Post by agathe on Sept 7, 2012 7:46:25 GMT 10
Title: Curiosity (PG)
Rating: PG
Warnings: mild nudity
Prompt: “Seeing the world.”
Notes: There’s no way that Neal’s mother is at all ordinary. Some Queenscove family fluff.
----
Duke Baird of Queenscove used to dance with Ilane of Seabeth and Seajen, but lovely as she and many of the other young ladies at court were, his heart already belonged to someone else.
The only downside, of course, was that said someone else was in the Yamani Islands. And then Carthak. And then the Copper Isles. And then briefly in Scanra and Galla, and he’s been waiting for four years. They’ve conducted a long and secret courtship by letter, where she’s told him about her research and her adventures. She’s interested in plagues, and trade and slave economies, and the ways that mages in different societies fight diseases, and the way drugs travel and governments aid or interfere. She jokes that she’s not a generalist--she just wants to know everything. He sees the world through her eyes, which find everything endlessly fascinating.
He keeps all the letters locked in his desk. There’s one written from the sacred mountain in Chosôn, where she tells him about temple dances and the paper is smudged with sandstone dust and smells like incense. There’s the one posted from Port Caynn, where she stopped between Rajmuat and Frasrlund, where all her views on slavery rage across the fine rice paper pages and she furiously curses the short-sighted rulers who wouldn’t care about the social determinants of health if you deposited a plague-ridden corpse on their thrones.
From Scanra, she writes about starvation and whistle magics, and in an aside mentions she’s learning how to sing the old epics. The next letter comes with some of her messy sketches: an old woman in a bear cape, the inside of a longhouse, and a group of sinuous figures dancing under a partial moon. Then there’s the letter from Galla that makes his heart stop, where she casually mentions being ill in the wilderness, and then transcribes as much about Scanran healing magic as she can remember. Also, now she has some interesting woad and yew ash tattoos permanently affixed to her back. He almost dropped everything to ride to Cría right then. If she was ill, then he’d be there. (If she was well, then he’d like to take a closer look at those woad tattoos…)
Given these adventures, he’s just surprised that his sister’s stories of her convent years together with Wilina of Haryse weren’t more rambunctious. He would like to travel more, and he’ll have better opportunities as he rises in the ranks of the realm’s healers. For now, he’s still learning, and his responsibilities to his fief keep him tied to home.
When he gets a second letter from Cría, he does ride out to meet her. He stops at Haryse on the way north to speak with the general, who, fortunately, has met Baird before in official capacities other than swain. Emry of Haryse accepts his suit, and then tells him to just sit around for a few days, which means that Baird is grilled by his prospective father-in-law at length, rather than just briefly. Haryse is a rambling manor house, surrounded by golden fields and full of a stunning array of weapons. It is both congenial and extremely intimidating. He barely notices while he waits out the days.
Baird has been turning down eligible noble girls for so many years that by now he’s sure that a highly unconventional, extremely well-educated duchess who happens to be the youngest daughter of one of the Old King’s most famous generals will strike all the gossips as the inevitable, and really unsurprising, choice.
When a dusty woman on a mare rides through the gates of Haryse with a packhorse on a lead rope and an elegant Kyrprish dueling sword slung across her back, Baird meets her in the courtyard, and waits until her feet hit ground before proposing. They walk through doorway together, hand in hand, and even the fierce old general is pleased.
They marry in Corus, and on their wedding night, the Duke of Queenscove lies in bed tracing the duchess’ Scanran tattoos with his fingertips across her pale, perfect back, watching the runes flare silver blue in the moonlight.
He has to marvel at her, as he’s done for years, that a woman with her curiosity and spirit could have sat still for six years in the convent of the Mother of the Mountains. Or that a woman from her background, born into one of the most established and blue blooded noble families in Tortall could even conceive of a life beyond presentation at Court and tranquil domesticity on her husband’s lands, much less make the opportunity into an exhilarating adventure and a thorough education, which makes her one of the most dynamic and original magical healer-scholars in the Eastern Lands. Of course there will be bad days; of course she has faults. (A temper; an inability to be on time to anything, ever, if she’s working; the way she beats herself up when she makes a small mistake.) But he sees the world in her eyes and her back and her mind and heart, and he wants to see it all with her, wherever it takes them.
