either ratmance in thronemorphs or someone loling about the rachel being saddled with him as a fiance and by someone i think we both know i mean marco
She looked up at her fiancé. His hand was extended, and what was probably supposed to be a pleasant smile on his face, but his eyes lingered just a little lower than they should have and it was all she could do to keep from snarling at him.
Aware of the eyes on her, she very deliberately set down her knife and fork, and rose slowly. Ignoring his outstretched hand, she swept past him to take a place on the dance floor. Finally, of course, she had to take his hand, and felt her skin crawl at the contact.
They weaved slowly between the other couples, treading viciously on each other's toes. Whenever he tried to change direction, she jerked him another way, leading their path across the dance floor.
She glared fiercely over his shoulder, wishing she could simply slip into the mind of her eagle, soaring free and alone somewhere above them. But that would leave her body unattended, and Rachel Berenson did not swoon. She certainly wouldn't give him the satisfaction.
His hand, which had been firmly grasping her waist, slid around and down, and she snatched it away, digging fingernails like claws into the soft skin of his wrist.
"Let me make one thing very clear," she said softly, her tone sweet, and low enough that the other dancers would be unable to hear her words over the music. "We are betrothed. Soon, we may be married. But if you ever—ever—stick your balls up where I have not explicitly told you they can be, you will soon find them very far away from you. Do you understand?"
His returning smile was tight with pain. She thought her fingernails might be drawing blood, but didn't glance down to check.
(( I haven't done any Thronemorphs in a while so here, Kendra, have some Westerosi Ratmance. Feel better soon! ))
"My mind doesn't change easily, my Lord." The honorific grated against her tongue on the way out. "It might serve you better to return to the Westerlands. I wouldn't want to waste your time."
"I don't consider any time spent with you to be wasted, dear lady."
Gods, the ones that thought they were romantic were the worst. "I wouldn't hold out hope for a marriage here, my Lord."
"I'll take that as a challenge."
They strolled arm-in-arm down the path, every muscle in Rachel's body tense. But she knew her mother was watching from the walls, and there would be hell to pay if she, say, punched that little self-satisfied smirk right off his face. Instead, she hooked one foot about his ankle, and he did a beautiful faceplant into the dirt.
"Oh my!" she exclaimed, a look of exaggerated shock on her face. "Are you all right, my Lord?" She clasped his hand and pulled him back to his feet in a single heave, leaving him off-balance and spitting out soil.
"Yes," he growled, wiping the dirt out of his eyes. His expression was somewhere between fury and admiration. "I believe my foot simply caught on a root."
"Yes, it must have," Rachel agreed with wide eyes, hamming up the innocence. "These paths are very treacherous sometimes. I'll have a word with the gardener."
He offered his arm again, and she took it without hesitation, this time gripping it so tightly that her nails bit into his flesh.
She smiled at him brightly. "Shall we go on?"
He smiled back at her, a hint of strain about his mouth. "Yes. Let's."
(( I did work on Thronemorphs a little bit last week before Westermorphs lured me away. I drew a map and everything. ))
CLANG!
Our blades met in a shower of sparks.
"Predictable," he said dismissively. Quick as a snake, he circled his point under my sword and lunged. I blocked his thrust, my fingers tingling from the impact.
"Clumsy," I returned. We spent a few moments circling each other slowly, watching carefully for any openings, or shifts that would give away an action. I feinted left, switching directions at the last second to aim for his right shoulder. He sidestepped.
"Too slow," he sneered, flicking his point under my hilt. My sword clattered to the ground, and the cold tip of his blade touched my throat. His dark eyes glinted dangerously. "Do you yield?"
Marco lowered his blade, a smirk dancing across his face.
"That's four for me, one for you," he reported as I retrieved my practice sword from where it had fallen. "Best five out of nine?"
I sighed, rubbing my aching wrist. "Sun's starting to set. We'd best get back to Boarhall."
We left the swiftly darkening godswood, berating each other about technique and form. As we emerged onto the dusky path, another figure materialized out of the gloom.
"Hi," Tobias said. "Are you going back to Boarhall?"
Tobias was a scrawny street kid when I met him. I'd scared off a couple of bigger boys who were shaking him down, trying to work out if he had anything worth stealing. Then I got him a job in Boarhall's kitchens, where he mostly just fetched things and washed dishes, but I guess it was better than what he'd had. He'd sort of taken to acting like my own personal servant, which was sweet in a weird kind of way. I sort of felt guilty sometimes, like I was using the kid.
"Yeah. We were just out dueling."
"So, I guess I'll walk home with you guys."
I said sure. Marco didn't say anything. I don't think Marco liked Tobias much, maybe because he was a kitchen boy or maybe just because he'd sort of latched onto me -- and by extension, Marco -- like a motherless puppy.
Not much farther down the path lay the nameless little town that squatted about a mile outside Boarhall's outer walls. Most of the merchants at the tiny market had packed up and gone home for the night, but a few carts of wares remained. The square was softly lit by the oil lamps that swung from the carts and over some doorways. I spotted a pair of girls standing by a cloth merchant's cart and changed course to meet them.
