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agentlelog2019-01-31 01:03 pm
agentlenpc) wrote in agentlelog2019-01-31 01:03 pm
walking in a field of fog
Who: You and Fayura
When: Today, a week after the Strangers' arrivals
Where: The Queen's Residence and the Old Town Bazaar
What: Q&A
Warnings: n/a
When: Today, a week after the Strangers' arrivals
Where: The Queen's Residence and the Old Town Bazaar
What: Q&A
Warnings: n/a
EARLY MORNING, THE QUEEN'S RESIDENCE
The morning is cold and dark. Inhaling the frigid air is so shocking that those who aren't expecting it cough and wheeze with their first breath. No one really wants to make their way to the training field. Even the Queen's court moves sluggishly, but move they do with muttered recriminations against Allairavar. Cold weather doesn't stop training.
A warming spell around the field keeps it warm enough to practice, and bobbling witchlights and steady e-line floodlights keep the darkness at bay. All along one side of the practice area are weapons with blades live and dulled. The court eases onto the field alongside the Strangers with sighs and grumbles aplenty. No one likes practice on chilly mornings, but they like Allairavar's retaliation against tardiness even less.
Everyone has paired off by the time Allairavar strides out of the manor home with his arm around a woman's shoulders. In the harsh e-line lights and softer witchlight, it's clear she hasn't been well and still isn't entirely healed. Sunken golden eyes scan the field, and her expression is vaguely nauseated. She trembles, either from weakness or discomfort, as Allairavar pulls away and calls in two bladed sticks—weapons caught somewhere between sword and ax.
"Let's go," he tells her, and she takes one stick from his hand as court and Strangers alike look on.
Another male follows them in, sleekly predatory in his slow prowl around the practice field. A dangerous look glazes his eyes, and he circles the whole field once before making a second, tighter pass around the marked off area where Allairavar and the woman square off.
Members of the court trade wary looks, sharing them with the Strangers. More than a few murmur things like, "Verim will go for his throat if he pushes her too hard," and, "Should she even be out of bed yet?"
It seems Allairavar's rule for training is absolute. Even the Queen takes part. Under his watchful eye and tutelage, they run through a warm up that clearly exhausts her, but when he asks if they should stop, she snarls at him and pushes on for another five minutes. Only then does she sit off to the side of the field and begin stretching.
As she lifts from a leg stretch, she catches your eye and offers a small, shy smile. "Would you like to stretch with me? Allairavar's workouts are always hardest the first day back," she says softly.
Allairavar's exercises may be hard, but she looks like she's seconds from collapsing from exhaustion. If she spent this last week resting and still looks so wan and thin and weak, her initial injuries must have been severe.
MID-AFTERNOON, THE BAZAAR PAVILION
Snow drifts lazily through frigid air. Though temperatures hover around freezing, the Old Town Bazaar bustles with activity. Slowly, people rebuild homes and shops burned by the Hunter Guild, and for perhaps the first time in the past fifty years, sentiment has turned against the Hunters.
Strangers out and about in the Bazaar hear:
There's some commotion toward the center of the Bazaar, where the Queen has settled at the pavilion with a group of landen and Blood children. Her only guard seems to be the elegant man seated across from her at the pavilion's wooden table, his eyes watchful as the people pass by.
The Queen herself looks unwell. Though she wears a bright smile and her golden eyes glitter with laughter, they are sunken and dark smudges circle them. Her arms are thin, little more than skin wrapped around bone. In spite of the freezing weather, she wears a tunic with wide sleeves that pool around her elbows as she holds up a small plank of wood and tugs at a ribbon embedded in it. Here, in the chilly winter morning, the woman who brought some twenty Strangers across the vast distances of many worlds looks very human, very mortal, and very fragile.
Her eyes meet yours as she looks up, and you feel a gentle brush against your mind. No matter how familiar or strange mental communication is, no matter how disconcerting or easy you find it, the touch strikes you as incredibly polite. *We can talk, if you'd like,* she tells you over a psychic thread.
Should you join her, you find respite from the cold. A warming spell makes the pavilion pleasantly toasty, explaining why no one wears a jacket and, maybe, the Queen's clothes. She's dressed plainly in a loose, knitted tunic and fitted breaches. She wears no coronet and no visible jewelry except for a golden chain that tucks beneath her tunic.