Rating: PG
Warnings: mild nudity
Prompt: “Seeing the world.”
Notes: There’s no way that Neal’s mother is at all ordinary. Some Queenscove family fluff.
----
Duke Baird of Queenscove used to dance with Ilane of Seabeth and Seajen, but lovely as she and many of the other young ladies at court were, his heart already belonged to someone else.
The only downside, of course, was that said someone else was in the Yamani Islands. And then Carthak. And then the Copper Isles. And then briefly in Scanra and Galla, and he’s been waiting for four years. They’ve conducted a long and secret courtship by letter, where she’s told him about her research and her adventures. She’s interested in plagues, and trade and slave economies, and the ways that mages in different societies fight diseases, and the way drugs travel and governments aid or interfere. She jokes that she’s not a generalist--she just wants to know everything. He sees the world through her eyes, which find everything endlessly fascinating.
He keeps all the letters locked in his desk. There’s one written from the sacred mountain in Chosôn, where she tells him about temple dances and the paper is smudged with sandstone dust and smells like incense. There’s the one posted from Port Caynn, where she stopped between Rajmuat and Frasrlund, where all her views on slavery rage across the fine rice paper pages and she furiously curses the short-sighted rulers who wouldn’t care about the social determinants of health if you deposited a plague-ridden corpse on their thrones.
From Scanra, she writes about starvation and whistle magics, and in an aside mentions she’s learning how to sing the old epics. The next letter comes with some of her messy sketches: an old woman in a bear cape, the inside of a longhouse, and a group of sinuous figures dancing under a partial moon. Then there’s the letter from Galla that makes his heart stop, where she casually mentions being ill in the wilderness, and then transcribes as much about Scanran healing magic as she can remember. Also, now she has some interesting woad and yew ash tattoos permanently affixed to her back. He almost dropped everything to ride to Cría right then. If she was ill, then he’d be there. (If she was well, then he’d like to take a closer look at those woad tattoos…)
Given these adventures, he’s just surprised that his sister’s stories of her convent years together with Wilina of Haryse weren’t more rambunctious. He would like to travel more, and he’ll have better opportunities as he rises in the ranks of the realm’s healers. For now, he’s still learning, and his responsibilities to his fief keep him tied to home.
When he gets a second letter from Cría, he does ride out to meet her. He stops at Haryse on the way north to speak with the general, who, fortunately, has met Baird before in official capacities other than swain. Emry of Haryse accepts his suit, and then tells him to just sit around for a few days, which means that Baird is grilled by his prospective father-in-law at length, rather than just briefly. Haryse is a rambling manor house, surrounded by golden fields and full of a stunning array of weapons. It is both congenial and extremely intimidating. He barely notices while he waits out the days.
Baird has been turning down eligible noble girls for so many years that by now he’s sure that a highly unconventional, extremely well-educated duchess who happens to be the youngest daughter of one of the Old King’s most famous generals will strike all the gossips as the inevitable, and really unsurprising, choice.
When a dusty woman on a mare rides through the gates of Haryse with a packhorse on a lead rope and an elegant Kyrprish dueling sword slung across her back, Baird meets her in the courtyard, and waits until her feet hit ground before proposing. They walk through doorway together, hand in hand, and even the fierce old general is pleased.
They marry in Corus, and on their wedding night, the Duke of Queenscove lies in bed tracing the duchess’ Scanran tattoos with his fingertips across her pale, perfect back, watching the runes flare silver blue in the moonlight.
He has to marvel at her, as he’s done for years, that a woman with her curiosity and spirit could have sat still for six years in the convent of the Mother of the Mountains. Or that a woman from her background, born into one of the most established and blue blooded noble families in Tortall could even conceive of a life beyond presentation at Court and tranquil domesticity on her husband’s lands, much less make the opportunity into an exhilarating adventure and a thorough education, which makes her one of the most dynamic and original magical healer-scholars in the Eastern Lands. Of course there will be bad days; of course she has faults. (A temper; an inability to be on time to anything, ever, if she’s working; the way she beats herself up when she makes a small mistake.) But he sees the world in her eyes and her back and her mind and heart, and he wants to see it all with her, wherever it takes them.
Maybe once we'd have seen it during Smackdown!