#When dragons can return in peace :: coining post

[squidedibles]

here you go my dragon (and alterhuman) friends, angel4angel, demon4demon, and angel4demon/demon4angel!

A4A: a flag for angel otherkin who date other angels for comfort!

D4D: a flag for demon otherkin who date other demons for comfort!

A4D/D4A: a flag for demon/angel otherkins who date angel/demons for comfort and the angel and demon dynamic!

> look at rentry before interacting

[astradrifting]

GRRM really created so many parallels and foreshadow using the DoD characters that honestly we could just figure the asoiaf ending by analyzing it. My favorite is the Aegon III-D@ny parallels, the fact that one of his closest allies was a face-scarred Master of coin Lannister who ended as Hand to Bran' parallel character just make it so obvious its funny.

Oh my god I didn’t even realise Tyland Lannister was initially on the greens’ side! I’m not super fond of Tyrion ending up as Hand, but you’re right that it’s so obviously meant to reference him. There’s so many parallels that it’s a little crazy. I don’t want to say that the second Dance will end exactly as the first did, it’d be a little too neat if history repeated entirely, but you can see so many echoes of it even in the show’s bastardised ending.

“The broken, shattered realm suffered for a while yet, but the Dance of the Dragons was done. Now what awaited the realm was the False Dawn, the Hour of the Wolf, the rule of the regents, and the Broken King.”

(TWOIAF, Aegon II)

I’m not sure what the False Dawn is going to parallel to, it refers to the period of time after Aegon II’s death but before Lord Stark got to King’s Landing, when people thought that peace had finally come. It kind of brings to mind the War for the Dawn, though personally I think that the threat of the Others will be resolved before the Dance is over. The Hour of the Wolf is obviously about House Stark’s rise back to power, and the Broken King is Bran - though if he actually becomes known as Bran the Broken I might end up committing violence ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. 

The parts about Lord Corlys Velaryon are why I’m so hopeful that Jon’s book ending will be completely different from the show’s. He’s arrested for Aegon II’s death by Cregan Stark, even though Cregan had previously declared for Rhaenyra, because as TWOIAF puts it, “to kill a cruel and unjust king in lawful battle was one thing. But foul murder, and the use of poison, was a betrayal against the very gods who had anointed him.”

Corlys didn’t deny his guilt, and expressed no regret. “What I did, I did for the good of the realm. I would do the same again. The madness had to end.”

Cregan Stark declared him to be guilty of murder, regicide, and high treason, and he was sentenced to execution. But many spoke in his defence, even people who had fought against him in the Dance. Baela and Rhaena Targaryen, Corlys’ granddaughters and Aegon III’s half-sisters, convinced Aegon to issue an edict pardoning Lord Velaryon, which Alysanne Blackwood then convinced Cregan to let stand. Lord Velaryon was pardoned and even restored to his offices and honours, made one of the king’s regents and given a place on the small council.

Corlys’ words definitely could be Jon’s as well, a much more in-character declaration post-D@ny’s death than the drivel GoT tried to feed us. I was worried for a bit that this would be how Tyrion is let off scot-free, but Baela and Rhaena, who were vital to his release, are such obvious Arya and Sansa stand-ins, and they’re certainly not going to expend any effort in helping Tyrion. So Corlys’ circumstances more likely lays the groundwork for how Jon will be freed and remain in political power, while Tyland frankly inexplicably becoming Aegon III’s Hand after he was in favour of brutally killing him parallels Tyrion managing to fail up, as a way of reconciling the old regime with the new one.

This makes Tyrion becoming Hand more palatable IMO. Either Jon and Tyrion both should have been punished or neither should have been punished, not the travesty where Tyrion gets everything he’s ever wanted while Jon is exiled to a Watch with no purpose and a Wall that’s already half-collapsed, so what exactly can it protect against? I suppose they were afraid of seemingly rewarding Jon for killing d@ny, especially if pol!Jon had been revealed, but most people noticed how nonsensical his ending was, and it just led to ‘Bloodraven/Bran is the real villain’ takes anyway.

(Side note: Asha/Yara basically still being loyal to D at the end annoys me so much, and made no sense. Jon did more to help save her by giving Theon that pep talk than D@ny did. Maybe it was a leftover from her taking Victarion’s role in the story, but in no reasonable world is anyone going to listen to the Ironborn who brought the Fire threat over in the first place.)

Of course Tyland Lannister isn’t actually Hand for long, given that he dies barely two years later from Winter Fever, feared and hated, alone except for a maester and King Aegon. It might be an indication that Tyrion will face a similar fate, that he’ll die after he’s seemingly won, exactly what he threatened Cersei with:

“A day will come when you think yourself safe and happy, and suddenly your joy will turn to ashes in your mouth, and you'll know the debt is paid."

(ACOK, Tyrion XII)

So that I can stop talking about Tyrion, here’s some facts about Rhaena and Baela that are obviously meant to reference Sansa and Arya, so much so that it feels a little bit like GRRM is winking and going “See what I did there? Huh? Huh? Did you see??”:

- their descriptions: “Rhaena was slender and graceful; Baela was lean and quick; Rhaena loved to dance; Baela lived to ride...” + “Baela was wild and willful”, “more boyish than ladylike”, and kept her hair cropped short as a boy’s

- Rhaena spent most of the Dance in the Vale, where she lived in relative comfort as the ward of Lady Jeyne Arryn. Baela was a dragonrider and so moved between Dragonstone and Driftmark, but was captured on Dragonstone when Aegon II descended upon it

- Rhaena was favoured to be queen after her brother, considered more qualified than her wild sister

- Baela liked to spend time with “unsuitable companions” she would bring to the Red Keep - including a comely juggler, a blacksmith’s apprentice whose muscles she admired (!!!), a legless beggar, a pair of twin girls from a brothel, an entire troupe of mummers once

- After her brother’s regents tried to marry her to a lord 40 years older than her, Baela escaped the Red Keep by climbing out of a window, trading clothes with a washerwoman, then walking right out of the front gate. She ran away to Driftmark and married her supposed cousin (though more likely he was her half-uncle), the legitimised bastard Alyn Velaryon, which might have had me worried about j0nrya if Alyn weren’t best known for being a daring sailor who went on many voyages, including sailing the Sunset Sea, until he was finally lost at sea during Aegon IV’s reign. Alyn’s mother was also called Mouse, for being “small, quick, and always underfoot.”

- another fun fact about Alyn: he’s a bad haggler, and had to agree to a high ransom and many concessions in order to get Prince Viserys returned to Westeros. This automatically disqualifies him as a Jon stand-in, because as we all know, Jon Snow can haggle like the best of fishwives.

- My absolutely favourite detail that has my jonsa heart singing - Rhaena was more dutiful than her sister and would have married a man that the king and council chose, saying that as long as he was “kind and gentle and noble, I know that I shall love him.” She was able to marry her first choice, whom the regents didn’t immediately approve of but that they ultimately accepted  - Ser Corwyn Corbray, the brother of the Lord Protector of the Realm, a second son (!) whose late father had gifted him the Valyrian steel sword Lady Forlorn (!!!)

And as a treat for @istumpysk, some similarities between Rickon and Viserys II!

- the youngest child of their family

- separated from their older brother after they were forced to flee their home, trying to get to safety while their other brothers and mother were at war

- worshipped their oldest (half-)brothers, but were closer to the brother nearest their age

- spends the war stuck on an island, populated by people closely linked to their family’s origins - Skagosi are descended mostly from the First Men, while Viserys was on Lys, where the blood of Old Valyria still runs strong

- sought by/held hostage by a powerful and wealthy family, who will treat them well but whose intentions are dubious

- will be brought back from exile by an upjumped bastard/commoner from a port town who was raised to lordship and became their monarch’s chief admiral

- after they are returned, long after the wars and crises, is happily welcomed as the heir to their older brother’s throne (shhhhh just let me have this, let the baby live)

Thanks for the ask!

[witcher-and-his-bard-archive]

Jaskier has started referring to the parts of his life as pre-dragon hunt and post-dragon hunt. He doesn't like to refer to the actual incident because he tries to think about it as little as possible, but even pretending like it didn't happen, his life post-hunt is nothing to brag about.

He's never really felt like he belonged anywhere; he didn't fit with his family, he annoyed most of the other kids his age - Oxenfurt may have been the only place he felt comfortable. But all of that changed when he met Geralt because he was just as fucked up as Jaskier is and no one had wanted him either and with him, Jaskier had elevated them both. And it was good, for a while. Or at least he had thought it was. He doesn't think much about his Witcher anymore. His heart aches to know that even someone who knew and understood the pain of not being wanted could throw him away so easily.

Evidently, Jaskier is entirely unlovable.

Which is fine, he tells himself. He can still charm his way through court and find people to keep him company for a time. And even if they too move on, he'll get by. After all, nothing could be as bad as losing someone you thought was a kindred spirit. Nothing could be as bad as losing your one true friend.

But he doesn't think about that anymore.

Except when he's composing. When he can't find the words because anything uplifting sounds false and falls flat on his tongue. The only words he can get to flow are dark and melancholy and they get him thinking about feelings and people he would rather forget. Only how could he? Whatever possessed Geralt to shun him after twenty-two years, Jaskier doesn't share it.

Maybe it's because witchers don't have emotions. Jaskier had thought that was some sort of line, but maybe Geralt is just good at pretending to feel after all.

The longer he spends alone, the more somber his writing becomes and the less people want to pay to hear it. The only thing they want to hear anymore is Toss a Coin and Jaskier can't bring himself to play that anymore. The only song about Geralt he can stomach playing is one he wrote for himself and he's not ready for anyone else to hear. Not that they would want to anyway, it's not as though it's any happier than the rest of his repertoire.

He travels for a while but eventually, without the coin from performing, he needs to find somewhere to settle for a while. Somewhere he can find some other job. No one wants a bard who makes people miserable, so he makes his way to Oxenfurt because it's the only other place he knows he can find work. And maybe someone there will be happy to see him.

He arrives mid-afternoon on a sunny day and while he receives a warmer welcome than he has in months, it still doesn't feel quite right. He and Geralt had something special and no amount of familiar faces will help him recreate that - especially if it was all in his head to begin with.

It feels good to have his position back as a professor and Jaksier enjoys the constant stream of people in and out of the college, but his happiness is hollow. So many of the people here who he once considered friends seem more like acquaintances in comparison to the closeness he felt with Geralt. Maybe he's being too picky; the people here are kind and accepting and much less often request to hear songs about the Witcher he made famous.

So Jaskier tries. He tries harder than he ever has before to fit in and to be accepted, but even as he tries, even as he considers changing things about himself it doesn't feel right. He doesn't only want to be accepted, but to be accepted for who he is. And he's not perfect, but who is? Certainly not any of the people who have abandoned him in the past.

Over the next few months, he makes a routine for himself. He teaches classes during the days and most nights in the evenings will go to the tavern to drink and talk. Occasionally, he can be convinced to play a song or two if he's had a lot to drink, but mostly he goes to watch and listen.

Then one night he's been having a bad day. He can't quite place what's wrong, but everything just feels off and he feels more alone today than he has in a long time. He makes it through the day and doesn't even return to his room before heading off to the tavern to sit alone in the corner with a mug of ale.

He realizes when one of the regulars casts a suspicious look in his direction, that this must be what Geralt felt like that first day so many years ago. All he had wanted was peace and quiet and a drink and instead, he had gotten Jaskier. No wonder he didn't have to think twice about getting rid of him. At least Jaskier doesn't have to worry about anyone approaching him tonight; the few other patrons seem to realize it's best to keep their distance.

He thinks back to a younger version of himself, fearless and fascinated, approaching Geralt of Rivia and demanding a review of his performance. Three words or less he had said and Geralt had given him three exactly. He frowns thinking about it now and his heart aches as though something is wrapped around it, squeezing the life from it.

A group of other professors comes in a little later and the crowd grows. A few people say hello, but no one stays to sit and no one really wants to talk. A young aspiring bard gets up and sings Toss a Coin and Jaskier decides it's time to leave.

He's not drunk, not really, but it seems to take him ages to get back to his room and when he does, he flops down on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. Every night he spends here, staring up at these same beams and he feels trapped. He misses lying out under the stars and staring up at trees that swayed in the breeze. Even now in the dead of winter, he would trade his comfort and safety for the freedom of traveling.

But what's the point in traveling alone?

For the first time in a long time, he lets himself think of Geralt. He thinks back on all the good times, on all the nights they spend out in the wilderness either out of desire or necessity and he thinks about playing music around the fire. Occasionally, Geralt would even sing with him if he knew the words and those nights were the best of all.