Fayura offers a quick smile in your direction as she guides the end of the ribbon in her hand through the thin strip of wood in a twisting loop. She offers a soft-spoken explanation to the children before inviting them to try—and inviting the Blood to explain the magic to the landens, too.
As the children turn to their task, Fayura turns to you. "I'm glad to see you made it through the Hunters' attack relatively unscathed." She sets her plank down and taps her mug. Steam beings to rise from it and she lifts it to her lips with a sigh. "And I apologize that I wasn't there to greet you." A wry smile tugs at her lips; her appearance is, in her mind, enough of an explanation for why. "How have you found Draega?"
The morning is cold and dark. Inhaling the frigid air is so shocking that those who aren't expecting it cough and wheeze with their first breath. No one really wants to make their way to the training field. Even the Queen's court moves sluggishly, but move they do with muttered recriminations against Allairavar. Cold weather doesn't stop training.
A warming spell around the field keeps it warm enough to practice, and bobbling witchlights and steady e-line floodlights keep the darkness at bay. All along one side of the practice area are weapons with blades live and dulled. The court eases onto the field alongside the Strangers with sighs and grumbles aplenty. No one likes practice on chilly mornings, but they like Allairavar's retaliation against tardiness even less.
Everyone has paired off by the time Allairavar strides out of the manor home with his arm around a woman's shoulders. In the harsh e-line lights and softer witchlight, it's clear she hasn't been well and still isn't entirely healed. Sunken golden eyes scan the field, and her expression is vaguely nauseated. She trembles, either from weakness or discomfort, as Allairavar pulls away and calls in two bladed sticks—weapons caught somewhere between sword and ax.
"Let's go," he tells her, and she takes one stick from his hand as court and Strangers alike look on.
Another male follows them in, sleekly predatory in his slow prowl around the practice field. A dangerous look glazes his eyes, and he circles the whole field once before making a second, tighter pass around the marked off area where Allairavar and the woman square off.
Members of the court trade wary looks, sharing them with the Strangers. More than a few murmur things like, "Verim will go for his throat if he pushes her too hard," and, "Should she even be out of bed yet?"
It seems Allairavar's rule for training is absolute. Even the Queen takes part. Under his watchful eye and tutelage, they run through a warm up that clearly exhausts her, but when he asks if they should stop, she snarls at him and pushes on for another five minutes. Only then does she sit off to the side of the field and begin stretching.
As she lifts from a leg stretch, she catches your eye and offers a small, shy smile. "Would you like to stretch with me? Allairavar's workouts are always hardest the first day back," she says softly.
Allairavar's exercises may be hard, but she looks like she's seconds from collapsing from exhaustion. If she spent this last week resting and still looks so wan and thin and weak, her initial injuries must have been severe.
MID-AFTERNOON, THE BAZAAR PAVILION
Snow drifts lazily through frigid air. Though temperatures hover around freezing, the Old Town Bazaar bustles with activity. Slowly, people rebuild homes and shops burned by the Hunter Guild, and for perhaps the first time in the past fifty years, sentiment has turned against the Hunters.
Strangers out and about in the Bazaar hear:
A landen woman, to her friend: It's not right what the Hunters did, burning down our homes, too.
A well-to-do Blood male, at a food stall: …believe what that pompous Grand Master has to say about a Queen of the Blood.
There's some commotion toward the center of the Bazaar, where the Queen has settled at the pavilion with a group of landen and Blood children. Her only guard seems to be the elegant man seated across from her at the pavilion's wooden table, his eyes watchful as the people pass by.
The Queen herself looks unwell. Though she wears a bright smile and her golden eyes glitter with laughter, they are sunken and dark smudges circle them. Her arms are thin, little more than skin wrapped around bone. In spite of the freezing weather, she wears a tunic with wide sleeves that pool around her elbows as she holds up a small plank of wood and tugs at a ribbon embedded in it. Here, in the chilly winter morning, the woman who brought some twenty Strangers across the vast distances of many worlds looks very human, very mortal, and very fragile.
