hee! Happy Ficmas!
From: your still secret snowflake
Title: Five Golden Rings!...or, Wherein Everyone is Running For No Apparent Reason
Rating: PG
Wishlist Item: #1 - Evin!
Summary:It’s Midwinter in Corus and some things go too far. Why are they running, again? Part five of “The Twelve Days of Mischief...or, It Came Upon a Midwinter Weird”.
Five Golden Rings!...or, Wherein Everyone is Running For No Apparent Reason
Walking into her room to find Miri fuming was not the way that Evin had imagined the evening beginning when he had asked to escort her to the Midwinter Ball.
“Miri?” Evin hovered in the doorway, uncertain. “Are you alright?”
Aside from the red spots high on her cheekbones and furious expression, Miri looked wonderful and ready for the Ball; her dress was a wonderful deep red that made her green eyes sparkle, Evin thought, and her hair was pulled back from her face and pinned delicately behind her head. She looked, in a word, beautiful, until one took into account her dangerous expression.
“They’re gone, Evin, all of them,” she nearly growled, “even the one you just got for me for Midwinter, with the little horse etched on it…”
“Your rings?” he asked incredulously, “someone took your rings?”
Miri nodded, then showed him scrap of parchment.
“Miri-
We have your rings. Don’t worry, they’re safe. In order to get them back, you must ask the Lord Magistrate to dance and then do the Chicken Dance during the first waltz of the evening.”
“What is the chicken dance, anyway?” Miri asked, frowning at the paper. Evin looked funnily at Miri.
“You know, like this--” he demonstrated some odd looking motions with his arms, waving them in the air before Miri’s dumbfounded expression paused him. “--What?”
Miri shook her head. “Nothing...just, don’t do that again. We need to get my rings back before we’re forced to do that on the dance floor tonight.”
“What?” Evin protested. “It’s a perfectly fine dance!”
Sighing, Miri grabbed his arm. “Come on, come on, we have members of the Own to find and interrogate.”
The ballroom, when Miri pulled Evin through the door, already had a sea of people milling around the tables within.
“D’you see the Own?” Miri asked, trying to see over the crowds. “Oh, look, there’s Lord Turomot!”
Blanching, Evin ducked behind Miri at the mention of the Lord Magistrate. “Where?”
“He’s not that bad,” Miri twisted to mock-glare at Evin. “Besides, I am supposed to dance with him...its not like you have to.”
“Well, after the last time--- you know, the one with Dom and the duck--”
“You deserved that.” Miri told him firmly, then turned abruptly on her heel. “He’s really quite nice if he hasn’t been recently chased by a flock of hissing ducks.”
It took Evin several moments to recover as Miri marched across the room with a smile for Lord Turomot. When he had scraped his jaw off of the ground as Miri began a waltz on Turomot’s arm. Her acting abilities were really quite impressive, he thought as he looked around the room. Surely, men in bright royal blue couldn’t be that difficult to spot...
Ah.
No matter how much he disliked formal events, Raoul of Goldenlake couldn’t be behind multiple curtains at the same time. Which meant...
Evin stalked towards the hanging nearest him, which was also incidentally nearest the door. Jerking it to one side, he revealed a startled Domitan of Masbolle.
“No, no, no... leave me alone, leave, go, she might find me!” He whispered frantically, waving his hands at Evin.
“She who?” Evin, confused, did not drop the curtain.
“Your friend Padrach’s sister!” hissed Dom, looking around furtively. “She’s absolutely terrifying, let me tell you--”
“Tell you what,” Evin interrupted the wild eyed man, “I’ll leave if you give back Miri’s rings.”
“Her what?” Dom asked distractedly.
“Her rings,” Evin restated. “You know, her five gold rings--you took them.”
“Absolutely not,” Dom fidgeted. “Why would I have her—oops.”
Something fell from his pocket, rolling on the floor to bump against Evin’s foot. It was clearly Miri’s ring, the tiny horse on it facing up as Evin bent to pick it up. “Absolutely not, eh?”
Dom glanced from side to side quickly. “Er….um…”
He took off running down the hall. Evin pocketed the ring before taking off after him. “Wait, get back here!”
As they ran, Evin grew more and more aware that people were joining him in his chase. At first, it didn’t bother him, as his co-runners were his fellow Riders; Natan and Tarrus gave him a wink as they joined up. But then things started to get a little odd.