Jaskier aches to think of them now, to think of all they used to have and everything he wishes he could gain back. But Geralt made it inescapably clear that Jaskier is not what he wants and all he can do now is try to accept that.

When he falls asleep at long last, it's thinking about golden eyes and white hair tinged orange by firelight.

The next afternoon there's a commotion in town and Jaskier, wanting something to take his mind off things, goes to check out what it is. He regrets it the second he walks into the inn.

"Is it true the Witcher is here?" someone asks and Jaskier freezes in place.

"They said a witcher," someone corrects, "not the witcher."

"But it is him, isn't it?"

Jaskier doesn't wait around long enough to hear whether or not the consensus is that yes, it is Geralt, the great White Wolf. Jaskier retreats quickly, heading back to his room because if it is him, he doesn't want to see him. Even if it isn't him - not likely, with his luck - Jaskier's had enough of Witchers to last a lifetime, thank you very much.

He tells the few people he sees that he'll be writing and would prefer not to be disturbed before heading up to lock himself away in his room. They're happy enough that he's writing again that there's no hesitation in their agreement and Jaskier feels confident that he will be left alone. His confidence only lasts as long as the peace outside his bedroom door lasts.

Within the hour, there's some sort of argument taking place downstairs and while he wants to know what's going on, he keeps to himself. He has even started writing a little and he'd like to keep the flow going while he can. He ignores it for as long as he can, but then there's a knock on the door. Dreading who might be outside, Jaskier pretends not to hear.

The first two times, he pretends, but then the knock comes again and he sighs and heaves himself up from his bed. He crosses the room on unsteady legs and pulls the door open. He's expecting someone to be there asking him to come down and talk to the Witcher because it is Geralt. He's probably doing something unpleasant like walking around covered in guts or something. What he's not expecting is to open the door to the man himself.

Immediately, he shuts it again. Geralt pushes it open and steps into the room.

"No, no, no, no, no, I am not getting mixed up in whatever this is.

"There's nothing to get mixed up in," Geralt says and despite his best efforts, something inside Jaskier crumbles. It aches to reach out to him, to stand beside him again. Jaskier holds his ground.

"Good," he says, "then you can go." It takes every ounce of his strength, but he crosses to the door, brushing past Geralt and holding the door open for him.

Something in Geralt's face softens and Jaskier pretends not to notice, doing his very best to remain stoic. Geralt steps toward him and as Jaskier's breath catches in his chest, the door is pulled from his hands and Geralt shuts it behind them.

"I was passing through and I heard you were here," he says. Jaskier wants to ask where he's coming from and to where he's going that Oxenfurt just happened to land neatly between them, but he doesn't trust himself to speak. And while he's not trying to remain civil, calling Geralt out on a lie might not be the best course of action.

Geralt sighs, resigning himself to the lack of reciprocation and his shoulders slump. "I knew you were here," he admits. "I've been looking for you for months until I ran into a bard who recognized me and asked why I wasn't with you."

"Did you tell him it was because you decided you'd had enough of me?" Jaskier asks bitterly and Geralt shuts his eyes, breathing sharply.

"No. And that's not true."

"Right," Jaskier scoffs, "because that's why you tell people to leave. If life could give you one blessing, that's what you said."

"I know and I'm sorry." Jaskier's heart is pounding now, beating so quickly he's afraid it might burst, but he doesn't move, even when Geralt takes a step toward him. "Come back," Geralt says and Jaskier can feel every fibre of his being pulling him toward Geralt, but he won't give in so easily.

"You don't want me," he says, "you just don't want to be alone."

"I do. I was wrong when I said those things. I was angry and I took it out on you." Geralt looks at him, but Jaskier refuses to meet his eyes. They're both silent for a moment before Geralt reaches out, hesitating before pulling his arm back. "I miss you."

"Hm," Jaskier responds, not trusting himself with actual words.

"I think about you every day. When someone sings that god awful song or when it's too quiet in the dark at night. I miss having you around, I miss listening to you sing. I want you to come back."

Jaskier shuts his eyes and listens. Geralt has moved closer and if he was to reach out, even to just move his hand forward, he could touch him. He's been dreaming of this moment for a long time but it doesn't feel like he expected it to. He thought he would feel good, that everything would suddenly be fine, but he almost feels more hurt now than he did before.

"I'm sorry I never told you before. I'm leaving in the morning. If you want to come with me, meet me at the stables. If you're not there, I'll know you've made your choice." He turns and pulls the door, disappearing out into the hall and leaving Jaskier alone in the room.

He's overwhelmed and it takes a few minutes for him to even remember how to breathe. In his time alone, he'd forgotten the effect Geralt has on him, and worse, he seemed genuine about his offer. Geralt never says that much at once unless he's mad and he definitely didn't seem mad. He considers it for a moment because maybe he does want him back.

Alone in his room, he realizes there's only one option and he sighs, letting his arms fall limp at his sides.

"Fuck."

- - - - -

The sun is just rising over the horizon and Jaskier is anxious, wondering if he made the right decision. It's a matter of the rest of his life and finding somewhere he can belong and he doesn't know whether he has. He's quiet as the sun rises and down the road and he hears footsteps approaching and the familiar whinny of a horse. Jaskier sucks in a deep breath and one last time and cements his decision in his mind, just as a familiar figure approaches up the hill.

Geralt smiles at him, and Jaskier's heart melts despite himself. Next to him, Roach leans over the gate of her stall, nibbling at his hair and he thinks maybe he chose right.

"Did you really miss me?" he asks as Geralt comes closer.

"Yes," Geralt says, not slowing his stride as he approaches. He wraps strong arms around Jaskier's shoulders and pulls him close, resting his head against his. Jaskier squeezes his eyes shut, returning the embrace and inhaling the Geralt's scent.

As he pulls back, he looks up at him and the faintest sliver of doubt creeps into his mind again. "Prove it," he says, stepping back and without a moment's hesitation, Geralt takes his face in his hands, closing the gap between them again and kissing him more tenderly than Jaskier thinks he's ever been kissed in his life.

His knees are weak and his eyes sting with unshed tears as he lets himself be bundled up into loving arms. When Geralt breaks away again, he presses his face into Jaskier's neck, breathing softly.

"Forgive me," he pleads and Jaskier couldn't deny him if he wanted to.

[forever-animated]

Rayllum Reunion in S4

Ever since Through the Moon came out, there’s been a lot of discussion in the TDP fandom about when Callum and Rayla will reunite and what that will look like. Even before the AMA (where Ehasz, likely trolling, cast some doubt as to whether or not the two would see each other again), many fans were speculating that a Rayllum reunion may not happen until S5. They’ve been theorizing that the two may be apart and have their own separate journeys in S4, which could lead to Rayla finding and/or getting captured by Viren, Claudia, and Aaravos.

I don’t really think this will happen for several reasons.

1. TDP is good at making things happen and moving the plot forward quickly.

Think about past TDP seasons. Despite having only nine episodes, there’s so much that usually happens in the course of each season. There’s usually several conflicts that are set up near the beginning, and many of them end up being resolved by the season’s end.

Here’s just a few:

Season One

Conflict: The gang begins the trek to return the egg, only to have it fall in icy water. They find out it’s dying. Resolution: They save the egg by hatching it.

Conflict: Rayla’s binding won’t come off and keeps tightening. Resolution: Zym pulls the binding off and saves Rayla’s hand.

Season Two

Conflict: Callum wants to learn primal magic, but is told humans can’t. Resolution: Callum connects to the sky arcanum.

Conflict: Callum learns Harrow has died and has to find a way to tell Ezran, and deal with his own grief. Resolution: Callums reads Harrow’s note and comes to terms with his grief. Ezran finds out about his father and returns to Katolis.

Conflict: Ezran is trying to teach Zym to fly. Resolution: Ezran uses their mental connection, and Zym learns how to fly.

Season Three:

Conflict: Callum and Rayla are now in Xadia and need to return Zym to his mother. We find out that the Dragon Queen is dying and has fallen into a deep sleep. Resolution: They succeed in returning Zym and the Dragon Queen awakens. Conflict: Ezran is struggling with the burden of the crown. He’s usurped by Viren and thrown in prison. Resolution: Ezran is freed from prison and reunites with Callum and Rayla, becoming integral in the fight against Viren and returning Zym. He regains the crown after Viren’s supposed death. Conflict: Soren is questioning his loyalty to his father. Resolution: Soren decides to free Ezran from prison, leave his father, and assist the gang in their fight against Viren’s troops.

If season 4 follows this model, and Callum and Rayla’s separation is one of the major conflicts they open with - which it likely will be - then it’s also likely to be one of the conflicts that is resolved (at least in some way) by the season’s end, if not sooner.

I don’t really see the creator’s dragging out their reunion for yet another season, given their track record with previous seasons and how a lot of the conflicts tend to be resolved within nine episodes.

2. There’s going to be a timeskip after Through the Moon.

We already knew there was going to be a timeskip between S3 and S4, but the creators have also confirmed that there will be a timeskip between TTM and S4 as well. Given how the comic ends with Rayla leaving to Callum to find Viren, this means that the show will pick up some time after she’s set out to do that.

Now, if the creators had planned to keep Rayla and Callum apart for all of S4, what would be the point of this timeskip? They could’ve very easily turned the events of TTM (or at least the ending) into the first S4 episode, which would set up the direction of the season with Callum and Rayla going on separate journeys. But they didn’t do that. They tell us why Rayla left in the comic and THEN they give us a timeskip going into S4.

What’s the point of that? To give the characters time to be apart (offscreen) and then bring the audience up to speed on what has happened during that time. Setting the stage for a reunion, perhaps? It seems very likely that this is the case.

3. There’s potential S4 hints in Callum’s Spellbook.

Many fans have speculated about the importance of the information found in Callum’s Spellbook. In it, he mentions wanting to spend a year traveling through Xadia. Could this be what he’s been up to during the timeskip - looking for Rayla in Xadia? 

Beyond this, I have an interesting theory relating to the descriptive words used for each of the primal sources, which I may decide to elaborate on further in the future. Here’s the gist of it though.

The book has a page for each of the six primal sources. They’re in the following order: Moon, Sky, Sun, Earth, Ocean, and Stars. This also appears to be order of each of the “books” of the series. S1 is Moon, S2 is Sky, S3 is Sun, and we know S4 is Earth. I don’t believe this is on accident.

Following this logic, I believe there’s a direct correlation between the words used to describe each of the sources and the major themes and events of each season. For example, the words associated with Moon are illusion, death, deception, etc. All of these are major themes of S1 - Lujanne’s illusions, Harrow’s’ death, Viren’s deception, etc. This association seems to hold true for the other seasons as well. (It’s not perfect, of course. Some of the words for Sky magic don’t seem to correlate to what happens in the season and are more descriptive of the magic itself. But on the whole it seems to hold true.)

With this in mind, let’s look at some of the words for Earth:

Strength Stubbornness Patience Growth Healing If my theory is correct, these will likely be major themes for S4. I can see all of these playing into a potential Rayllum reunion / reconciliation. Rayla thinks she’s being strong by going after Viren herself, but Callum sees it as stubbornness. He’ll need to have patience with her as she learns that she cannot do this on her own. She’ll experience character growth, and their relationship will begin healing.

At least that’s how I see it through my Rayllum shipper goggles. But this makes a lot of sense, and if true, seems to point to a S4 Rayllum reunion and reconciliation as a distinct possibility.

4. Viren / Aaravos may not be the main antagonists of S4.

So far, we’ve only seen Viren as the main antagonist of TDP (with Aaravos pulling the strings, of course.) But this is just for the first three seasons. The first of the three overarching stories that will make up TDP. The creators have confirmed that S4 and S5 will be its own arc, and S6 and S7 will be its own.

So what if there’s another antagonist for S4 and S5?

We know that Sol Regem will be reappearing. Many are speculating that there might be potential conflict between Janai and her unnamed brother that we’ve been told exists. (The creators have declined giving any information on him, so we can assume he’ll play a role in upcoming seasons.) We also know that Rex Igneous (the Earth dragon from Callum’s Spellbook) will likely make an appearance this season. And Zym will still very much be a part of the show.

So what if a separate antagonist rears their head for S4 and S5? Resolving this new threat may be what brings Callum and Rayla together again. I could see her putting her search for Viren on hold to deal with a bigger, more tangible threat, especially if it involves Zym or the peace that they fought so hard to achieve. It’s possible that she won’t find any leads on Viren. And maybe Aaravos has decided to stay in the shadows, waiting for the right time to strike. This could set him up as the main antagonist we know he’ll likely be for S6 and S7.

