Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to Kuwa- ...thingy!

This site is purely here for our own enjoyment, which means it's not open to the public. Well, I guess you can read our ramblings if you want... Beware, though. They are known to cause severe mental damage when we've been nightsick.

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
Vale of the White Horse
Topic Started: 5 Jan 2010, 13:03 (19,267 Views)
Sonja
Red & dangerous! Rawr!
Without thinking about what he was doing, he'd locked her in an embrace and pushed his lips against hers. She may not be able to or didn't want to leave with him, but he couldn't care at the moment. Morcant wanted to tell her not to do it, but he had even less influence over her decisions than her father had. And knowing that ate at him, because he saw no way to change this situation for the better.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Marieke
Lief! <3 (and powerful!)
His move pushed her backwards, down. It was a hard kiss he was giving her. Desperate, she imagined. She couldn’t move – wasn’t sure she wanted to, but he had conveniently taken away that choice. What this journey would bring her, both of them, she was unable to tell. If this was a story and she was the teller, how would it end?
Essylt had her hands on his shoulders, but his body was touching nearly all of hers anyway. This same bed that Rufus had nearly managed to get his way with her…Would Morcant do the same? She closed her eyes, trying to push away all the questions, all the hard thinking. They only confused her and wore her out. Enough of that.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Sonja
Red & dangerous! Rawr!
His hands were halfway down her thighs when he got himself under control again - or at least partially. Enough to stop kissing her. Was he taking advantage of her? She wasn't protesting, so he could probably do what he wanted to do ever since he'd laid his eyes on her. But wouldn't that make him like Rufus? Essylt had never told him whether she wanted him or not. Gods, he'd never thought as much as he'd done the last months and it started to hurt his head. 'I - I should go. Before things happen.'
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Marieke
Lief! <3 (and powerful!)
Essylt didn’t know what to say to that. Things would happen, and maybe they’d free her of this awful plight towards her father.
Silently she looked up into his face, which was hovering close to her own. ‘I wish we could do this. I really do.'
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Sonja
Red & dangerous! Rawr!
Almost he kissed her again. Almost. Essylt had basically told him that she wanted him, too, but that they couldn't. Morcant pulled himself off of her and rubbed his temples. He wanted to borrow a leaf out of Rhywallon's book and tear that damn Roman to shreds. It was impossible, he told himself over and again. Stop with the childish fantasies. He had to focus on his task as one of the brotherhood, and once he'd made certain that Essylt was settled in, that was exactly what he'd do. Till the day he died. 'I'm sorry about that.'
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Marieke
Lief! <3 (and powerful!)
‘I hope not,’ she said. ‘I hope you’ll never be sorry that you’ve met me, Morcant.’
Because she would never be. He was going to be the beacon of her thoughts throughout long years of unhappy marriage. If she was to endure that, if she was to survive at all, she’d need him as a clear memory, strong and true.
As she pulled herself from her lying position, her arms found their own way around his shoulders. There was a small dell between his neck and his chest where she could rest her head, and she did. ‘Don’t ever,’ she whispered, ‘forget me.’
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Sonja
Red & dangerous! Rawr!
He patted her on the back, a little awkwardly. It was all he dared do. 'I couldn't, even if I wanted to. Not even if the Earthwoman on the hill would turn me into a stone for her cave.'
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Marieke
Lief! <3 (and powerful!)
‘Yes, stones have long memories,’ she said, before pulling away.
He looked forlorn here. This wasn’t the place where he should be. She wasn’t even sure that it was her own place to be, though this bedroom had been hers for her entire life.
‘I think it’s best if you go now. You need sleep. I do, too. It’s been a very harsh journey.’
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Sonja
Red & dangerous! Rawr!
'I already slept,' he said, wanting to hold her in her sleep for one last time. But he couldn't possibly. If anyone found out - he couldn't fix such a thing with his fists alone. 'But you're right. Tomorrow another day.'
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Marieke
Lief! <3 (and powerful!)
‘Good night, Morcant,’ she muttered, tearing her eyes away from his figure.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Sonja
Red & dangerous! Rawr!
'Sleep well, Essylt.' He nodded and walked out of her room. There were no servants in the hallway, but he wasn't going to take chances and quickly, silently, walked to his own. Once there, he threw himself down on his bed. Her scent was still in his nostrils, and his body made it quite clear that it resented his self-control. Morcant clenched his fists. It'd just have to deal with it. He wasn't about to help himself, not tonight. He screwed his eyes shut and hoped for a dreamless sleep.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Marieke
Lief! <3 (and powerful!)
When she woke up the following morning, it was to see that the sun had already made quite an arch in the sky.