“Meathead?!” Dom exclaimed, and Evin realized that the person next to him was indeed Nealan of Queenscove. “…you traitor!”
Dom threw a frantic look over his shoulder and did a double take. “Owen, why are you running?”
The curly haired boy only shrugged. “I saw you going for a run and thought it would be jolly so I joined in! Why, aren’t you exercising?”
Breathlessly, Dom only groaned and threw up his hands before continuing in his headlong drive forward.
“What’s the matter?” Owen wondered at Neal, who currently was looking at his friend as though Owen was something he had scraped off the bottom of his boot. “Sir Wyldon always says that exercise will keep you—“
Neal shook his head. “I hate you. So much.”
On his other side, Merric grunted.
“When did you get here?” Neal exclaimed, but Merric just shot him a dark look.
“Someone’s titchy,” Neal remarked about the latest ill-tempered addition to the wave of crazy that was growing increasingly bigger.
Down the hall, Wyldon and his wife Vivienne dashed out of the way of the oncoming runners. It was only Vivienne’s insistence and the impending fate of being trampled by Neal and Owen that kept Wyldon from stepping in front of Dom in an attempt to stop the madness.
The next time Dom looked back, he whimpered; the group of people he was now leading on a merry chase had more than doubled.
“Qasim, not you too!” He cried, seeing that some of his Own had joined up.
“I can’t help it, it sucks you in!” The Bazhir responded.
Beside him, Wolset called, “It was run or be trampled, sir!”
Pounding around a corner outside the ballroom, Evin saw Gareth the Younger step into the hall ahead of them, before being clipped by the racing crowd. He stumbled, and papers went everywhere. Hauling him to his feet, Raoul told Gary, “You’re out of shape and practice; I remember a time when you could have dodged that, easily.”
Gary scowled at the papers by his feet, which were faring much better than the few documents that were being trampled. “Why don’t you stop them?!”
Raoul laughed and clapped him on the back. “Oh no, you don’t pay me enough for that.”
Peering around the corner carefully, Buri saw Evin go by, then turned around decisively. “If I don’t see it, it’s not happening...”
“Don’t worry,” Raoul told her gleefully, “I’m watching enough for both of us.”
“Oh, great.” Buri’s enthusiasm was distinctly lacking as they turned into the ballroom. “Well, we might as well greet Thayet and Jon, prove that we are, in fact, here.”
“Goody,” muttered Raoul darkly. When he and Buri approached the dais, Thayet gave them an odd look, then motioned at the commotion outside the left-hand door. Quick glimpses of what looked like more than a few of the Riders and Own sprinting past had Buri gazing off in the opposite direction, and Raoul pursing his lips in an effort to keep from laughing.
“This is a ploy by the two of you to get out of these banquets, isn’t it?” Thayet asked suspiciously.
Raoul snorted.
“You really do have odd traditions here,” Shinko remarked, trying to discreetly watch the action occurring in the hall.
On her other side, Roald blinked before hastily assuring her, “No, wait, this isn’t normal...”
Buri grinned and patted Shinko’s hand. “It totally is, ignore Roald.”
“I keep waiting for this ‘normal’ they always speak so fondly of...” Thayet commented, leaning around Shinko.
“Well, that mistletoe was a nice touch,” Shinko told her mother in law, “I thought it was quite lovely, didn’t you?” Beside her, Roald slowly turned a deep shade of red.
“Hmmm?” Buri asked, turning away from the door to face her again. “What was that?”
Roald sat on his hands to keep himself from covering Shinko’s mouth and sent her a beseeching look.
Luckily, the ballroom was summarily distracted in the next moment.
In the hall, Evin was beginning to feel out of breath when Dom took a sharp left. Following with no thought other than to regain Miri’s rings, Evin was surprised to find himself dashing through the middle of the Midwinter Ball.
“Ahah!” Dom cried, “You’ll never catch me in here!”
Evin didn’t respond; he didn’t have enough breath to form words.
When Dom ducked, so did he; they both had a very near miss with the reaching hands of Keladry of Mindelan. Instead, she grabbed Neal and Owen by the scruffs of their necks and shook them.