We’ll likely still see him, Viren and Claudia, but they may not be as integral to the central conflict as we assume they’ll be. If that’s the case, then a Rayllum reunion makes logical sense from a story perspective, as it gives Rayla the opportunity to pause her quest in a way that makes sense for her character.

5. Rayla being captured / coined may not happen, or may not happen so early in the show.

Many fans have speculated that Rayla will find Viren, attempt to fight him, and get captured and/or coined as a result. They imagine that this could be how S4 ends, and Callum either discovers this or is left unaware until their reunion in S5. 

This is an interesting theory, but it assumes that Rayla will be successful in finding Viren. What if she isn’t? What leads does she really have? Viren, Aaravos and Claudia will likely need to regroup after their defeat at the Storm Spire. They’ll be staying in hiding for awhile, which will make them hard to track. Who’s to say she’ll even know where to look, outside of wandering aimlessly through Xadia?

Everyone is also assuming that Rayla being coined is inevitable. But this predictability is not what the writers are known for. What if she doesn’t get coined? What if no one gets coined? What if Callum does?

Even if she does eventually get captured and coined, why would this happen so early in the show? That seems more like a S6 or S7 event, as it’s a very emotional, high-stakes conflict that would likely lead into the reveal of Runaan and Rayla’s parents being alive. I doubt the writers would want to play those cards so early.

If S4 Rayla doesn’t find Viren and isn’t captured, then what does that leave? Her wandering Xadia aimlessly? Not likely. A reunion with Callum is the only other plotline that makes sense here. 

There’s probably more reasons, but that’s all I have for now. If I write any more, I’ll link a part 2 to this post.

[reyxa]

an obligatory zutara teashop au

AO3

title: can’t we just get oolong? author: Reyxa rating: T summary: au where zuko and iroh settle in ba sing se post-banishment. when a pretty water bender start frequenting the jasmine dragon, zuko's world turns upside down.

Chapter 1: Jasmine Tea

“Uncle, get the jasmine leaves from the back!” Zuko calls, writing ‘silent passion tea’ in neat brushed letters beneath the ingredient list.

Iroh huffs, clambering out of the small dusty closet with armfuls of jars. “You know, Prince Zuko, a healthy young man like you should be the one running around. You should help me get off my aging feet.”

Zuko laughs quietly before blowing on the ink to speed its drying. “How many times do I have to tell you, Uncle, I can’t and won’t accept the title of ‘prince’ any time soon.”

“What an easy way to skirt the question of my age.” Iroh winks as she sets the jars on the granite countertops. “What mix have you decided on, Prince Zuko?”

Ignoring the honorific his uncle refuses to drop, Zuko places the name card in its wooden holder and grabs the green tea jar. “Not a good one.”

“‘Green tea, jasmine and vanilla notes’, eh?” Iroh raises an eyebrow, his trademark wide smile taking over his face. “Very romantic.”

Zuko snorts. “There’s customers waiting, Uncle.”

He pretends not to notice the prying look on Iroh’s face as he shuffles from table to table. Romantic. Pfft, as if Zuko could ever know what that will feel like. His best case is taking up a Red Lamp District lover who charges a single silver coin each night.

“Hello, Zuko here.” Zuko never knows what to do with his face when greeting customers. When he first started working at the Jasmine Dragon, he had been a bitter 14 year-old convinced he was wasting his time on trivial things instead of chasing the Avatar. His frustration had driven more than enough customers away. Zuko of the present settles on a warm half-smile, though he wonders vaguely if it comes across as a grimace. “What would you like?”

“Zuko… as in Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation?” the man squints at him, grasping the hilt of his dagger.

He laughs, trying not to let bitterness seep onto his tongue. “I wish. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Gao, please,” the woman, face pale with cosmetics and eyelids blue as the sky, places a hand on the man’s shoulder. “I’d like a jade springberry tea and he’ll have a black tea with syrup.”

Zuko shrugs, notes down the order, and greets the next table. His smile is marginally less forced when he sees the familiar face of a regular. “Miss Sora, what can I get you?”

Sora groans, wrinkled face offering a dry smile. “It is not what you can get me, dear Zuko, but what I can get you.”

She often spouted nonsense Zuko seldom understood but he was used to it, living with his uncle and all. “I assume it’ll be the regular. Green tea with lemon and a meaningless epiphany.”

“Not meaningless, my dear!” she gestures for him to come closer. He sighs. The more he complies, the faster he can get back behind the counter where he’s most comfortable. She drops her voice as she speaks. “There’s talk along the outskirts of the wall.”

He has to roll his eyes discreetly. He has long given up caring about the outside world. He’s tired of hearing about his sister chasing after the Avatar and his crew from his uncle, he’s tired of hearing about the useless Earth King, and he’s especially tired of hearing about the scores of refugees entering the city. All Zuko wants is to pretend he didn’t exist before the age 16 and try his best to forget the royal blood in his veins.

But he hardly has these luxuries.

“Are you listening, boy?” she shouts in his ear. He cringes but nods regardless. Grabbing his ear, she whispers again. “I have heard there is a girl from the Water Tribe in the inner-city. Looks of marriageable age. I imagine a cabbage cart’s worth of boys will be chasing her tail.”

Shaking his head, he reclaims his ear and stands back up. He taps his foot insistently on the stone floor. What does he care about some washed-up girl from a broken tribe? “Just the green tea, then?”

Sora slams a hand down on the table, her green eyes wide. “Zuko, my boy! Think of the potential! The only Fire Nation boy in all of Ba Sing Se and the only Water Tribe girl for miles!” she presses a hand to her heart. “What a love story to behold.”

He tries his best not to fume but his palms prickle. Why is everyone trying to marry him off? Why does anyone care what happens to him at all? But more than anything, Zuko is worth more than a Water Tribe peasant, regardless of his lost title.

He’s about to blow when his uncle pops out from the counter with a mug filled with well-steeped green tea. “Sora,” Iroh sings, practically oozing charm and charisma. “Have you finally come to accept my marriage proposal?”

Predictably enamored by him, Sora blushes a deep red and fluffs her silver hair. “Oh, you’ll have to bring me more than tea for that, Iroh.”

Zuko stalks off, fingers prickling with the fire he can’t summon.

~

Katara is not enjoying being cooped up in a Ba Sing Se upper-class house with three children and an overbearing chaperone.

She wants to read her scrolls quietly? Nope, Toph is idly bending rocks up into their hardwood floors. A nice hot shower? No! Sokka and Aang used all the hot water to wash the ink off Momo. A stroll down the street? Joo Di must accompany her, of course.

Slipping away was the easy part. The gang had set out into the city earlier that morning to spread word about Appa. Toph and Sokka paired up and went on their way, pasting posters and chatting away. Aang had taken to the skies. And Katara had finally found a peaceful afternoon to herself.

Knowing where to go though, is turning out to be harder than she thought.

She hums old songs as she strolls down cobblestone streets, enjoying the sun and the clamor in the streets. It’s nothing like her close knit village back home. Ba Sing Se is vast and heavily populated. And though Katara’s only ‘allowed’ to roam the wealthy rings of the city, she can’t help but wonder what true hardships still plague the impoverished streets outside the ring.

Itching to learn more and honestly incredibly thirsty after a day in the sun, she ducks into a lavish teashop, already enjoying the cool indoors.

She’s only marginally sweating through her thick cotton clothes as she seats herself in a tucked away booth. No need for Joo Di to catch wind of her out and about. Better to lay low anyway.

“Hello, miss, I— oh!” the aged man exclaims, a grin on his face wider than Katara had thought possible. “I would recognize those beautiful blue eyes and those lovely exotic clothing anywhere.”

“Oh,” Shit. She really didn’t think she could’ve been recognized so easily. “I shouldn’t be here.” she climbs out of the booth. “I wouldn’t want to cause you any trouble.”

“Trouble?” he laughs. “The presence of a Water Tribe native is nothing but a gift, please have a seat.” a wild twinkle in his golden eyes startle her but she takes her seat again slowly. “I think my nephew would suit your… needs far better. Allow me to introduce you.”

What is this guy on about? “No, that’s not necessary, I was just looking for—“

“Zuko!” the man shouts. “Come attend to our guest!”

Katara sinks into her seat. All she was looking for was a simple afternoon finally alone with her thoughts and this commotion is haunting her now. She’s brainstorming how quickly she can leave when he arrives.

“Uncle, you know I was on a break how could you—”

She stares at him. Dark hair, as thick as hers but far more straight, tumbles into a pair of eyes golden like the sun. Honestly, she’s wondering if she’ll be blinded if she stares for too long. Though far more distracting is the deep burn scar across his eye and scraping into the pale skin of his cheek. Her healer’s hands are itching while her heart thrums loudly in her ears.

“Zuko! I think this lovely girl would like some tea. Please serve her.” the man chuckles through his whole body before winking at the two of them individually. He flounces off, leaving them gaping at each other.

“What can I get you?” he sighs, grumbling something under his breath about crazy old people and their meddling ways.

Zuko, the name is vaguely familiar but Katara writes it off, completely distracted. She is struggling to find her voice in her Si Wong desert of a throat. “Just some jasmine tea.” she chokes out, holding onto her necklace for dear life. “With honey.”

He merely grunts and stalks off, not nearly as friendly as his uncle.

She sighs. She has got to stop finding pretty boys at every pit stop. The urge to repeatedly smack her forehead against the table takes over but she’d rather not be concussed when she returns to everyone else. She settles for tugging on her mother’s necklace nervously and endlessly fussing with her hair.

Shouting from the back startles her enough to yank hard on the necklace. Something about marriage and royalty and… flirting? Regardless, it ends with a scarred waiter storming out of the back with several teacups and pots in hand.

Katara sinks back into her booth, chiding herself. She doesn’t have time to care about pretty temperamental teashop boys. She’s in Ba Sing Se to find Appa, convince the Earth King to rally his forces for the invasion, and get out.

“Forgot to ask if you wanted just a cup or a full serving.” the boy’s voice shocks her from her internal scolding. She looks up at him, finding eyes desperately trying not to meet hers and lips pursed. “Uncle said to just bring a full pot for you.”

“Mmm hm,” Words, Katara. Words. “That’s kind of you, thank you.”

His brow seems to soften as he nods. “How hot do you want it?”

The double entendre makes her tug hard enough on her mother’s necklace to break the clasp. She sighs, holding up the torn satin strings. “Oh fuck… um, however it is now should be fine.”

He shakes his head as if to laugh at her, holding the teapot like a turtleduckling. His eyes close, brows drawn together as he concentrates.

Katara squints at him, thoroughly confused until steam rises through the spout of the pot. Her heart stumbles, she isn’t sure if it’s fear or something else entirely. “You’re a firebender,” she whispers, a hand uncorking her water skin.

He offers her a confused look as he pours her tea. “Um… yeah? What did you—“

Her waterbending stance comes maturely as she pops out of the booth, water poised for striking. “He’s a firebender! Everyone get to safety!” she shouts.

The room looks back at her, the same confused look on their faces as the one of her server.

“Why aren’t you leaving?! He’s dangerous!” she throws her water closer to his face. “Who are you?! Are you working for Azula?”

The recognition flickering over his face is enough for her. She drenches him, the force of her bending throwing him against the back wall.

“Stop, stop!” his uncle comes trotting out from the back. “It isn’t what you think, miss!”

“Are you a firebender too?!” she draws her water back, splitting it to hover dangerously close to both the firebenders. “Is this teashop for some sort of front for a Fire Nation military base?”

“How do you know Azula? Did she send you here?” his broadswords seem to materialize from nowhere.

“Me?! Working with Azula? How dare you!” she bends her water into ice shards, flicking them to pin him against the wall. He deflected them and it only makes her angrier. “Tell her her chase for the Avatar ends in Ba Sing Se!”

“Alright, alright, let’s all calm down, hm?” the elderly man skirts around the water she’s wielding, a smile on his face. “My dear, we are only Fire Nation refugees. We came to Ba Sing Se to settle away from the oppression of the Fire Nation.”

The boy snorts, still gripping his broadswords.

“The Fire Nation has taken so much from us.” his face falls, flickers of grief in his eyes. “We mean you and this city no harm at all.”

Katara’s heart softens. The pain written all over the old man’s face guides her to ease her weapons. She knows it well. “The Fire Nation has stolen so much from me. I’ve never heard of or seen peaceful Fire Nation citizens, so I hope you understand why—”

“We’re not citizens.” the other firebender rolls his eyes, drawing back one of his swords. “It’s your turn to explain, waterbender. How do you know Azula?”

