There was something almost strangely comforting about this meeting. It felt, to Charlemagne, at once familiar and yet warmer than any he’d actually had in his youth. It had all the trappings of his many times greeting a visiting lord or dignitary to his father’s home, but gone were the pressures of that role and the world it belonged to. It felt, in short, like a wish of home, more than the fact of it. It helped that the stranger himself was so dignified, his accent clipped but words casually polite. He spoke like he looked, which was to say, commanding but not intimidatingly so. Charlemagne is put in mind of a gentleman scholar, or a learned knight, the kind that only existed in stories from his childhood library, and not in the reality of his life. Until now, evidently. And so it is easy enough to meet that smile, to nod at the response and allow green eyes to meet green. “I am glad to hear it, Somnus. Well met - I am Charlemagne.” Without consciously intending to, he echoes the golden stallion’s posture, and imagines that they made a courtly pairing, standing there on the cobblestones in the full sunlight, despite the other’s height over him. And then the palomino asks him a question that punctures his little game of pretend. At first the unicorn only blinks, and to his shame the thought that creeps through his mind, then, is that he should say yes. Why not, if he was pretending that he was some graceful diplomat, anyhow? If he could be anyone to this stranger, why not the king? But that is a laughable thing, surely - a three-year-old sovereign who had only just escaped being mocked by his contemporaries. It is with effort that Charlemagne holds his posture, though the laugh that escapes him is a breezy, surprised thing, though mercifully brief. He shakes his head, and when he meets the golden stallion’s gaze once more, his smile is rueful. “I’m afraid I am not. I’m only a scholar here, recently arrived myself.” Still wearing that smile, he again takes in the courtyard around them, empty but for birds and trees and simple sunlight. What must Somnus think, to arrive at mighty Delumine and find it so still? “I’m not sure where our sovereign, Kasil, currently is.” He does not add that the king seems to prefer to keep to himself - or at least, Charlemagne has not often seen him out. “Is there something pressing that brings you?” The unicorn hopes not; he feels ill-equipped to help with anything this courtly man could not handle himself. @Somnus |
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