Rachel was bent over the cart, eying the rolls of fabric critically. Cassie stood back a little, a small basket over her arm, looking faintly embarrassed. Then she caught sight of me and there was no "faintly" about it. She bobbed a swift curtsy, her dark cheeks flushing in the soft light. I inclined my head, hiding my own flush in etiquette.
"Are you going home?" I asked them both. "You shouldn't go through the ruins at night by yourselves. I mean, being girls and all."
Rachel snorted, turning away from the cloth merchant's cart. "Are you going to come and protect us, o brave knight? You think we're helpless just because—"
Cassie put a hand on her arm. "I'd appreciate it if they did walk with us. I know you're not scared of anything, Rachel, but I guess I am."
Rachel and Cassie have a weird friendship. Even though Rachel is highborn and Cassie is the maester's bastard daughter, you'd never think it to look at the way they act with each other.
So, there we were. The five of us—Marco, Tobias, Rachel, Cassie, and me.
Sometimes I think about that one, last moment when we were still just normal kids. It's like it was a million years ago, like it was some totally different group of kids. You know what I was afraid of right then? I was afraid of admitting to Tom that I'd failed my sword test with Ser Hedrick. That was as scary as life got back then.
"Your 'R' is backwards," she told me, pointing out the letter in question. I frowned at the scrap of parchment.
"It is?"
"Yes -- here." Taking the charcoal and parchment, she rubbed out the mistake and replaced it with a neat, simple letter 'R' of her own. "Sorry, I'm not being a very good teacher. Cassie's better at this than I am."
"Where is Cassie?" I wondered. Rachel shrugged.
"Helping her parents, I think. Grandpa G's sick again."
"I'll see if I can find her." Closing my eyes, I reached out with my mind and slipped into the hawk's. He had been about to swoop down on a hunt out in the woods, and I had to resist the urge to finish it for him. I was sorry to pull him away from a meal, but there would be other mice to chase.
I spent longer than I had to, strictly speaking, to fly back to the castle, losing myself in the hawk's absolute freedom as we soared high above the world. After a while I spotted Cassie, toting an empty bucket across a courtyard. I swooped down to perch on a nearby ledge in the stonework, and she smiled knowingly. "Hello, Tobias."
Unable to reply, I flew down to the ground, landing near a smooth patch of dirt. The hawk protested, vulnerable and at a disadvantage without altitude, but I pushed it aside for the moment and concentrated, scratching out shaky letters in the dirt with my talons. HELLO.
She laughed delightedly. "Oh, well done!"
I bobbed my head in a sort of mock bow.
"You'd better go now," she told me. "You don't want to leave your body lying around too long."
I took flight with some difficulty; hawk wings just aren't made for lifting off the ground. Circling once over her head as a farewell, I winged away over the castle, allowing my mind to fade back into my body as I returned once more to grounded life.
while I'm on the subject, I figured I may as well add more Thronemorphs info
1. David's House: Lannis. I figure they're a very distant offshoot of the Lannisters, so distant that they're an entirely different House in the Westerlands with their own sigil and etc. Like the Karstarks are to the Starks, only a lot smaller and poorer and less important. They have no money and no land, and are looked down on by pretty much every noble out there which is why marrying David to Rachel is so important.
2. I finally picked the Berenson House words: Stillness is the sleep of swords. It's got nothing to do with Animorphs; in fact it's a slightly altered Zora Neale Hurston quote that I read in English class and thought fit the family really well.
3. Sometime after the whole David fiasco is over and done with, Jake and Rachel get married. First cousins marrying isn't unheard of in Westeros and no advantageous match seems forthcoming for either one of them, and it looks to be about the only marriage Rachel is ever going to agree to. I'm not sure whether they ever actually consummate, but they both get to do their own thing and their parents aren't trying to force marriages on them and everyone's happy. Realistically this probably wouldn't happen until their late teens at least, once the marriage prospects have pretty much hit their peak, so I might extend or delay the timeframe of the war, or maybe the marriage is just being seriously discussed. Actually though I quite like the idea of making the war last longer than three years. Leaves time for more angst. /evilhandrub
more thronemorphs plz maybe rachel first meeting david as a potential husband?
(( :D ))
The suitor was blonde and slightly shorter than Rachel, and held himself with that proud, upright bearing seen often in landless nobles who had nothing but their names and their dignity to separate them from the smallfolk. After that first, dismissive glance, Rachel spent the rest of the welcoming formalities staring very determinedly at everything but David Lannis. Once the lord had finished his brief, obligatory words of welcome and Ser Steven had finished his rather longer ones, the small procession dispersed, and David (who, Rachel noticed as he drew closer, was rather scrawnier than he had appeared at first glance, and had a cruel note to his face that she misliked) broke away from his parents to approach.
"Have fun," Jake chuckled as he passed by on his way out the hall.
"Oh, I will," she muttered darkly.
"Ser." With perfect etiquette, David inclined his head to Ser Daniel, and then offered a sweeping bow to Rachel, her mother, and her sisters. "My ladies."
There was a pause. Naomi cleared her throat. With an almost painful slowness, Rachel held out a hand for him to kiss, which he did.
"May I say, you are even fairer than I had heard."
Rachel felt as though she would soon grind her teeth out of her head. "You may say that."