She glares at him, poised to whip her water out once again. “I don’t owe you any explanation. In fact, I think we should all pretend I was never here to begin with.”

Katara backs towards the door, eyes flickering between the old man and the firebender. Her tongue mourns the untouched tea left on the table but she turns on her heel, a hand on the door.

A sword beneath her chin steals her breath. When the boy speaks, she can feel his breath in her hair. “Let me rephrase. My name is Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation and if my sister is in the city, I need to know.”

“Zuko!” his uncle hisses. “Let the poor girl go! We have nothing to do with the royal family anymore.”

“If she’s here, it’s only a matter of time before she comes for us too!” his voice is strained in his throat. “Tell us, waterbender.”

Katara laughs bitterly. “So not only are you a firebender, you’re literally the heir of the man causing mass genocide across the globe?” she slips the water out of her water skin discreetly. “I’d never tell you anything.”

He grunts, his breath unnaturally hot against her shoulder.

His exasperation is her distraction. In the seconds before his interrogation starts up again, she drops to her knees and sweeps her water backwards, knocking the firebender to the ground.

Katara rushes for the door and doesn’t stop running until she’s sure no lurking handsome firebender is on her tail.

~

Zuko huffs as Iroh flits from table to table, apologizing for the commotion. Though, most of their regular customers know well that some in the city don’t react well to Fire Nation within the walls.

As Iroh rushes around the shop, Zuko puts away his broadswords. While the exchange with the waterbender proved useless, he did find it satisfying to take out his swords every once in a while. It was the moments when he was brandishing his weapons that he felt less exposed, less vulnerable.

He mops up the water the girl had splashed across the floor, still sore from crashing to the ground earlier. He can hardly pay attention to the pain.

Azula is approaching Ba Sing Se and he has no idea how to process that. He knows if Azula catches wind of him and his Uncle, she’ll come. Come to taunt, to toy, to terrorize.

Zuko sighs. Just when he had accepted his fate as a banished prince with stupid useless royal blood, Azula has to come in and turn his mind into a storm.

“Uncle?” Zuko puts up the mop at the back of the shop where Iroh is storing away tea leaves.

“An interesting day it has been, right Prince Zuko?” he laughs heartily. “Who could imagine a waterbender in our humble shop today!”

“A waterbender who’s affiliated with Azula and the Avatar.” his hands turn to fists. “Don’t you remember what the Fire Lord had asked of me when I was banished? He wanted me to chase the Avatar! And of course Azula managed to find an Avatar that’s been missing for a hundred years!”

Iroh sighs deeply, placing a hand on Zuko’s shoulder. “All I want is for you to let the past go, Prince Zuko. Does it matter what Azula is off doing?”

“She could find us! How could you not understand?” Zuko is more than tired of hearing about how he has to let the past go. He has.

“Do you fear seeing her, or do you fear her seeing you here, nephew? Be honest.” the lines etched into Iroh’s face seem to deepen, aging him. “Are you afraid of her seeing you honorable without a crown?”

Zuko steps back, eyes shut tight. “I have no honor. I’ve accepted that.”

“If that is what you think, then you have not accepted yourself, Prince Zuko.” Iroh sighs and turns away from him. “That is why your fire is dying.”

The blow throws him. He glances down at the palms that have been unable to produce a flame greater than that of a stovetop. His inner fire had flickered out months ago and he knew why. He knew it was losing everything he had, his mother, his home, his family, his title, his honor. Zuko has been stripped of his identity and his fire has been doused. “Regardless, Azula is on our heels now, Uncle.” Zuko takes a deep breath. “And I’m going to figure out how to keep us safe from her.”

Iroh nods. “If you insist on chasing Azula, I imagine this might help you.” he slides something out of his apron pocket and presses it into Zuko’s hand. Offering him a smile, he says, “I hope you find what you are searching for, nephew.”

Zuko stares at the Water Tribe pendant in his hand, the one that had been hanging from the girl’s neck. He nods. “Thank you, Uncle.”

He claps Zuko on the shoulder. “My teas won’t serve themselves.”

~

“Hey Katara! How did putting up posters go?” Aang waves from the couch on their Ba Sing Se home, fiddling with his staff.

Katara pastes a smile on her face, bending the sweat off her forehead. “It went great! I think we’ll find Appa really soon!”

She had decided not to tell the rest of the gang about the Fire Nation teashop. It wasn’t worth it to send the whole squad in to scope it out, even though that firebender had threatened her with a sword under her chin. And made her heart race like Azula was chasing it. But that’s just a silly irrelevant detail.

Besides, the elderly guy seemed nice enough. She isn’t worried.

“Something’s different about you.” Sokka squints, pointing a paintbrush at her from his dark oak desk. “Did you change your hair?”

“Yeah! It looks so much better, Katara!” Toph laughs, as she picks at her toes.

“Ha ha, Toph, you’re so funny.” Katara rolls her eyes, collapsing onto a plush green chair near Aang. “But no, I didn’t do anything with my hair.”

Aang gasps. “Your necklace is gone!”

Katara reaches for her neck, coming up empty. She mentally smacks herself. She must have left it on the table after it had broken at the teashop. “Oh,” she sighs. “It must have fallen off when I was, um, putting up posters.”

“Please don’t tell me we have to put up posters for the necklace now too,” Toph groans, falling back against the ground.

Aang touches Katara’s shoulder and smiles. “We’ll find it, don’t worry.”

Katara nods, brows drawing together. She knows exactly where to start.

[the-last-cuddlebender]

The Jasmine Dragons

When Uncle Iroh said in TLOK that he chose to move on into the Spirit World, I think he did so by climbing onto the back of a lionturtle…

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A/N: This started as a little hc post a few days ago, but then I remembered how much I love dragons and Uncle Iroh (and Azula and Zuko). Plus, my selfcontrol for writing hurt/comfort is non-existent:)

Rating: G (D for dragons)

Words: 1,390

ArchiveOfOurOwn

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The sun is setting in the West when the lionturtle speaks to him. 

“I have heard your wish. I can help you face the next step of your journey. But only if you are ready.” 

Iroh shares a cup of jasmine tea with Zuko and beats his nephew’s butt at Pai Sho one last time. He doesn’t tell him that he’s going. Zuko doesn’t sense anything strange, either, because his uncle always exudes love like his very next minute of life will be taken from him. 

Azula finds Iroh before he finds her. Nothing happens in the Palace without her knowing. She looks at her Uncle like she knows more about what is to happen than he does. She hugs him and says nothing, and she holds him for a few seconds longer than Iroh thought her capable of. 

Then the moment is gone, Azula squares her shoulders, and Iroh’s niece strides away towards the company awaiting her in the gardens. 

Iroh gets on the lionturtle’s back (it’s the water one, by the way. The element of family and change, and the element that Iroh so closely studied after his son was killed). He glances back to see his mortal coil looking as if asleep and smiling. 

When Iroh turns around to face his new world, he is a little sad, though. In fact, his heart breaks and cries. 

An old friend is there to greet him—the lionturtle is gone, now, and Iroh is standing in a mountain’s valley. Little tears escape him as he pets the nose of the massive, purring blue dragon. 

But then the Firebending Master, now a spirit, touches a whisker to Iroh’s brow. 

He shows Iroh his red-scaled mate, also an old friend, curled up and at peace so deep in the secret passages of their cave that she practically sleeps on the heart of the earth. She purrs in her half-empty nest, and she keeps one eye open to watch her two hatchlings play and tussle about the other half of her nest. The young dragons roll in the imprint that their ancient father had left, and the smooth dip of stone smells like something familiar and safe even though they never met him. 

But then the mothering red dragon moves, showing Iroh something else. And Iroh cries a little harder and is so overcome with joy that it fills him to the brim, curls into a smile, and spills over into a laugh. 

The ancient blue dragon relishes his old friend’s happiness and shows him through his vision, again, the hoard of golden eggs clutched in an alcove behind his old nest. The alcove is covered walls and floor with bushes blooming small white flowers (that cradle the eggs like a bed), and crystals like those used in the Earth Kingdom—though these are gold teetering on white—line the alcove’s ceiling and bathe the bushes and eggs with light like the crystals were each a tiny sun. 

Iroh laughs so hard that he would have stopped breathing if he weren’t a spirit, now, when, in the vision, the ancient red dragon turns and puffs a small gust of cinders over the bushes. Her heated breath hardly disturbs a leaf, and she settles to sleep as the faint smell of burning jasmine fills the cave.

...Zuko, much like his Uncle had once done, goes to the masters as he grieves his loss. 

The Sun Warriors play the horn and drums, and Zuko doesn’t know what the hell to think when two dragons barely bigger than housecats emerge from the massive caves. 

The tiny dragons circle him like vultures (not quite old enough to fly) and trip over feet they have yet to grow into as they attempt to dance. 

The blue, keen and calculating for its young age, sits like the statues outside the Palace. She nods and blows a ring of smoke to voice her approval of him, and she puffs her chest and looks at Zuko like she expected him to grovel his thanks for her giving him a judgment at all. 

The red circles a second more, cocks his head, and then jumps and tries to spit a stream of fire. His form is terrible, and he would have landed flat on his back if Zuko didn’t drop to his knee and catch him. The dragon’s golden eyes narrow like he’s smiling, and Zuko swears he really is. (The blue huffs and growls like she is muttering her irritation.) 

The stone bridge shakes as the red Master, massive and looming and ancient, appears at the mouth of her cave. She gives Zuko a look, cocks her head, and puffs an approving ring of smoke just like the little blue dragon had. She growls something that sounds like a purr and shakes Zuko to the bone. The rolling bass of the sound is a landslide trembling his marrow, and the blue, her nose and tail high in the air, trots to her mother. 

But then the blue pauses, frozen for a second. 

She zooms like she is made of water up Zuko’s pants and tunic, and she throws herself over her brother. Zuko holds them both against his chest, and their weight reminds him of Bumi and baby Kya (who he had visited not even a week before). 

The blue nuzzles her brother like she was both saying hello after living a lifetime apart from him and saying goodbye forever.

The red flinches as though surprised, but he returns the gesture with twice as much urgency and just as loud of a purr. 

Then the moment is gone, the blue dragon nips the red’s ear as if to remind him of the chain of command, and she shakes off her fall of demeanor. She sticks her nose back in the air like royalty, and she trots to her mother awaiting her in the cave. 

The ancient red Master rolls her eyes as much as a dragon can, and she cuddles the little blue close. She gives Zuko a long look that sinks into the deepest parts of him and flips through the pages of his soul. 

The little red dragon, purring, clings to Zuko’s tunic. His mother looks sad but proud as she and the little blue disappear back into the cave. 

Ancient eyes that have witnessed a thousand lifetimes gleam through the black at Zuko. They glint like sunlight hitting gold coins and shuffle through a rainbow of different emotions as if to show him something. 

“...I understand.” 

The orbs of gold blink and disappear. 

Zuko smiles and holds his dragon like he was his inner fire made scaly flesh, and he tries not to trip or cry as he descends the stairs. 

(His dragon smells so much like jasmine tea that Zuko’s heart doesn’t know whether to jump for joy or stop beating altogether.) 

(Azula is there to greet him when Zuko steps off his ship. She doesn’t look surprised, and the little red dragon doesn’t shy away from her hand.) 

(Druk makes his nest in the bushes blooming small white flowers near the turtleduck pond.) 

(Ursa keeps him in the corner of her eye when she sits in the garden to read. She awaits the company soon to join her. Druk pads the space in the bush beside him like he is doing the same.) 

(Azula is nothing if not patient.) 

(“...I know.”) 

(And Azula, like her brother, struggles not to trip as she descends the stairs with the little blue curled and clinging to her chest.) 

(But Azula, unlike Zuko, lets herself cry.) 

(Her heart decides to beat like her next minute of life would be taken from her.) 

(Neither Azula nor Zuko—nor Ursa, especially—ever move the empty fourth seat at the table where they play Pai Sho.) 

(Druk and Riyu curl up, winding over each other like a metal cable braided together, in the imprint their Flame-Brother’s and Flame-Sister’s father—not their sire—had left, and the smooth dip of wood smells like something familiar and safe even though they had never met him.) 

(Ursa lights a gentle fire and brews their tea.)

(They all welcome the lazy fuzz simmering just beneath their skin that threatens them with sleep as the smell of steaming jasmine fills the gardens.)

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Riyu = "reason"...because Azula found her drive/purpose/reason...