Her eyes meet yours as she looks up, and you feel a gentle brush against your mind. No matter how familiar or strange mental communication is, no matter how disconcerting or easy you find it, the touch strikes you as incredibly polite. *We can talk, if you'd like,* she tells you over a psychic thread.
Should you join her, you find respite from the cold. A warming spell makes the pavilion pleasantly toasty, explaining why no one wears a jacket and, maybe, the Queen's clothes. She's dressed plainly in a loose, knitted tunic and fitted breaches. She wears no coronet and no visible jewelry except for a golden chain that tucks beneath her tunic.
Fayura offers a quick smile in your direction as she guides the end of the ribbon in her hand through the thin strip of wood in a twisting loop. She offers a soft-spoken explanation to the children before inviting them to try—and inviting the Blood to explain the magic to the landens, too.
As the children turn to their task, Fayura turns to you. "I'm glad to see you made it through the Hunters' attack relatively unscathed." She sets her plank down and taps her mug. Steam beings to rise from it and she lifts it to her lips with a sigh. "And I apologize that I wasn't there to greet you." A wry smile tugs at her lips; her appearance is, in her mind, enough of an explanation for why. "How have you found Draega?"
no subject
"Lisette? No. She wears Purple Dusk. In a... a healthier world, that wouldn't be dark enough to rule a Territory. Don't mistake me: a dark Jewel isn't the only thing that draws a court to a Queen, but it helps. Territory Queens need a certain degree of strength, and if they don't have it inherently, they need strong males who will be their hands." It doesn't occur to her that Mordred might not understand some of the casual jargon that she's using even though she'd just been flummoxed by Mordred's talk of kings. "Here, now, that Jewel is dark enough to rule a Territory, but Lisette..."
Fay smooths her hands down her thighs.
"Lisette lived here when I set up my court. She tried to take my males from me. She drugged one of them and used a Black Widow's tangled web to ensnare another's mind. Because Allairavar realized something was wrong and protected those males before anything could happen, I only exiled her." There's a hardness in Fayura's usually soft eyes. If something had happened, if Lisette had hurt those who belonged to Fay...
The Blood are not kind, and there's a reason Warlord Princes step onto killing fields in lieu of their Queens.
no subject
“Yeah, I get it. I've met a few people like that and...well, like I said, I get it.”
Assassin of Red and her mother come to mind, but she's not going to elaborate on that one. Like with not going into detail about kingdoms and successions, elaborating on the Grail War and her mess of a family tree isn't in her plans anytime soon.
“Sometimes exile's not enough and you've gotta do what you have to do. But if you don't have to...”
She stops, she's not adverse to killing her enemies. She killed plenty in life and in the Grail War, she kind of has to keep at it. It comes with being a knight and then a Heroic Spirit.
“I don't know. Maybe if there'd be more things like this,” she looks at the pavilion, the kids trying the ribbon, it's all so peaceful despite what just happened. She doesn't know if it'll last or not, but she doesn't hate it. Even if peace and quiet does make her a little antsy sometimes, it's not the worst thing in the world.
“Less need for exile or execution, more stuff like this, might not fix everything, but it could help. Course if people try to screw with it or start crap like those guys did, I can knock some sense into them.”
And any attempt at making a real point is derailed by her needing to attempt at being a badass anytime it might seem like she's not all fight happy delinquent all the time.
no subject
Sometimes it's nice to hear someone confirm her decisions.
"That's my hope," she says. "That we needn't execute or exile people, but that we can build something new and grand out of the rubble we've been given." She smiles. She saw Mordred's point under the bold, brash words, and she likes what she hears. "Someone to defend the good things in the world is exactly what we need. I'm glad you answered my call, Mordred."
no subject
She doesn't really do the whole defender of good and all that, looking a little uncomfortable with the whole thing. She's not going to screw up and she's not going to start a rebellion or anything, but it's still weird for her to hear praise like that. So she tries to downplay it and deflect.
But that only goes on for so long before she goes to the well of trying to act all cool again. Which she just did a moment ago, but it's her tried and true method of dealing with things she doesn't really know how to deal with. Tried in that she tries it a lot and true in that she thinks it's works. Whether other people think it works isn't something she puts much thought into.