She had slept in very late, but her head felt much clearer.
After she got up and went to the dining hall, she shared breakfast with her father. He had waited for her, and treated her to a kiss and a smile.
There was no sign of Morcant, but Essylt didn’t think that he ever could sleep as she had, even though he was worn out and bone weary. She remembered the time where she had made him lie with her for a day and a night.
‘I’ve thought about the proposal,’ she eventually said. It was still hard to speak about this, but after last night she had understood exactly what she would be giving up. Somehow, that made it not more difficult but easier. ‘I’ll do it, father.’
He was silent for a moment, finishing his drink. ‘I’m glad,’ he told her then. ‘And very proud, Essylt.’
And he should be. Of course he couldn’t understand what her life was like now. She barely felt that he knew this new Essylt, who was still his daughter, yet nothing like the girl that had been kidnapped by a gang of freedom fighters.
‘I want to see Carwyn now,’ she said, standing up from her chair. ‘You’ll bring me to him, won’t you? I’ve terribly missed him.’
Something shifted in her father’s face. It reminded her of those terrible real nightmares, where the hounds of Arawn had chased after her like moving shadows. ‘If you want this, daughter.’
‘Of course I want this.’ A spell of cold shivers ran over her body, but she quickly dismissed it.
Now her father stood up as well, but his face was still passive. ‘Follow me up, then.’
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Sonja
Red & dangerous! Rawr!
What little sleep he had gotten, had been plagued by nightly demons. Cursing God and Good Folk for it alike, Morcant got up at the break of dawn. After a hasty and sparse breakfast in the kitchen, he'd gone outside for some training. His stiff muscles practically screamed for it. The morning air was chill, and he could smell snow again, but he ignored these things and stripped himself to his smallclothes. He wouldn't like soiling them, since they didn't belong to him. His own clothes were being washed for him; something he resented, because he didn't usually let anyone doing things for him. Pushing his thoughts to the back of his mind, he started his training.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Marieke
Lief! <3 (and powerful!)
She followed in his wake, as he led her from the hall to the stairs that led to her family’s quartes. Only after they had passed the door to the nursery room and that of her father’s own chambers, where she had helped to deliver her baby brother, Essylt began to admit to her feelings of wrongness.
‘What’s this you’re going?’ she asked.
Her father pointed ahead. Essylt inhaled and suddenly recognized the sharp scent of burnt things, like they were walking into a large, dead oven full of coal.
‘Father, where are you going?’ she asked again. Her voice rose to a much shriller tone. ‘We’re far past the nursery, so why –’
She forgot to speak further, because then she saw the ravage around her. It wasn’t only as if they had been walking to an oven, they were right in one! The walls were scorched dark as the night, and in many places the bricks had simply fallen away, so that she could see the sky outside. The fire, she thought, with such a heavy nausea that she had to seek support from the wall. It happened. The man with the burned face was here.
And even though she wanted to cry out, there was no time – because her father halted by a door that looked dirty from smoke and ashes. It was closed.
‘He’s in here.’
She didn’t understand. It all matched so well with her dreams, but she had always supposed that something terrible would have happened to her father if her brother would be allowed such a terrible treatment.
‘Why…is he here?’ she asked weakly, pushing herself away from the wall. ‘What has happened?’
Her father pushed the door open, but didn’t step inside the dark room behind it. ‘It’s a wicked child,’ he muttered. ‘From his damned birth on, brought disaster upon disaster to our home.’
She couldn’t believe it. Was this yet another dream? No – all was real and she was wide awake. ‘Wicked?’ Essylt repeated. The word felt like a curse to her tongue.
‘Yes, a changeling. It wouldn’t bring you good to go in here and watch him, Essylt. He’s had wetnurses. The first were scared away.’
‘…Scared away by what?’ she whispered.
Her father clenched his face into an ugly frown. He had never looked more loveless. ‘Owls come to his windowsill and stare at him. Many of them. During daytime. His skin grows so cold that he feels dead, but he cries like a banshee.’
It was enough. Essylt swallowed the nausea back. How could this man, her father, talk with so much contempt about the son he had been praying for so long!
‘Well, what is wrong with owls?’ she demanded, and pushed past him into the room.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Sonja
Red & dangerous! Rawr!
After training, Morcant decided to investigate the area, see if anything had changed. At first, everything seemed just fine. He couldn't see any Romans, in any case. But when he got around to the back of the caer, he sucked in his breath. This part of the walls looked as ravaged as a thousand-year old ruin; blackened by what must've been a terrible fire. How had they mastered it before it had eaten all of Two Lakes? He slowly walked towards the first of the charcoaled stones, touching his fingers to it. It left dark smears on his skin and he shuddered. Essylt's dream had already come true. But then, how was her baby brother doing?