...Azula had to find the last (Master) firebender whose kind had been slaughtered by hers.

[theusurpersdog]

Floppy Ears

A Dance with Dragons is the most important arc Daenerys has had since she hatched her dragons at the end of A Game of Thrones, and is a huge turning point for the trajectory of her character. And while GRRM’s books have always been incredibly detailed and focused on character, this book and A Feast for Crows is when he really mastered that style. Those two things combined make Daenerys’ ten chapters incredibly dense, and full of very important details. If I were to write it all out in one post, it would be just ridiculously long (and considering the length of my other posts, that’s really saying something. . .). To try and keep these posts from turning into books, I’m going to split my analysis of Dany in A Dance with Dragons into three separate posts; one dealing with the political aspects of her arc, the next a look at the outside forces that influence Dany’s decision making, and the last will center on the personal struggle that defines her arc. Here is the first, where I breakdown the political merits of Queen Daenerys Targaryen. . .

Holding Court

Running parallel to all of the symbolic choices and struggles Daenerys makes in A Dance with Dragons is the practical decisions she makes as Queen of Meereen. GRRM is famous for his quote about “Aragorn’s tax policy”, and it is clear that he tries to answer that question in this book. We get chapter after chapter that gives Daenerys a new political trial, and get to see and examine how she decides to move passed it. The first three books gave us small moments to look at and decide how Daenerys would rule Westeros, but A Dance with Dragons gives us definitive examples of how she would. This book asks would Daenerys be a good queen? and also gives us the answer: No.

Whenever Daenerys has to face the Meereenese as their queen, she thinks to herself that she is putting on her “floppy ears”, in reference to something Brown Ben Plumm tells her:

"Man wants to be the king o' the rabbits, he best wear a pair o' floppy ears."

This quote works so well to summarize Dany’s time in Meereen for a couple different reasons. The first is that it perfectly describes how Daenerys feels about being queen; she hates the rich Meereenese, former slavers who plot behind her back and have traditions that Dany hates, and she could never view herself as one of them. Dany feels as if she must pretend to be a part of them. But it also gets at a deeper truth of Daenerys’ arc - she is just pretending to be a queen; it doesn’t come naturally to her. She has to don her “floppy ears” to be a queen, and start pretending. She has to face many impossible choices in this book, and her anger is righteous in many circumstances, but that doesn’t change the fact that she is not a good queen, and in fact hardly even wants to be one. I’ll get into it more when I breakdown the personal part of Dany’s A Dance with Dragons arc (this meta focusing on the political), but to be queen of Meereen, Dany has to fight against her own nature. The way GRRM plotted this book so expertly, all of the political struggles Daenerys faces are reflections of her own personal struggles with staying in Meereen, each problem designed to get at a different part of Dany’s psyche and push her closer to the choice she ultimately makes in Daenerys IX and X.

When Daenerys holds court in Meereen, she is faced with many grievances that she must have an answer to, many from the noble class that she despises. What I find most interesting about these, is that Daenerys has something in common with all of the men she refuses to help. These are the stories she hears:

A rich woman came, whose husband and sons had died defending the city walls. During the sack she had fled to her brother in fear. When she returned, she found her house had been turned into a brothel.

A boy came, younger than Dany, slight and scarred, dresses up in a frayed grey tokar trailing silver fringe. His voice broke when he told of how two of his father’s household slaves had risen up the night the gate broke. One had slain his father, the other his elder brother. Both had raped his mother before killing her as well. The boy had escaped with no more than the scar upon his face, but one of the murderers was still living in his father’s house, and the other had joined the queen’s soldiers as one of the Mother’s Men.

The parallels Dany shares to these people are quite clear. The first woman she hears fled her house when the city was sacked, just as Rhaella fled the Red Keep when she was pregnant with Dany; yet Dany refuses to give the Meereenese woman her home back, even though Dany herself is determined to retake King’s Landing in her family’s name.

Daenerys also parallels the son in the second story, who has to see the men who raped and murdered his mother live in his house and work for the queen (Dany). This sounds very much like Gregor Clegane and Amory Lorch being rewarded for killing Elia Martell. Dany turns the son away, and continues to let the murdering rapist serve her; yet, when she thinks of how the same thing happened to her family, Dany refers to the men as “dogs” and is disgusted by Robert Baratheon for allowing it.

The most interesting decision Daenerys makes, though, is how she responds to this story:

Grazdan zo Galare asked that he be granted a portion of their earnings. “They owe their skill to me,” he insisted. “I plucked them from the auction bloc and gave them to the loom.”

Dany listened quietly, her face still. When he was done. She said, “What was the name of the old weaver?”

“The slave?” Grazdan shifted his weight, frowning. “She was . . . Elza, it might have been. Or Ella. It was six years ago she died. I have owned so many slaves, Your Grace.”

“Let us say Elza. Here is our ruling. From the girls, you shall have nothing. It was Elza who taught them weaving, not you. From you, the girls shall have a new loom, the finest coin can buy. That is for forgetting the name of the old woman.”

Through these grievances, GRRM is giving us the chance to judge Daenerys based on her own morality. There is plenty of debate about what exactly it means that Dany forgets Hazzea’s name in her last chapter, but the above passage tells us what that means to Dany herself. When she sees that behavior in someone else, she is appalled; she goes out of her way to punish Grazdan specifically for forgetting the slave’s name. Judging Daenerys by her own standards, she has failed Hazzea.

Besides these stories painting Dany as a hypocrite (since she is doing everything that she turns the Meereenese away for), they also start to teach Dany a lesson about being a queen; it is really hard. Dany never realizes how these stories connect to her, but she does begin to understand how impossible it is to make some decisions. When she turns down the son whose mother was raped and house stolen, this is what she thinks:

I am queen over a city built on dust and death. Dany had no choice but to deny him. She had declared a blanket pardon for all crimes committed during the sack. Nor would she punish slaves for rising up against their masters.

And after the boy lunges to attack her, but trips on his tokar and is led away, Dany realizes that that the Harpy has gained another Son.

And while Dany never consciously thinks back on the decisions she’s made and how similar they are to Robert Baratheon’s, on a subconscious level she does soften towards him. When she watches the pit fighter gored by a boar, she thinks of him:

A terrible creature and a terrible death. For a heartbeat she felt almost sorry for the Usurper.

Dany from the first three books would never give even that much thought to Robert Baratheon.

The last decision Daenerys makes while holding court that day, is when she is presented with Hazzea’s bones. While Drogon had never killed a person before, we learn that it is a growing problem that he’s killing people’s livestock:

Her dragons had grown too large to be content with rats and cats and dogs. The more they eat, the larger they will grow, Ser Barristan had warned her, and the larger they grow, the more they’ll eat. Drogon especially ranged far afield and could easily devour a sheep a day.

Since Drogon is stealing and eating so many people’s sheep, and Daenerys doesn’t want to sit and speak to all of them, she agrees to give them all the value of their sheep:

The pronouncement was received in sullen silence. You would think they might be happier, Dany thought. They have what they came for. Is there no way to please these people?

This quote says a lot about Daenerys. In her mind, the people should be happy because she’s willing to give them back what they lost, failing to consider how much trouble it would be for them to gather up the bones of their dead animals, bring them to Dany’s pyramid, and wait all day for just the chance to be heard by her. Dany thinks many of them lie about Drogon to try and get money or sheep, and thinks they should just be happy she’s giving them anything at all.

It’s also one of the first times that Daenerys’ thoughts drift to how much she hates the Meereenese. I think most people just assume that Daenerys’ hatred of the city is limited to the Nobles and former Slavers who disgust her, but that isn’t true; she thinks that she hates the former slavers more often because she is forced to interact with them more often, but when Dany is around the freedman and lower classes she doesn’t like them either:

Daenerys was sick unto death of Zhak and Merreq; she was sick of all the Meereenese, great and small alike.

Dany tries very hard to make her rule of Meereen work, and from a broad political perspective even manages to achieve that, but her own personal bias against the city make it impossible to sustain the peace she creates. While a lot of Dany’s fights are over important things, the small battles she chooses are very telling; she hates the way the Meereenese style their hair and has her advisors shave their head because of it, hates the local food and delicacies, and takes a hard stand against the fighting pits (I’ll get into that more later). In the big picture, these little battles Dany chooses to fight are meaningless and just serve to alienate her from the people, but she does it anyway. Because she hates Meereen; not just the slavery or the toxic elements of the culture, but everything.

All of these decisions Daenerys makes while holding court occur in the first chapter, because there is a huge gap where she doesn’t hear the people’s complaints. It isn’t clear exactly how long she goes between hearing the people, but Daario tells her that the people don’t believe she is real, which implies quite a long time. And when Daario tells her she should, she replies:

“No. On the morrow I will be a woman wed, and Hizdahr will be king. Let him hold court. These are his people.”

The only reason she does hold court is because Daario said she would and Dany doesn’t want to disappoint him. But just the thought exhausts her:

The prospect of wrestling with Meereen once more left her feeling weary.

Daenerys really does throw herself into being queen - marrying Hizdahr proves that - but she still can’t bring herself to do the day to day tasks of a queen.

Choices

Seeing the decisions Daenerys makes when holding court gives us a window into how she handles small issues within the city, but there is also several times when Dany has to make very important choices that could affect thousands of lives. Most of these choices have no good answer, only the lesser of two evils, and Dany has to weigh what is most important to her knowing that people are going to be hurt by her decision either way.

But while that is mostly the case, there is one issue in which it isn’t: the fighting pits. Compared to the other choices she is forced to make in this book, it seems like Daenerys should not be bothered by allowing the fighting pits to reopen, considering the loss of life is *relatively* small and only by those who choose to fight. Yet, it is the issue Daenerys takes the hardest stand against, and completely refuses to do it herself, waiting until Hizdahr is King and letting him do it instead:

A queen must listen to her people, Dany reminded herself. “After the wedding Hizdahr will be king. Let him reopen the fighting pits if he wishes. I want no part of it.” Let the blood be on his hands, not mine.

Before I get into why Dany refusing to do this was a bad choice, I want to clarify something; there actually is plenty of good reasons not to open the pits. As we see through Tyrion’s eyes, slaves are still being brought in to fight, and we see that again when Hizdahr tells Dany that the dwarves are unaware they will have to fight wild animals with wooden swords. The pits shouldn’t have been reopened until Dany had a system in place that assured those kinds of abuses couldn’t occur.

But Dany isn’t thinking of any of that when she refuses to open the pits. To her, they represent everything wrong with Meereen; watching men die as sport is grotesque to her. That’s a perfectly reasonable thing to believe, and I don’t begrudge her for holding that position, but no one else in the city agrees with her. The pit fighters themselves are coming to Dany, begging to fight again:

"Before, I fight for master. You say, fight for you. I say, fight for me." The huge man thumped his chest with a fist as big as a ham. "For gold. For glory."

And not only is the fighting pits a part of the culture, but it’s also a part of the Ghiscari religion; the fights are viewed as sacrifices to the gods. Daenerys is already viewed as an outsider in the city, and refusing to allow this part of their culture is just another thing that turns the Ghiscari against her, especially because Dany never offers a reason for why she won’t open the pits; we see her argue Hizdahr’s points for him, to mock how often he comes to her, but she never actually makes a case against him. And even in her own thoughts, we never fully understand why the fighting pits bother her so much. When she has to watch the fights, the blood and killing of it all makes her nauseous, but she wasn’t bothered by that when Strong Belwas fought for her in front of the gates, and in the very same chapter isn’t bothered by Drogon’s violence.

The fighting pits is the one thing Dany absolutely refuses to concede. Even when she agrees to marry Hizdahr, close the gates to the refugees from Astapor, and let Yunkai restart their slave trade, she won’t open the pits and never does, letting the responsibility go to Hizdahr. And when she finally decides to leave Meereen, it is after watching Barsena die fighting. It seems like a small thing for Dany to be so hung up, and even she realizes that:

Better a few should die in the pit then thousands on the gates. This is the price of peace.

But she can’t go through with it. This is one of the biggest mistakes Dany makes as queen of Meereen. And she makes it for personal reasons; even though she could offer Hizdahr and other supporters of the fighting pits valid political reasons not to open them, she never does, because she doesn’t care about them. She refuses to open the pits because it is too Meereenese for her tastes.

Another major choice Daenerys has to make is how to deal with Astapor and Yunkai, which have fallen to disaster since she left them. The two cities represent two opposite decisions Dany made in the past; she attacked and burned Astapor, but peacefully moved past Yunkai after they agreed to free their slaves. Yet both have problems that are impossible to solve, and force Dany into choices she doesn’t want to make.

