tallisstark:
Tallis drew herself up a little, so that she could seem taller in her seat. She stood at only five foot two, though she denied that when asked, adding an extra inch here or there when asked. “That’s ridiculous,” she scowled in his direction. The concept was ridiculous, and as much as she tried to be stern with him, she laughed. Had he not been injured, she would have dug a sharp elbow into his side, but his wound granted him a rare show of grace. “Just because you’re so big that the Knights of the Vale tried to scale you like one of their mountains, it doesn’t mean you can comment on my height.” It was a relief to be able to joke with him once more. When things had gone sour, she had spent weeks in solitude, rarely leaving her room, denying herself the things she loved and sobbing into the dead of night when she thought nobody could hear. Slowly, she had pieced herself back together, the old, carefree Tallis reemerging from inside her.
It had taken every once of dignity to forgive him for a wrong he had never apologised for, and to reach out via letter to bridge the gap between them. Her letters to him had been awkward. She was no wordsmith, and her handwriting was barely legible, but she had still done it. He could have ripped up the letters before ever reading them, but he had shocked her and responded. She was glad, now, that she had made that move. It was almost as though no time had passed at all now. she glowed in his presence, though a little voice in her head called out words of caution, warning her not to let her guard down too much, lest she be broken all over again.
She let her hands slip out from under her, freeing them from where she had sat on top of them to help control herself. She put them on her lap, fingers lacing together neatly. She knew little of politics. It didn’t take her interest, and so she didn’t care. As much as she tried to listen, it all went over her head. “You must do what you think is right, and defend what is yours,” she said, slowly, though from what she understood, she was outraged on his behalf. “Harlon will advise you better than I could.”
He replied to her with a roll of his shoulders and a look towards lord Glover once more, the man was laughing with a few other lords, but their eyes locked from across the room, and the man fell silent in his laughter. Rodrik’s eyebrow rose up, which garnered him a response that held somewhere between bright red indignation and a sort of proud, boastful anger. But Rodrik had already looked away again, the moment passed. “I just hope he listens to my petition. I will not bend the knee to that man.” Then he turned to her and smirked. “But I can tell I am talking you to sleep.”
He was glad that they could sit like this. Like before. Like friends. Things had for the longest time been strained. Practically deadened, between the two of them. He had been at a loss as what to feel. Anger, firstly. She had made him look like a fool at his own wedding. Blamed him for things he had absolutely no control over, that were not of his making. She had offended him, his bride. He had been angry for a while. But the anger had subsided and had been replaced with sadness. He had missed her, in a way that he dared not speak. It had meant he had been ecstatic when she had wrote him and more than eager to forgive and forget. He was about to speak up when a shadow fell over him.
The man that had cast it was Lord Glover. His face was reddened, partly by the drink and partly because of anger. A grimace lay across his face, with knitted eyebrows. His chest heaved with each ale-stained breath. “Were you looking at something, boy?” Rodrik rose from his seat almost immediately. He was nearly two-thirds of a foot taller than lord Glover. And due to his bulk, the man was forced to take a step back. “Go back to your friends, old man.”