Seconds later, Evin saw his chance as Dom ran into what looked like a corner of the room. He darted to one side, and Evin threw himself forward, tackling the sergeant to the ground. Halfway through the air, he found that he had drastically miscalculated, and the two men flew right into a table, knocking the punch bowl high into the air.
In slow motion, Evin watched as the drink flew delicately through the air, creating a graceful arc of glistening liquid that would have been pretty had time not continued. There was just enough time to see three things:
1. The punch bowl was aimed straight at his head.
2. The punch was headed straight for Lord Turomot.
3. Dom’s face formed a picture of absolute horror.
With a great slosh, Dom, Evin, and Lord Turomot were all absolutely drenched in punch. A hush fell over the crowd who watched the purple faced Lord Magistrate sputter dramatically.
“He did it,” Evin pointed at Dom. “Its all his fault.” When the Lord Magistrate turned his glare on Dom, Evin began to breathe easier.
Taking advantage of Dom being frozen in horror, Evin retrieved Miri’s rings from the man’s pockets before presenting them with a flourish back to their owner.
Covered in punch was not the way that Evin imagined ending an evening at the Midwinter Ball, but then again, Miri thanked him for recovering her rings with a kiss and he found he didn’t mind…much.
“My hero”, she commented dryly, but Evin chose to ignore her tone of voice and take her words at face value.
A night’s rest hadn’t improved the Lord Magistrates’ temper any, and a very cowed Dom took the verbal lashing that the man was delivering without any protest.
“...And I have heard from a Mr. Larse in great detail how you conceived of this dastardly plot and caused a whole cacophony of ruckus to descend upon the Palace last night. In the face of such an undignified outburst, before the Crown might I add, Domitan of Masbolle, I hereby sentence you to a day of solitary confinement, during which you would be best served thinking of proper and wholesome thoughts. ” Lord Turomot looked as though he had recently tasted a lemon, and the fervor of his gavel striking the block rather looked as though the Magistrate would prefer to bash Dom’s head into the block.
Attempting to look properly contrite, Dom bowed his head and shuffled after the Palace Guards who would lead him to the cell-block. At least in there, he’d be good and safe from whatever the Riders cooked up in retribution for his most recent prank; Miri in particular had looked mighty incensed.
Message: Tee-hee! Happy Ficmas!
From: your still secret snowflake
Title: Five Golden Rings!...or, Wherein Everyone is Running For No Apparent Reason
Rating: PG
Wishlist Item: #1 - Evin!
Summary:It’s Midwinter in Corus and some things go too far. Why are they running, again? Part five of “The Twelve Days of Mischief...or, It Came Upon a Midwinter Weird”.
Five Golden Rings!...or, Wherein Everyone is Running For No Apparent Reason
Walking into her room to find Miri fuming was not the way that Evin had imagined the evening beginning when he had asked to escort her to the Midwinter Ball.
“Miri?” Evin hovered in the doorway, uncertain. “Are you alright?”
Aside from the red spots high on her cheekbones and furious expression, Miri looked wonderful and ready for the Ball; her dress was a wonderful deep red that made her green eyes sparkle, Evin thought, and her hair was pulled back from her face and pinned delicately behind her head. She looked, in a word, beautiful, until one took into account her dangerous expression.
“They’re gone, Evin, all of them,” she nearly growled, “even the one you just got for me for Midwinter, with the little horse etched on it…”
“Your rings?” he asked incredulously, “someone took your rings?”
Miri nodded, then showed him scrap of parchment.
“Miri-
We have your rings. Don’t worry, they’re safe. In order to get them back, you must ask the Lord Magistrate to dance and then do the Chicken Dance during the first waltz of the evening.”
“What is the chicken dance, anyway?” Miri asked, frowning at the paper. Evin looked funnily at Miri.
“You know, like this--” he demonstrated some odd looking motions with his arms, waving them in the air before Miri’s dumbfounded expression paused him. “--What?”
Miri shook her head. “Nothing...just, don’t do that again. We need to get my rings back before we’re forced to do that on the dance floor tonight.”
“What?” Evin protested. “It’s a perfectly fine dance!”
Sighing, Miri grabbed his arm. “Come on, come on, we have members of the Own to find and interrogate.”
The ballroom, when Miri pulled Evin through the door, already had a sea of people milling around the tables within.
“D’you see the Own?” Miri asked, trying to see over the crowds. “Oh, look, there’s Lord Turomot!”