Yunkai has gone back to slavery since Dany marched passed, and since she left their military intact is threatening to march on Meereen; the Yunkai’i have blocked off the bay and plan on starving the city out. But Daenerys doesn’t have enough food to support the city, and without the power of her dragons can’t compete with Yunkai’s army. The only way Dany can save Meereen from Yunkai is to allow them to resume their slave trade, which goes against everything she wanted to stand for. The whole reason Dany decided to stay in Meereen was guilt and the realization that the people she left behind were going to get hurt, and she didn’t want to leave another city behind. And having to let the Yunkai’i go back to slaving is a harsh reminder of that. But it is her only choice to keep Meereen free, and it was the right choice. If she tried to fight Yunkai, she would have lost and then all three cities of Slaver’s Bay would return to slavery. But it is a choice that takes a piece of her, and makes her feel like everything she fought for was pointless.

Looked at it in isolation, the situation with Yunkai seems to suggest that Dany’s mistake was passing the city without military force, and Dany herself would agree with that:

She was coming to regret leaving the Yellow City untaken after defeating its army in the field. The Wise Masters had returned to slaving as soon as she moved on, and were busy raising levies, hiring sellswords, and making alliances against her.

But then Daenerys has to face what has become of Astapor, which she did attack with force, and it’s even worse:

Cleon the self-styled Great was no better, however. The Butcher King had restored slavery to Astapor, the only change being that the former slaves were now the masters and the former masters were now the slaves.

At first, Dany is untroubled by the fall of Astapor, because they are no threat to her and even march against her enemies. Then the first rider appears:

"He came out of the morning mists, a rider on a pale horse, dying. His mare was staggering as she approached the city gates, her sides pink with blood and lather, her eyes rolling with terror. Her rider called out, 'She is burning, she is burning,' and fell from the saddle”

Soon, hundreds and thousands of people fleeing Astapor arrive outside the gates of Meereen, begging to be let inside the walls. Daenerys’ first instinct is to help them, and she tries her best to do so:

“I will not turn away from them,” she said stubbornly. “A queen must know the sufferings of her people.”

“Go if you wish, ser. I will not detain you. I will not detain any of you.” Dany vaulted down from the horse. “I cannot heal them, but I can show them that their mother cares.”

Dany is willing to ride out amongst those suffering from the bloody flux, because she sees herself as their mother and every part of her wants to be able to help them. She even intended on letting them in the gates. But then Daario brings news of the Yunkish armies gathering in the hills, and again Dany is forced to make an awful, but right, choice:

She wanted to scream, to gnash her teeth and tear her clothes and beat upon the floor. Instead she said, “Close the gates. Will you make me say it thrice?” They were her children, but she could not help them now.

Even though this is an awful call to have to make, it is the right one. Leaving the gates open long enough to let everyone from Astapor in would have left Meereen exposed to Yunkai’s attack, and Meereen barely has enough food to feed their own people and wouldn’t have been able to sustain thousands more. Most importantly, though, is that the people from Astapor are carrying the Bloody Flux, which is basically an even more contagious version of dysentery; men who Daenerys had sent into the Astapori camps to help feed them all caught the flux and most died from it. If she had let them into Meereen, the whole city could have been wiped out.

In the end, I think Daenerys made the right choices when it came to Astapor and Yunkai (even though the decisions she made were far from perfect or even good). But, why did she have to make those hard choices at all? Ruling a city was never going to be easy, but the unrest in both Astapor and Yunkai, though she approached them with two entirely different strategies, is making a clear point: Daenerys never should have left them. Meereen is the only city of Slaver’s Bay that is able to keep the slaves freed, and it is also the only city where Daenerys stayed. No matter how radical the change is (like Astapor), or subtle (Yunkai), someone needs to stay and make sure the change stays in place. So, while Daenerys ultimately made the right choices to keep her own city safe, she is the one who left Astapor and Yunkai in positions to fall apart.

The biggest problem Daenerys faces inside Meereen is the threat from the Sons of the Harpy, a shadow-group of murderers who target freedmen. This is also the best ruling Daenerys does as queen, rarely making a poor choice and mostly making the best one. Trying to ease the tensions between the Nobles and the Freedmen is an almost impossible task, though, because of the long history of Meereen’s slave trade; and the sacking of the city only served to make it worse. The freed slaves are entirely justified in their hatred of their former masters, but since the slaves were given immunity for crimes they committed during the sack, the masters are even more horrible to the freedmen than they would have been otherwise. Since noble women were raped, property was defaced or stolen, and people were murdered, tensions in Meereen are running higher than ever as Daenerys tries to stop the killing.

The first steps she takes against the Harpy is to mix her City Guard, which was previously all Unsullied, to equal parts freedmen and Shavepates (former nobles who have taken to Dany’s cause), so that the Sons of the Harpy would have to kill their own; and to pay for these men, she enacts a “blood tax” that charges the nobles whenever the Harpy kills someone.

Even though these are good ideas, the killings don’t stop, and Daenerys has to try something else; eventually she decides on taking young hostages from the noble families, under threat of death if the killings continue. When she is actually faced with having to kill her hostages, though, she cannot go through with it; and that was the right decision. If she had killed them, it would have only served to give the noble families another excuse to fight against her rule and would have been used as evidence of her cruelty. By sparing them and befriending them, Daenerys is actually building bonds and relationships with the next generation of noble families that can only benefit her in the future.

But Daenerys can’t wait years to see the killings stop, and needs a solution to stop the Harpy immediately. The only thing that could do that is a permanent tie between Daenerys, who represents (in the eyes of the former masters) the former slaves, and a noble family; and the best way to do that is a marriage to Hizdahr zo Loraq, who has the Green Grace’s approval and has offered to marry Daenerys. She knows that marrying Hizdahr is her only choice:

“My people are bleeding. Dying. A queen belongs not to herself, but to the realm. Marriage or carnage, those are my choices. A wedding or a war.”

She resists this decision for a long time, and then tells Hizdahr that she won’t marry him unless Meereen goes 90 days with no murders. The reason she resists the marriage are obvious; it is the ultimate act of giving up her own agency for Meereen. Once she commits to marrying Hizdahr, she is losing the chance to choose who she loves, or to make a marriage alliance in Westeros. The idea of giving up herself in this way is devastating to Dany, and she’s only willing to make the choice when she’s absolutely sure that it will work, and that she has no other choice. But she does marry Hizdahr, because she knows that as a queen, she should put her people first:

“A queen loves where she must, not where she will."

Her decision to marry Hizdahr is the one true attempt Daenerys makes to be a part of the Meereenese culture, and the way she blends Meereenese wedding traditions with her own – accepting the harmless and replacing the offensive – is a great example of how Daenerys could move forward in Meereen peacefully.

Now that I’ve explained what Dany did right fighting the Sons of the Harpy, she does make some morally wrong calls. The killings make Daenerys justifiably angry, but the way she handles that anger is letting the Shavepate torture suspects and their kids:

Mercy, thought Dany. They will have the dragon’s mercy. “Skahaz, I have changed my mind. Question the man sharply.”

“I could. Or I could question the daughters sharply whilst the father looks on. That will wring some names from him.”

“Do as you think best, but bring me names.” Her fury was a fire in her belly.

It is one thing to torture someone you only suspect of being involved in a crime, but it is even worse to torture girls just to get at their father. And while this is the only instance we hear of Daenerys allowing the torture of people she knows are innocent to try and get confessions, it’s made clear that the Shavepate is torturing a lot of people:

“I do not doubt that Skahaz would soon have me confessing. A day with him, and I will be one of the Harpy’s Sons. Two days, and I will be the Harpy. Three, and it will turn out I slew your father too, back in the Sunset Kingdoms when I was yet a boy. Then he will impale me on a stake and you can watch me die. . . but afterward the killings will go on.”

“I do not trust these confessions. You’ve brought me too many of them, all of them worthless.”

The first quote is from Hizdahr, showing that the Shavepate has a reputation amongst the noble families of being especially brutal. Dany allowing that kind of behavior gives the nobles real reasons to hide behind when they don’t support her. And the second quote is from Dany herself, showing that Hizdahr’s perspective wasn’t biased, and the Shavepate truly is getting false confessions from people; which more than suggests his methods are particularly brutal.

Furthering the divide between the Nobles and Freedman, Daenerys forces the Nobles into labor, digging fields to plant trees. Xaro Xhoan Daxos notices this when he enters the city, and uses it against Dany when she refuses to let the other cities have slaves, since the men forced to work for Dany are asking to be made slaves again.

Besides marrying Hizdahr, the biggest choice Dany has to make for the good of Meereen is chaining her dragons. Locking them away is a huge sacrifice for Daenerys, since she sees them as her children, and it leaves her at a political disadvantage when negotiating with Yunkai and Qarth (since the dragons are her only real advantage). Without them, Dany is worried she won’t even be able to hold Meereen:

Without dragons, how could she hope to hold Meereen, much less win back Westeros?

And she knows that she could destroy her enemies with them:

She was the blood of the dragon. She could kill the Sons of the Harpy, and the sons of the sons, and the sons of the sons of the sons.

But Dany also knows that however useful dragons are for killing enemies, they can’t bring peace to the city:

But a dragon could not feed a hungry child nor help a dying woman’s pain.

On the surface, Daenerys chaining her dragons seems like a very good thing she did; but again, just like with the disasters of Astapor and Yunkai, Daenerys helps create a problem, waits until it hits a fever pitch, and then makes the right choice at the end. All the way back in A Storm of Swords, Daenerys was already having fears about her dragons:

"Did any of them try to burn their way free?" That was the thing that frightened Dany the most.

Also in that book, Drogon gets upset and bites Irri hard enough to make her bleed. So, even before A Dance with Dragons starts, there is plenty of warning signs about what her dragons are capable of. And once the book starts, and some time has passed for the dragons to grow even larger, it’s clear the dragons have only become more unruly:

Her dragons were growing wild of late. Rhaegal had snapped at Irri, and Viserion had set Reznak’s tokar ablaze the last time the seneschal had called. I have left them too much to themselves, but where am I to find the time for them?

And Drogon has been out hunting, killing many people’s livestock:

Her dragons had grown too large to be content with rats and cats and dogs. The more they eat, the larger they will grow, Ser Barristan had warned her, and the larger they grow, the more they’ll eat. Drogon especially ranged far afield and could easily devour a sheep a day.

In my meta about Daenerys’ personal arc, I’ll discuss more of how she could let the dragons get so far out of hand before intervening, but right now I just want to draw attention to how bad a decision that was politically. Even before Hazzea is killed, Drogon burning the sheep is starting to become a problem between Daenerys and her people; as she noticed when she agreed to pay the people off, it doesn’t make them happy. And it’s especially bad that Daenerys is starting to lose their support, because they are all she has; since the nobles don’t support her, Daenerys depends on the freedmen and lower classes to keep her crown.

But the biggest issue with Daenerys allowing Drogon to roam the hillsides, is how obvious it was that an incident like Hazzea was inevitably going to happen. Once Hazzea is killed, Daenerys’ rule depends on the silence of a grieving father; because, if her murder ever got out, the city of Meereen would abandon Daenerys. It also puts her in a position where she has to take advantage of one of her people:

Dany chose to pay the blood price. No one could tell her the worth of a daughter, so she set it at one hundred times the worth of a lamb. “I would give Hazzea back to you if I could,” she told the father, “but some things are beyond the power of even a queen. Her bones shall be laid to rest in the Temple of the Graces, and a hundred candles shall burn day and night in her memory. Come back to me each year upon her nameday, and your other children shall not want . . . but this tale must never pass your lips again.”

“Men will ask,” the grieving father had said. “They will ask me where Hazzea is and how she died.”

“She died of a snakebite,” Reznak mo Reznak insisted. “A ravening wolf carried her off. A sudden sickness took her. Tell them what you will, but never speak of dragons.”

Daenerys rule rests on the good will and/or fear of a grieving father. All because she put her dragons before her people.

Tokars

The choices Daenerys has to make with Astapor and Yunkai, where she has to leave people to be enslaved or die because she can’t save everyone, start to break Dany’s will and it gets harder and harder for her to keep giving parts of herself to Meereen. But those are not the reasons that Daenerys decides to abandon the city at the end of A Dance with Dragons; I touched upon it earlier, but the real reason her rule in Meereen is unsustainable is that Daenerys doesn’t want to be a queen. She holds onto the idealized version she had, of being a mother to her people and feeling as if she belongs; but the actual day to day responsibilities of being a Queen, of representing even the people she doesn’t like, and making hard choices, is not for her. She is still a young girl, and often times foolish in the way she carries herself.