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Marieke
Lief! <3 (and powerful!)
Inside the room stood a lonely cradle. She couldn’t even rush to it; her body was filled to the brim with shock and disgust.
Wrapped in a dirty linen cloth was Carwyn. His cheeks had fallen to dark holes. His once so lovely eyelashes brushed nothing but a pallid skin. Was he even breathing?
Essylt breathed in and out through her mouth, her throat swollen with tears. She lifted the small bundle from his bed. Oh, Epona, yes – at least his chest rose steadily up and down. He felt cold, but not unusual for a boy who had been exposed to the chill of an unlit room.
She turned around. ‘Have you lost your mind completely?’
‘Essylt!’ Her father had still not stepped inside. He was hovering in the doorway. ‘You’ve not been here, daughter. Put that child down, let the nurses take care of him.’
‘I will not,’ she whispered. ‘Why did you put him so far away?’
‘So that the cursed Folk that brought him here, will take him back.’ He didn’t even look like he was ashamed of himself.

There was no wicked Good Folk who had put this little boy in their household. Essylt couldn’t fight the tears anymore; they rolled down her cheek into the wrapper of the child.
‘This isn’t a changeling,’ she said hoarsely. ‘He’s exactly the same boy as I took from mother, while she way dying. It’s my own brother Carwyn. This is your son.’
When he did not respond, she thought her knees would buckle. But not today. This was a time of strength and if she carried even a shred of Udd Wyll’s blood in her, she would best this hideous situation with her head held high.
‘I don’t know what happened to you, father,’ she told him. ‘This is the most sickening thing I’ve seen since a long time!’
Perhaps the brotherhood had been right, and was his obedience to the Romans no longer the wisest act to protect his people – perhaps he was as weak-hearted and cowardly as they had suggested.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked as she strode past him. He grabbed her arm. ‘Essylt! You are my daughter – you are to obey me!’
‘I’m taking him away from here,’ she answered, waiting a moment while his fingers dug in her flesh. ‘I’m your daughter, yes. But this is my brother, and he needs me more than I need you.’
His grip only tightened. ‘You will leave the child here!’
No, she thought. I will not.
One arm loosened from Carwyn’s still form against her chest. She put her fingers around her father’s fist. ‘Forgive me. This is as far as I will obey you.’
Tendrils of ice streamed over his sleeve. It couldn’t hurt him much, but the shock made him stumble back.
Essylt hurried away.

Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Sonja
Red & dangerous! Rawr!
Morcant couldn't wrap his head around the destruction. Who'd done this? Romans? It certainly wasn't the brotherhood - despite Gwyddien and Elgued's background, most of them weren't warriors. And even warriors wouldn't inflict such mindless destruction. Certainly not a fire that threatened their own people, turncoats though they were. He shook his head and turned back, not feeling at all at ease in the thick atmosphere. And he was getting cold, if he didn't want to fall ill he had to go inside and get something warm inside of him.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Marieke
Lief! <3 (and powerful!)
He had woken up from her stumbleling descent back into the undestroyed part of the caer.
‘Hush,’ Essylt sang into his ear, but he kept on crying. But it didn’t matter – at least he was still strong enough to have it known that things displeased him.
‘You’re right, love,’ she told him, kissing him on the head. ‘Things have been too harsh for you.’
Where to go now? She couldn’t just run out of her home and make it all the way back to the settlement of Caer March. Right now, there were other things. Carwyn desperately needed to be cleaned, dressed in warmer stuff, maybe even fed!
And Morcant. She needed him. Both of them did.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Sonja
Red & dangerous! Rawr!
When he was on his way to the main hall, he heard the quick patter of feet on the floorstones. Footsteps he thought he recognized. And then he saw Essylt, with a bewildered, panicky look on her face and a crying baby covered in a grimy piece of cloth huddled to her chest.
'Essylt? What..?'
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Marieke
Lief! <3 (and powerful!)
She nearly ran into him, and could just cover Carwyn. ‘Sh!’ she hissed then, when she had recognized Morcant. ‘I’m going to my room and I don’t want my father in!’
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Sonja
Red & dangerous! Rawr!
He raised his eyebrows high, wondering what the hell had happened. 'Okay. I'll stand guard, then?' he suggested, at a loss at what else to say.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Marieke
Lief! <3 (and powerful!)
‘I don’t…. If you…’
Nevermind. She had other things to worry about than what people would think if this guest prohibited her own father entrance. She walked on to her own chamber and slipped in, leaving it up for Morcant to decide whether he wanted to come in.