Blanching, Evin ducked behind Miri at the mention of the Lord Magistrate. “Where?”
“He’s not that bad,” Miri twisted to mock-glare at Evin. “Besides, I am supposed to dance with him...its not like you have to.”
“Well, after the last time--- you know, the one with Dom and the duck--”
“You deserved that.” Miri told him firmly, then turned abruptly on her heel. “He’s really quite nice if he hasn’t been recently chased by a flock of hissing ducks.”
It took Evin several moments to recover as Miri marched across the room with a smile for Lord Turomot. When he had scraped his jaw off of the ground as Miri began a waltz on Turomot’s arm. Her acting abilities were really quite impressive, he thought as he looked around the room. Surely, men in bright royal blue couldn’t be that difficult to spot...
Ah.
No matter how much he disliked formal events, Raoul of Goldenlake couldn’t be behind multiple curtains at the same time. Which meant...
Evin stalked towards the hanging nearest him, which was also incidentally nearest the door. Jerking it to one side, he revealed a startled Domitan of Masbolle.
“No, no, no... leave me alone, leave, go, she might find me!” He whispered frantically, waving his hands at Evin.
“She who?” Evin, confused, did not drop the curtain.
“Your friend Padrach’s sister!” hissed Dom, looking around furtively. “She’s absolutely terrifying, let me tell you--”
“Tell you what,” Evin interrupted the wild eyed man, “I’ll leave if you give back Miri’s rings.”
“Her what?” Dom asked distractedly.
“Her rings,” Evin restated. “You know, her five gold rings--you took them.”
“Absolutely not,” Dom fidgeted. “Why would I have her—oops.”
Something fell from his pocket, rolling on the floor to bump against Evin’s foot. It was clearly Miri’s ring, the tiny horse on it facing up as Evin bent to pick it up. “Absolutely not, eh?”
Dom glanced from side to side quickly. “Er….um…”
He took off running down the hall. Evin pocketed the ring before taking off after him. “Wait, get back here!”
As they ran, Evin grew more and more aware that people were joining him in his chase. At first, it didn’t bother him, as his co-runners were his fellow Riders; Natan and Tarrus gave him a wink as they joined up. But then things started to get a little odd.
“Meathead?!” Dom exclaimed, and Evin realized that the person next to him was indeed Nealan of Queenscove. “…you traitor!”
Dom threw a frantic look over his shoulder and did a double take. “Owen, why are you running?”
The curly haired boy only shrugged. “I saw you going for a run and thought it would be jolly so I joined in! Why, aren’t you exercising?”
Breathlessly, Dom only groaned and threw up his hands before continuing in his headlong drive forward.
“What’s the matter?” Owen wondered at Neal, who currently was looking at his friend as though Owen was something he had scraped off the bottom of his boot. “Sir Wyldon always says that exercise will keep you—“
Neal shook his head. “I hate you. So much.”
On his other side, Merric grunted.
“When did you get here?” Neal exclaimed, but Merric just shot him a dark look.
“Someone’s titchy,” Neal remarked about the latest ill-tempered addition to the wave of crazy that was growing increasingly bigger.
Down the hall, Wyldon and his wife Vivienne dashed out of the way of the oncoming runners. It was only Vivienne’s insistence and the impending fate of being trampled by Neal and Owen that kept Wyldon from stepping in front of Dom in an attempt to stop the madness.
The next time Dom looked back, he whimpered; the group of people he was now leading on a merry chase had more than doubled.
“Qasim, not you too!” He cried, seeing that some of his Own had joined up.
“I can’t help it, it sucks you in!” The Bazhir responded.
Beside him, Wolset called, “It was run or be trampled, sir!”
Pounding around a corner outside the ballroom, Evin saw Gareth the Younger step into the hall ahead of them, before being clipped by the racing crowd. He stumbled, and papers went everywhere. Hauling him to his feet, Raoul told Gary, “You’re out of shape and practice; I remember a time when you could have dodged that, easily.”
Gary scowled at the papers by his feet, which were faring much better than the few documents that were being trampled. “Why don’t you stop them?!”
Raoul laughed and clapped him on the back. “Oh no, you don’t pay me enough for that.”
Peering around the corner carefully, Buri saw Evin go by, then turned around decisively. “If I don’t see it, it’s not happening...”