I want to preface this next section by saying this: if it seems like I’m being hard on Dany, that’s because I am. She, more than any other character in A Song of Ice and Fire, should be held to a higher standard; because she wields more power than anyone else. Cersei as Queen Mother and Jon as Lord Commander come the closest, but Cersei’s power is tied to Tommen and easily taken by Margaery, and Jon’s power is limited to the very small number of men in the Night’s Watch. Daenerys controls an entire city, and has three dragons to do whatever she wants with. And Dany intentionally sought her power out, completely out of self-interest; while her time in Slaver’s Bay evolves into a humanitarian effort, it began as her trying to gather an army to take back her family’s throne – not to better the lives of the smallfolk, but because she feels Westeros belongs to her. She went looking for power, and managed to get it; enough so that people live and die based on her choices. Because more lives are at stake, Daenerys should be held to a higher standard. Keep that in mind while reading. . .

From the first chapter, Daenerys’ immaturity is on display:

If he proposes again that I wed King Cleon, I’ll throw a slipper at his head.

She finds holding court very boring, and it’s hard for her to keep her “floppy ears” on:

The slippers the Butcher King had sent her had grown too uncomfortable. Dany kicked them off and sat with one foot tucked beneath her and the other swinging back and forth. It was not a very regal pose, but she was tired of being regal. The crown had given her a headache, and her buttocks had gone to sleep.

But while holding court, she manages to keep her discontent mostly to herself. Meeting with Xaro Xhoan Daxos, she is less diplomatic:

She took a cherry from the bowl on the table and threw it at his nose

His jeweled nose made a tempting target. This time Dany threw an apricot at him.

I cannot stress enough how immature this is; the Queen of Meereen throwing fruit at one of the Thirteen of Qarth. However annoying she finds Xaro, a queen should carry herself with more self-control.

The tokar, a traditional Meereenese garb worn by the nobility, is the way GRRM symbolizes Daenerys’ lack of patience with Meereen and queenship. This is how she describes the tokar:

The garment was a clumsy thing, a long loose shapeless sheet that had to be wound around her hips and under an arm and over a shoulder, its dangling fringes carefully layered and displayed. Wound too loose, it was like to fall off; wound too tight, it would tangle, trip, and bind. Even wound properly, the tokar required its wearer to hold it in place with the left hand. Walking in a tokar demanded small, mincing steps and exquisite balance, lest one tread upon those heavy trailing fringes. It was not a garment meant for any man who had to work. The tokar was a master's garment, a sign of wealth and power.

Daenerys is right that it is a garment for the wealthy, because the design of the tokar makes it impossible for practical use, so her hatred isn’t entirely unjustified. But the tokar also represents the tightwire Dany has to walk as queen; one step out of line, and the tokar could fall off, and she would lose her floppy ears. And that’s why she hates it: all of her attention goes to keeping it on, and it limits her freedom. The tokar is everything she hates about Meereen. Knowing the tokar represents Dany’s complicated relationship with Meereen, it’s fascinating to see the details GRRM has woven into her chapters:

With Jhiqui's help, she wound the tokar about herself correctly on her third attempt.

Meereen being the third city she conquered in Slaver’s Bay, the symbolism is pretty clear. The idea that she gets her third attempt correct also reinforces a point I’ve been trying to make through this post; for all of her missteps, Daenerys actually manages to achieve peace in Meereen. But in the end, she throws it away (but I’ll get into that more later).

When Hazzea’s father lingers in her court after she has dismissed everyone, it angers Dany:

As Dany stood, her tokar began to slip. She caught it and tugged it back in place. "You with the sack," she called, "did you wish to speak with us? You may approach."

The tokar is the physical manifestation of Dany’s “floppy ears”, and when she lets her queenly façade slip, so does her garment. But it’s very important that while the tokar sometimes slips, Dany never lets it fall. Like the mistakes she makes as queen, she can fix her dress before it all comes crashing down. She can, and did, make the peace in Meereen work, even if she came dangerously close to failing; Daenerys learned to walk the tightwire of Meereen. The only way the tokar will fall is if she chooses to take it off.

And that’s exactly what she does. After marrying Hizdahr, she agrees to attend the fighting pits with him, and that’s when she hits her breaking point. Through all the sacrifices she has to make, keeping the fighting pits closed is the one thing she never had to give in to. So, when she is faced with seeing her last stand fall to the Meereenese, she is looking for reasons to walk. Then Barsena begins her fight:

The boar buried his snout in Barsena’s belly and began rooting out her entrails. The smell was more than the queen could stand. The heat, the flies, the shouts from the crowd. . . I cannot breathe.

I think people focus too much on Drogon’s shocking return in the fighting pits, and forget what Dany was doing before he arrived. Practically speaking, Drogon returns because he smells meat and blood and wants to kill; but symbolically speaking, Drogon returns at the moment Daenerys stopped pretending in Meereen. And previously when Daenerys was faced with the choice of saving her dragons or saving her people, she was willing to chain the dragons. But this time, Daenerys is willing to let people die to save Drogon:

Drogon raised his head, blood dripping from his teeth. The hero leapt onto his back and drove the iron spearpoint down at the base of the dragon’s long scaled neck.

Dany and Drogon screamed as one.

Ser Barristan held her tightly. “Look away, Your Grace.”

“Let me go!” Dany twisted from his grasp. The world seemed to slow as she cleared the parapet.

In total, Drogon killed 214 people and wounded three times as many before he finally leaves with Dany. Politically speaking, this is a disaster for Daenerys. The Yunkish envoys were caught in the fire and killed, as well as many highborn nobles and even freedmen. Where Daenerys was able to cover up Hazzea’s death, there is no hiding what Drogon has done in Daznak’s Pit. And that’s why in her absence, Meereen completely collapses and war begins.

But Daenerys was never going to go back to the city as their queen. When she is in the Dothraki Sea, she tries to convince herself to go back, even walking toward the city, but even before Drogon arrived in the Pit, Daenerys gave up on the peace she had worked so hard to make. The tokar is her “floppy ears”, the thing that allows her to be a queen of the rabbits; to take it off, Daenerys is saying she has no interest in doing that anymore.

Like I said at the beginning, Daenerys’ A Dance with Dragons arc splits into two halves – the personal and the political. If Daenerys X is the personal reckoning she has with herself to embrace Fire & Blood, Daenerys IX (the chapter in Daznak’s Pit) is the political falling out she has with Meereen. The only reason she can have her moment on the Dothraki Sea is because she has already given up on the one thing holding her back from her family’s legacy. It is only fitting that the last thing she does before Drogon appears, is take off the only thing tying her to Meereen:

She lifted her veil and let it flutter away. She took her tokar off as well. The pearls rattled softly against one another as she unwound the silk.

“Khaleesi?” Irri asked. “What are you doing?”

“Taking off my floppy ears.”

[jojal-jojalkorean]

🌊 Korea’s hero, Admiral Yi Sun-Sin(이순신 장군) 🌊

Hello everyone! This is Admin Sun here with another post ☺ Today (April 28th) is the birthday of Korea’s hero, Admiral Yi Sun-Sin (이순신). So, the Jojal-jojal team decided to make a post about Admiral Yi. He can be found on Korea’s 100 won coin.

100 won coin

Admiral Yi Sun-sin was born on April 28th in 1545. He played a crucial role in the wars against the Japanese when they invaded Korea during the Joseon dynasty. The Japanese leader Toyotomi Hideyoshi attacked Busan in the spring of 1592 to satisfy his ambition for invasion. The Chosun army failed to defend Busan and the Japanese drove up North towards hanyang quickly. The Joseon King Seonjo quickly took flight North to ask Ming China for help and left his son Gwanghae, the crown prince, in charge.

The Joseon army, with old-fashioned weapons, was no match against the Japanese army which possessed firearms. The King Seonjo quickly took flight North to Uiju to ask Ming China for help and left his son Gwanghae, the crown prince, in charge. The Japanese army arrived in Hanyang in less than twenty days, and they advanced North towards Pyeongyang and Hamgyeong-do.

In this dire national emergency and the Joseon army failing in land, Admiral Yi crushed the Japanese navy in the sea. Though Admiral Yi was thrown into prison after being falsely accused by jealous colleagues, he eventually returned and became the commander of the naval forces in Cheolla-do. He also developed the turtle ship (Keobuk Seon 거북선). The turtle ship is thought to have been the first ironclad battleship in history. It had armored plates and spikes and knives attatched to the plates to protect the crew of the ship and stop enemies from boarding the ship. The ship had a dragon head which cannons could be fired and smoke could be emitted to obscure the ship. Admiral Yi also trained his men and stocked up supplies. These preparations enabled his forces to be ready to fight when the Japanese unlike the rest of the Korean military.

A scaled down replica of the Turtle ship

Commander Yi Sun-sin won several naval battles with outstanding tactics and better ships. In the Battle of Hansan, the Joseon naval forces pretended to retreat, and making clever use of the geographical features of the seas near Hansan Island. The Korean fleet assumed a U-shaped crane formation with larger warships in the center and lighter ships on its wings. This formation is called ‘학익진’. The Japanese fleet was destroyed, and Admiral Yi’s forces counterattacked. The Japanese thus became unable to move supplies and had no choice but to halt their advance North. 

There were brief peace negotiations, but the Japanese launched a second invasion and succeeded in destroying almost all of the Korean navy. Admiral Yi, who was once again falsely accused and demoted, was reinstated as commander of the very few remaining ships. However, with only a few ships he crushed the Japanese army. After the Japanese leader Toyotomi Hideyoshi died, the Japanese forces withdrew. While attacking the retreating Japanese forces in the seas off Noryang, Admiral Yi fell to an enemy shot, leaving the final words, “Don’t let the enemy know that I have died”. This shows the deep patriotism of Admiral Yi, as he feared that the news of his death would discourage the Korean army and encourage their enemies.

Without Admiral Yi, Korea would never have defended themselves against the Japanese invasions. He was a hero in dire times, and he along with King Sejong is remembered as one of the greatest historical figures of our country. You can see his statue at Gwanghwamun square.

- Written by Admin Sun

- Edited by Admin Yu

[shadowywerewolfqueen]

Hunting A Dragon

Didn’t have a chance to post this yesterday, so here it is!

“I’ll pay you handsomely if you get rid of the dragon that lives on the edge of my kingdom,” king Crowley said from his throne.

“How handsomely?” Dean asked with a smirk.

“Enough to own your own small castle,” the king replied.

“I guess you got yourself a deal. Any reason you want it gone?” Dean asked, not that he actually cared. He was only concerned with the small fortune he was about to make.

“That’s none of your business knight. I’m not paying you to ask questions, I’m paying you to get rid of dragons,” the king snapped.

Dean ground his teeth together in agitation. He plastered a fake smile on his face. “Of course, your majesty. I shall return when the deed is done.” Dean turned on his heel and walked from the throne room.

He hurried out the castle, hating the stuffy feeling that palace life always gave him. He enjoyed wide open spaces and freedom rather than gold and finery. He walked out the doors and took in a deep breath of fresh air. He grinned when he heard Chevy’s whinny at seeing him. He walked over to the large black mare and petted her forehead affectionately. “Hey baby, you miss me?” He asked as he pulled a few carrots from his saddle bag and fed them to her. Once she had eaten the last bite, Dean untied her reins from the post and hoisted himself into the saddle.

He patted her neck as she started walking out the courtyard back to the inn. He would need to grab his supplies and gear from his room before starting on his journey to the outskirts of Crowley’s kingdom. He knew the area well and internally moaned at the five-day journey ahead of him. He decided to stop by the marketplace as well to stock up on provisions.

After enjoying one last hot meal and flirting with the bartender, Dean headed out on his trek. Thankfully, the weather was mild this time of year and the days weren’t overly hot, and the nights were clear of rain. He made good time and ended up arriving to his destination a day earlier than planned.

The sun was setting by the time Dean stopped and he decided to explore the area tomorrow. Within the hour, Dean had a fire going and a freshly caught rabbit roasting over it. Chevy grazed a few yards away; Dean completely at ease with letting her roam free. He took a gulp of water from his canteen and stilled as heard the crack of a stick.