Her heart had been hammering all the while. Now she needed to calm down.
With another lullaby on her lips, she put Carwyn down on her bed, where she freed him from the rag. Who had wound him in these stinking cloths? Father? The nursemaids?
Since she didn’t want to draw attention to her own maid, she hung the kettle above the hearth fire, then filling the bath tube with lukewarm water.
‘The moon is high, my little child,
sleep sweetly now, outside the wild
deers chase the fireflies,
aroo, this is my lullaby…’

Carwyn cooed when she put him in the bath. Essylt smiled through her tears.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Sonja
Red & dangerous! Rawr!
The door closed behind Essylt and her little brother, and he poised himself in front of it with his arms crossed and a glowering look on his face. After a while, the crying stopped and he heard a soft lullaby drifting out. Morcant tried to imagine what could have happened, but he was completely taken by surprise. One of the servants walked up to him then, his eyebrows knitted together, and demanded to know why he stood here.
'The lady wants some private time. Women's stuff, I'm told. Scoot.' He made his tone as offensive as he could, and the man quickly scurried off with an indignant mutter.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Marieke
Lief! <3 (and powerful!)
Oh, how dirty he was! There were still traces of ash all over his face. The bath water turned a greasy grey.
Essylt wrapped him in a soft linen shawl, then she put an extra wrapper around him.
Now, her next challenge was far more testing. Essylt looked down her own breasts. Carwyn would probably eagerly try to get his food from there if she laid him to her body. But she had nothing to give him. And he was still so young. If she really went through with her resolve, how was she going to feed him during the long days of travel?
Essylt slipped to the door, opening it a bit. Morcant there like a statue. ‘Could you find me some cow’s or goat’s milk?’ she whispered. ‘And maybe some honey?’
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Sonja
Red & dangerous! Rawr!
'I'll see what I can do,' he promised and looked around. There was no one to be seen, but he didn't really want to leave. Essylt had such a fierce look on her face however, that he didn't doubt she could keep any unwanted guests from her room herself. 'Be right back.' And he ran off, to the kitchen. When he got there, he didn't even wait until anyone noticed him. Instead, he roared for a jug of the freshest milk and honey. The servants nearly jumped out of their skin, and one of them, a girl hardly older than Essylt, quickly scurried to the larder. No one dared to stop her as she quickly pressed the milk in his arms.
'And honey,' he demanded.
The girl opened her mouth. 'I don't think -'
'Get me honey, girl, or do I have to trash this whole place?' he shouted. It had the desired effect; a small jar of the sweet stuff pressed into his free hand.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Marieke
Lief! <3 (and powerful!)
As she waited for Morcant’s return, she took Carwyn back in her arms, cradling him.
All was silent outside her room. What was her father doing now? Maybe he was still in the burned part of the caer, where the wind whipped at his clothes. Maybe he wouldn’t get over the shock of having two bewitched children.
But would he be shocked enough to let her go? Essylt wasn’t so sure and it worried her.
Well, she simply had to find a way to make this work, for better of worse. The thought of disobeying her father, or even doing something that was not in his favor, scared her – but not so much as she had expected.
‘I’m here for you now,’ she told her little brother. ‘Don’t worry about a thing.’
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Sonja
Red & dangerous! Rawr!
Morcant hurried back as fast as he could without spilling the milk. When he got to Essylt's room, he knocked softly on the door. 'It's me,' he said through the wood.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Marieke
Lief! <3 (and powerful!)
Essylt opened the door with Carwyn on one arm. ‘You should come in too,’ she muttered. ‘I’ll simply bolt the door, so father can’t come in even if he went after me. But I doubt he will.’
She heard the darkness in her own voice and quickly moved back to her bed.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Sonja
Red & dangerous! Rawr!
'Right.' He put the two jars on Essylt's bedstand and looked around at her. 'So... What exactly happened?'
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Marieke
Lief! <3 (and powerful!)
For a while, she stared down into the warming milk, mixing honey through it. Then, with a folded cloth, she dipped brought it little by little to Cawyn’s mouth. He opened his lips to suck on it, expecting a woman’s breast.
He’s still so young, she though again. Perhaps even too young to feed him anything else. But he would have to grow up quickly. There was no choice.
‘My father treated Carwyn….really badly,’ she said thickly. ‘I changed my mind about staying.’
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
ZetaBoards - Free Forum Hosting
ZetaBoards gives you all the tools to create a successful discussion community.
Learn More · Register Now
Go to Next Page
« Previous Topic · Vale of the White Horse · Next Topic »
Add Reply


Theme created by vcd of the ZetaBoards Theme ZoneStyle District