“Don’t worry,” Raoul told her gleefully, “I’m watching enough for both of us.”
“Oh, great.” Buri’s enthusiasm was distinctly lacking as they turned into the ballroom. “Well, we might as well greet Thayet and Jon, prove that we are, in fact, here.”
“Goody,” muttered Raoul darkly. When he and Buri approached the dais, Thayet gave them an odd look, then motioned at the commotion outside the left-hand door. Quick glimpses of what looked like more than a few of the Riders and Own sprinting past had Buri gazing off in the opposite direction, and Raoul pursing his lips in an effort to keep from laughing.
“This is a ploy by the two of you to get out of these banquets, isn’t it?” Thayet asked suspiciously.
Raoul snorted.
“You really do have odd traditions here,” Shinko remarked, trying to discreetly watch the action occurring in the hall.
On her other side, Roald blinked before hastily assuring her, “No, wait, this isn’t normal...”
Buri grinned and patted Shinko’s hand. “It totally is, ignore Roald.”
“I keep waiting for this ‘normal’ they always speak so fondly of...” Thayet commented, leaning around Shinko.
“Well, that mistletoe was a nice touch,” Shinko told her mother in law, “I thought it was quite lovely, didn’t you?” Beside her, Roald slowly turned a deep shade of red.
“Hmmm?” Buri asked, turning away from the door to face her again. “What was that?”
Roald sat on his hands to keep himself from covering Shinko’s mouth and sent her a beseeching look.
Luckily, the ballroom was summarily distracted in the next moment.
In the hall, Evin was beginning to feel out of breath when Dom took a sharp left. Following with no thought other than to regain Miri’s rings, Evin was surprised to find himself dashing through the middle of the Midwinter Ball.
“Ahah!” Dom cried, “You’ll never catch me in here!”
Evin didn’t respond; he didn’t have enough breath to form words.
When Dom ducked, so did he; they both had a very near miss with the reaching hands of Keladry of Mindelan. Instead, she grabbed Neal and Owen by the scruffs of their necks and shook them.
Seconds later, Evin saw his chance as Dom ran into what looked like a corner of the room. He darted to one side, and Evin threw himself forward, tackling the sergeant to the ground. Halfway through the air, he found that he had drastically miscalculated, and the two men flew right into a table, knocking the punch bowl high into the air.
In slow motion, Evin watched as the drink flew delicately through the air, creating a graceful arc of glistening liquid that would have been pretty had time not continued. There was just enough time to see three things:
1. The punch bowl was aimed straight at his head.
2. The punch was headed straight for Lord Turomot.
3. Dom’s face formed a picture of absolute horror.
With a great slosh, Dom, Evin, and Lord Turomot were all absolutely drenched in punch. A hush fell over the crowd who watched the purple faced Lord Magistrate sputter dramatically.
“He did it,” Evin pointed at Dom. “Its all his fault.” When the Lord Magistrate turned his glare on Dom, Evin began to breathe easier.
Taking advantage of Dom being frozen in horror, Evin retrieved Miri’s rings from the man’s pockets before presenting them with a flourish back to their owner.
Covered in punch was not the way that Evin imagined ending an evening at the Midwinter Ball, but then again, Miri thanked him for recovering her rings with a kiss and he found he didn’t mind…much.
“My hero”, she commented dryly, but Evin chose to ignore her tone of voice and take her words at face value.
A night’s rest hadn’t improved the Lord Magistrates’ temper any, and a very cowed Dom took the verbal lashing that the man was delivering without any protest.
“...And I have heard from a Mr. Larse in great detail how you conceived of this dastardly plot and caused a whole cacophony of ruckus to descend upon the Palace last night. In the face of such an undignified outburst, before the Crown might I add, Domitan of Masbolle, I hereby sentence you to a day of solitary confinement, during which you would be best served thinking of proper and wholesome thoughts. ” Lord Turomot looked as though he had recently tasted a lemon, and the fervor of his gavel striking the block rather looked as though the Magistrate would prefer to bash Dom’s head into the block.
Attempting to look properly contrite, Dom bowed his head and shuffled after the Palace Guards who would lead him to the cell-block. At least in there, he’d be good and safe from whatever the Riders cooked up in retribution for his most recent prank; Miri in particular had looked mighty incensed.