If she wasn’t so concerned with recording the darker shades of Court mechanics and the little details that gave birth to immense consequences, Llewelyn surmised that she would have found fulfillment in becoming an art historian.
The sun had fully risen by then, and golden fingers floated down from the heavenly plane to paint the granite and marble statue of a regal mare. In all honesty, Llewelyn wasn’t sure of the identity of the stone woman, but she struck an admirable figure nonetheless; arched neck, Roman nose, striking eyes that seemed to follow passerby despite the lifelessness of the material itself. Of course, there was a plaque set into the stone pedestal that the mare stood upon, but the words inscribed there had been washed away by time and the elements.
Cocking her head to the side, the horned maiden admired how the sun cast the sculpture in gold, and how the placement of the towering granite likeness was lined up just so with the entrances and archways of the castle’s courtyard. If she narrowed her eyes and stared rather hard, Llewelyn could imagine the artist’s vision — a courtyard devoid of figures, hosting only ground level plant life and stout fountains, but ah! how a proud statue of our Blessed Lady of Something-or-Other would bring this place to life.
She grinned, a small, demure thing, and shivered a bit as a winter breeze rolled over her back. Rather out of character for the courtier, Llewelyn had opted out of wearing her emerald cloak for the time being, deciding that the plush garment was in need of some new furs about the neck and a change of fastenings. Swishing her heavily braided and tressed tail, the lass turned her golden gaze to the earth and sighed at the sad little shrubs clustered there.
The scholar knew it was childish to wish for Spring, but Oriens knew that she had been patient enough.
The moral of the tale is this: whoever allows himself to be whipped, deserves to be whipped.
Truth be told, Sarkan was no fan of civilization.
Oh, he liked people well enough, on their own. But the big stallion did not care at all for crowds, or buildings forced and leaning together like teeth in a too-small mouth. Maybe it was his size, or that the vast majority of his time was spent alone or passing company with a few other travelers, or that he’d never seen a city at all until he was almost four years old.
Whatever the reason (despite his vast amount of time alone, the grey was not given to introspection) it wasn’t the cold that kept his shoulders tight with tension and his steps a little stiff as he traveled the well-worn streets near the castle. It was late winter, when the beauty of fresh snow had long since been degraded to brown slush, but the morning sun washed the buildings and trees in warm gold as though it were spring already.
When Sarkan saw the message board well-decorated with with paper, he ambled over as incuriously as any other citizen. His bright blue eyes scanned the letters, finding nothing new - the same dire warnings about the poacher(s) that stalked the forest, a reminder not to travel within Viride alone, a call for patrols with the meeting time and place written neatly at the bottom. This last was why he came to the city today - to join in the hunt for the villain - but he had several hours yet before it left.
By the time he’d finished glancing over the other messages, a few others horses had congregated around him. Sarkan smiled, nodded, and stepped nimbly away. The crowd in the street was only growing with the day; when he glimpsed the quiet courtyard through a stone archway he took the opportunity to leave the hubbub behind for a bit.
He was no patron of the arts, but the gray stallion could admire the serenity of the place, with its quietly burbling fountains and the buds that were just beginning to form on bare branches. More interesting was the woman ahead of him along the path; as she admired the sculpture that faced (by no accident, he was sure) east into the sun, he admired the gold wound round her legs, her elegantly braided main and tail, and the fine antlers arching back over her shoulders. He wondered whether they were bone or keratin.
Before the time he spent watching her dragged into something improper, Sarkan stepped forward, clearing his throat when her gaze dropped to the ground. For his part, the Percheron kept his on the statue, save for a little summer-blue glance her way.
“What a fierce-looking woman she is. What’s her story?”
In recent times, Llewelyn had been feeling strangely distant from herself, as if she were standing outside of her own body for minutes on end and watching some other— some average — mare attempt to move and talk as she did. The scholar knew the word for such an experience, knew that dissociation was often a symptom of some trauma or other great stressor. Yet, the maiden refused to acknowledge that any part of herself was broken enough for her conscious mind to actively remove itself from her physical form. It was nonsense. Nonsense and ludicrous and more nonsense that she would not be in full control of her facilities at all times; for Oriens’ sake ,she was a Lady of the Court of Dawn, a Scholar Lady of the Court of Dawn, and she would be a disgraced wretch before she would admit to any lack of control.
A small line appeared between her brows as her expression darkened into a dissatisfied almost-glower, though the lass knew that she would look less than threatening to any who glimpsed her face. Having been born and bred for the life of a prim and proper member of the nobility, Llewelyn’s range of expression was more subtle and markedly less dramatic than those of more common stock. Where her face may be set in a joyous grin, to the untrained eye, it would seem that she was offering only a slight smile; such misunderstanding was the weight of a Lady of the court to bear, however.
Willing herself to remain within her own head and within her own body, the horned mare’s frown deepened infinitesimally before the resounding timbre of a stallion’s voice snapped her back into the sunlit courtyard. Blinking surprise from golden eyes, Llewelyn found herself looking up into the azure gaze of a strikingly large stranger. Their eyes met for only a brief moment, however, before the male turned his focus to the towering edifice before them. At his question, Llewelyn pursed her lips in a show of regret as she motioned with her head toward the worn plaque.
”Unfortunately, I don’t know. It looks like time has claimed her for it’s own, though I am sure there must be some recording of her in the library.” Tilting her head in a careful nod of greeting, the jewels in her horns whispering and tinkling with the movement, Llewelyn donned a cordial smile as she appraised the iceberg of a man, “Fair greetings to you, I haven’t seen your face in the palace. I am Llewelyn.”
The moral of the tale is this: whoever allows himself to be whipped, deserves to be whipped.
Had her face not been in shadow, he might have sooner noticed the frown that bowed the woman’s lips; as it was, he only caught a glimpse of it coupled with the warm gold of her eyes. It was just as well; there were plenty of ill tempers in the Dawn Court these days, though this one, at least, was probably not his doing.
Sarkan bent his head toward her, first to catch her words and then to examine the weathered plaque she indicated. Indeed, the markings there were smoother than stream-bottom stones, and even if he’d been better at his letters making them out would be impossible. “I see,” he said, unbothered; of the two mares before him, the statue had held less of his interest, anyway. He glanced up at her mention of the library, and smiled in return when he found her gaze on him.
“Blessed morning, Llewelyn,” he answered, the syllables of her name rolling like green hills in his rough accent. This time, his gaze didn’t leave hers as he nodded his whiskered chin over the soft chime of her ornaments. She was just as regal-looking washed in gold as the marble figure, and less daunting - he chose not to regard her comment about not having seen his face before as a sly threat. Sarkan was not given to paranoia, both by nature and by knowing it made you only more likely to slip up and get caught.
“My name’s Daniel,” he lied easily, “and I’ve never been to the palace before, and the city itself only rarely. To tell you the truth, it’s all a bit overwhelming.” The grey had lowered his voice as he admitted the last, like someone other than the statue might be listening; then he shrugged a shoulder with a laugh. “I suppose I’m just a simple country sort.”