“Course that doesn't mean you can't count on me. I've crossed swords with the King of Knights, I can handle anything they want to throw at me.”
Of course she also...died, so maybe she shouldn't brag about that, but she can't take it back now.
no subject
"I look forward to seeing what you can do, Mordred," she says easily, with no judgement for good or ill in her voice. "Since you've answered my questions, is there anything I can do for you?" She tops off her coffee as she asks the question, using Craft to lift and pour the pot. When she picks up the cup, her hand trembles the slightest bit.
She's well enough to be up and about, but she's clearly not entirely healed.
no subject
“Nah.”
Still, she's not going to make a big deal of it though, instead choosing to not draw attention to it.
“I haven't really done anything yet that I think merits asking something from the Queen. And any questions I've had, I can ask somebody else. I feel like I'd be wasting your time with those.”
no subject
Behind her, the children have largely figured out how to get their ribbons through the planks of wood, and most of the landens have had this explained to them to their satisfaction. A few of the Blood children have taken to pressing their hands against the planks with fierce looks of concentration.
"Mother Night," Verim mutters before rolling to his feet to stop any courageous young idiots from putting flesh through wood before they know how to get the flesh back out of the wood.
Fay smiles. "Precocious creatures, Draega's children. They give us hope."
no subject
She thinks about that watching Verim run over there. She didn't have much of a childhood and what little she had was prepping her for the role she'd take on one day. In that respect, she isn't too different from her father.
And thinking about that, she'll say a little more, it's a little guarded and unsteady because she's not quite sure how to say it, but she'll give it a shot. It's not a question and she's not trying to interrupt the lesson for the children, but she feels like she needs to say it or it's going to kick around in her head all day.
“You're different from other royalty I've met. Kings, queens, I can't really see any of them out here doing this.”
Her frame of experience is tiny, but it's just something she needs to say.
“It's not a bad idea thing, just not what I'm used to seeing."
no subject
As she works, carefully applying Craft to the wood to soften it as he fights the hold and risks damage, she cants her head to one side.
"I'm not sure what royalty is," she says. The word doesn't actually translate between them, so she uses the same word that Mordred does, putting a heavy accent on it. "Or kings. But, yes, I'm different even from other Queens among the Blood." The little boy makes a shrill sound, and Fay pauses, lifting her eyes to him. "Warlord," she says quietly, "your Queen is asking you to endure just a little longer so that she may help you."
It's not what someone might say to comfort a crying child, but the boy reacts immediately. He stops trying to pull his hand free and nods. "Yes, Lady."
Fayura goes back to work. "Draega needs someone that will care for it and help it, not someone who will rule it with an iron fist. Sometimes that care is cruel. You need to lance wounds or rebreak and old injury to make sure it sets properly. But, sometimes..." Fayura lifts the plank of wood away from a raw, red finger. "Most times, you just need a bit of compassion." She touches the little boy's cheek. "You did well, Warlord. Lady Jesiree is on her way to tend your injury."
He looks proud but also relieved and, after hesitating for a second, he sinks against Fay. She strokes his hair as he cries against her shoulder, smiling faintly at Mordred. "Hopefully, what makes me different and what makes you different will be what's needed to save Draega."
no subject
She just sighs at that one. It's going to be weird getting used to the fact that her only frame of reference for things doesn't really work here. Makes her feel more out of place than normal, which is going to get pretty annoying. But yes, things are different, she gets that, and Fayura's words to the child only prove that further.
Also a source of irritation for her is that she doesn't entirely know how to react to a kid being comforted. The whole having Morgan le Fay for a mother thing means that even if her childhood weren't weirdly short, she still missed out on having someone who was there for her and not planning on turning their kid into a weapon to be used against Camelot.
And since she really doesn't want to think about things like that, she'll handle it the way she usually handles not wanting to dwell on crap like that.
“Well then, if you're hoping I can help, I'll head back then. It's a little late in the day, but I can probably find someone to spar with.”
Some part of her feels like she should say thanks for the conversation, but that seems weird to her, so she'll just get up and wait a moment in case Fayura wants to say anything else. If not, she'll head out on her own.