His hand dropped to his sword as he scanned the area around him. He was surprised when he saw a man walking towards him in the fading light. When the man stood just outside the glow of the campfire, he came to a halt. Dean looked him over and was stunned by his beauty. The man had thick, messy black hair and the most astonishing blue eyes Dean had ever seen. His skin seemed to be glowing and Dean assumed it was because of the campfire. He had a light stubble covering a strong jaw. Dean let his gaze wander down the man’s body and was just as impressed. The man wasn’t overly muscular, but Dean knew he had strength in his limbs.

“Hello there,” the man replied with a soft smile.

Dean eyed him curiously. “Who are you and what are you doing out here?”

The man walked closer and took a seat opposite the campfire. “My name is Castiel and I live here.”

“You what?” Dean asked incredulously. “Dude, there’s a dragon that inhabits this area.”

Castiel smirked. “I’m well aware of the dragon. I have no fear of him; we are friends of sorts.”

Dean’s mouth fell open. “You’re what? Why in the world would you be friends with a murderous beast?”

Castiel’s lips turned down in a frown and his eyes hardened. “Oh, and I’m assuming to a hunter like yourself that all dragons are murderers.”

“Well, aren’t they? I mean they kill and plunder for fun! If that’s not a monster, I don’t know what is,” Dean growled as he crossed his arms.

“I’m not saying there aren’t bad dragons; I’m just saying not all of them are bad,” Castiel snapped. “The one who lives around here has never killed or plundered anything. He lives out here because it is deserted, and it gives him the privacy he so desperately wants.”

“Well, I’ve never come across a nice dragon,” Dean retorted.

Castiel narrowed his eyes and lifted his chin slightly. “And just how many dragons have you come across?”

“Three,” Dean answered quickly.

“What were their names?” Castiel asked.

“What does it matter?” Dean argued.

“Just tell me their names hunter,” Cas growled.

“Dean, my name is Dean,” the hunter said angrily.

“Fine, Dean, tell me their names,” the other man insisted.

Dean scratched at the back of his neck as he tried to remember the names of the dragons he had struck down. “There was a big red dragon named Alistair. Another was named Lucifer; a big black brute that took me ages to finally bring down. The last one was a golden dragon named Naomi; she was a bitch that one.”

Cas relaxed visibly. “Well, it seems all the dragons you’ve killed were rather nasty and deserved to die. They cost many humans and even a few dragons their lives. I’m sorry for accusing you of wrongful murder.”

“Thanks. Believe it or not, just because I’m a hunter doesn’t mean I kill every monster I come across. If they haven’t hurt anybody, I let them go. It’s just every dragon I’ve come across and every story I’ve heard about them depicts them as murderous beasts,” Dean explained to the man.

Cas sighed. “Yes, well most of them are of the murderous beast variety, but not all of them. There are a few who just want to live a peaceful life.”

“Well, if what you say is true and this dragon has never hurt anyone, I won’t kill it. I’ll just ask it to leave the area,” Dean said as he stood up and removed the rabbit from over the fire.

Cas looked up sharply. “If the dragon has done nothing wrong, why must it leave?”

Dean pulled out a knife and started to cut the meat from the bones. “King Crowley wants the dragon gone and is going to pay me a small fortune to make that happen. If I can finish this deal, I’ll have enough money to travel overseas to be with my brother. Unlike him, I’ve never been able to get out of the hunting life even though I despise it.”

Cas tilted his head. “Why have you never been able to quit?”

“I’m not smart like my brother; I’m just a grunt. Hunting things and saving people is all I’m good for. My dad was a hunter and he forced both of us to follow in his footsteps. Sam was never cut out for the life, so he packed his stuff and got on the next ship to America. I’m hoping to be able to join him soon,” Dean described. He moved closer to Castiel and handed him a few strips of the rabbit meat.

“Thank you, Dean,” Cas said softly as he took the meat.

“Don’t mention it. So, you really think the dragon won’t leave even if I ask it to?” Dean asked as he took a bite of the rabbit.

“Would you leave the only home you’ve ever known just so somebody can make a fast coin?” Cas shot back before taking his own bite of food.

Dean stared at the ground as he slowly chewed. “I guess not, but it never hurts to try. If the dragon says no and he hasn’t hurt anybody, then I guess I will go back to the king and tell him I am breaking his deal.”

“But if you don’t get the dragon to leave, you’ll be separated from your brother for even longer,” Cas pointed out.

Dean shrugged. “Yeah I know but getting to see him isn’t worth killing an innocent for. I’ll figure out another way to make the money.”

“You’re the most honorable hunter I’ve ever met Dean. Most would only be concerned with stuffing their own pockets and wouldn’t care about the creature they are hunting.” Cas fell silent as he took another bite of rabbit.

“Yeah, what can I say? I’m a hunter with a conscious,” Dean replied with a chuckle.

“You certainly are.” Cas finished his rabbit and stood to his feet. “Well, I must be going. I hope to see you again before you leave Dean.”

Dean looked up at him and smiled. “Yeah, you too Cas. Tell your dragon friend I said hi and I’d like to talk to him tomorrow.”

“I shall relay the message,” Cas answered before walking off and disappearing into the night.

Dean didn’t stay up much longer once he finished his dinner. He checked on Chevy one last time before curling underneath his furs and going to sleep. His sleep was haunted blue eyes and a deep voice.

Dean was startled awake when the ground beneath him shook violently. He jolted from his furs, his sword already in hand. He froze when his eyes came to rest on the giant creature in front of him. “Oh shit,” he cursed as he stared at the dragon.

The beast was easily five times Dean’s height and nearly ten times as long. The scales were a deep blue and they shimmered in the early morning light. A large pair of leathery wings were folded against the dragon’s sides. He had a large sail running from the top of his head down to the base of his neck, thick spines every few feet that the skin of the sail attached to. He had a large pair of horns that started just behind his eyes and pointed straight back.

Dean swallowed thickly before saying, “So, I guess you’re the dragon that lives around here.”

The creature nodded his head once. He slowly laid down, wrapping his tail around himself. He lowered his head until it was level with Dean. The hunter stared into a large pair of sapphire blue eyes.

The dreams from the night before rushed to the forefront of Dean’s mind. His eyes widened in shock. “Cas,” he said, voice full of surprise.

“Hello Dean,” Castiel replied.

Dean’s legs gave out beneath him and he crumpled to the ground. Immediately, a clawed foot was reaching out to help him back to his feet. Dean was still shaky and leaned against Cas’ foot for support. He continued to stare, not knowing what to say.

“I did tell you the dragon and I were friends.”

“Yeah,” Dean huffed. “I would say you’re friends. I didn’t even know dragons could shapeshift.”

“Most don’t anymore, saying that our human form is weak and unbecoming. I love both of my forms equally.” The dragon paused before adding, “I meant what I said last night Dean. I’ve never hurt anyone. Crowley doesn’t want me here because I’ve made my home in a mine full of gemstones. He and I have a blood contract that states he will not kill me, so he is trying to find another way to get me to leave.”

“Why do you have a contract in the first place?”

“My brother Lucifer used to inhabit these lands and I managed to defeat him and run him out,” Cas explained.

“Shit, Lucifer,” Dean exclaimed.

“It’s ok Dean, I’m not mad that you killed him. He was a horrible being and deserved his fate. I feel no sympathy or remorse for him. The world is a much better place without him, Alistair, and Naomi,” Cas said with a firm finality.

“Ok then.” Dean looked at his camp and then back to the dragon. He slowly pulled himself away from the warm scales and walked over to the campfire. He kicked some dirt on it and watched it splutter out. He started packing his supplies and whistled for Chevy. He heard a nicker in the distance, her signal that she heard him.

“Dean, what are you doing?” The hunter turned around to see Cas in his human form, staring at Dean with confusion. “What’s it look like Cas? I’m packing up.”

The dragon shook his head. “Why? Do you not wish to be around me any longer now that you know what I am?”

“What, no! It’s just I need to return to the castle and tell Crowley that I won’t be the one to force you to leave. I could come back for a few days, but I’ll have to leave to find work. If I’m not hunting, I’m not getting paid,” Dean explained as he started saddling Chevy.

Dean looked up when Cas’ hand grabbed his own. “Dean, did you not hear me when I explained where I lived?”

“Yeah, a cave full of gemstones. What does it matter? You said last night you wouldn’t be willing to leave this place and I wouldn’t ask that of you.” Dean pulled his hand free and finished saddling his horse.

Cas rolled his eyes. “Are you always this dense?” Dean glared at him. “Dean, I can give you some of the gemstones from the cave to sell to earn enough money to go to your brother.”

“What, no, I would never ask that of you! They are yours,” Dean argued.

“Honestly, I’m not a collector of gems. I prefer my books and souvenirs from my worldly travels. I chose the cave because it looks pretty, but I’m not unwilling to part with some of the stones. Besides, I’m not sure how much longer I will call it home.” Cas dropped his gaze to the ground.

“Why would you leave this place? You said last night you wouldn’t,” Dean stated. “You also said you enjoyed your privacy.”

“You’re right. Never before have I considered leaving my home because I never had a reason. But now, I might,” Cas said as he lifted his gaze back to Dean, his cheeks stained a bright red.

“Cas, no, you don’t want me. I’ve got nothing to offer you. I told you, I’m just a grunt. Sam’s the smart one of the family,” Dean said as he backed away.

“Don’t say that about yourself. I have the ability to see souls and your soul is the brightest I’ve ever seen Dean. It attracts me like a moth to flame. I have lived most of my life alone and I’ve grown incredibly lonely. Last night, you proved you’re not like other hunters. You could have killed me and yet you haven’t even attempted to do so.” Cas stepped back into Dean’s personal space. “I’d really like to get the chance to know you Dean.”

Dean huffed. “I would be the hunter who falls for a dragon,” he muttered before leaning forward and lightly pressing his lips against Cas’. That was just the start of Cas and Dean’s love story.

Tagging: @lonewolf34500 @notwithd @starrynightdeancas @flowersforcas @cockleslovesdestiel

[squidedibles]

Squidken 300 dragons coining event !

[event starts February 23rd to March 4th]

I'm amazed I reached 300 followers honesty, didn't expect it at all. sooo doing a little xenogender coining event!! tag me in what you make!

angels / deities ((Feb 23

dogs / canines ((Feb 24

nurses / nursecore ((Feb 25

love / lovecore ((Feb 26

dragons / HTTYD ((Feb 27

squids / octopus ((Feb 28

magical boys / magical girls ((Mar 1

radioactive / hazardous ((Mar 2

dead / gore-ish ((Mar 3

jesters / clowns ((Mar 4

rules ofc

> you are allowed to make multiple genders on certain days, the more the better!

> please try and post them on the correct days, just to keep things organized

> ofc you can skip a day if needed

> have fun!!!

little tags:: @epikulupu @mogai-sunflowers @cocajimmycola @kirby-in-wonderland @hauntingidol @str4ngl3d-r3d @sugarychime @succullusion @r0ttiingphantasm @cielos--angelphilia

[occassionalfanficwriter]

I see your Jaskier Falls in love first but Oblivious Geralt, Geralt falls in love first and Oblivious Jaskier, They both know Jaskier is in love but Jaskier doesn't know Geralt loves him back, They both know Jaskier is in love but Geralt is obliviously in love with him and raise you my contribution:

Geralt Falls in love first and falls in and out of love with Jaskier and Jaskier doesn't realize up until post dragon hunt.

So it goes like this:

Geralt doesn't have any opinion on bards and he's just minding his business treating everything as a background noice up until his brain suddenly registers the singing and he looks and sees Jaskier and it's love at first sight even if the song is terrible and horrendously wrong on so many levels. He can forgive that because 1. Bard and 2. Beautiful Singing Voice.

So he goes back to eating and thinks to keep this one as a memory. Nothing will come out of it because he is a witcher and the Butcher of Blaviken.

But then he hears footsteps and the bard is talking to him and look, Witcher School didn't include what to do when your crush talks to you in its curriculum so it takes him a while to register what Jaskier is saying but because Witcher genes, a while in terms of Witcher is equivalent to like nanosecond to humans.

So he gives 3 words and that's it. Geralt kinda hates himself for it but also thanks his self discipline that he didn't say some stupid shit like, "i like your voice" because that's probably an i love you is bardspeak.

And Geralt is ready for this to be over except Jaskier keeps talking and Geralt realizes that Jaskier ("what a nice name" "shut up brain" doesn't recognize a Witcher and Geralt entertains a one night stand and no more because we all know he accepts the love he thinks he deserves. Sad emo witcher™ etc etc.

But THEN! Jaskier pieces it out and then he's recognized as Geralt of Rivia and he leaves because he knows what follows his name.

'Story of my life' Geralt thinks because no good thing lasts when it comes to him. So yeah he's a little broken hearted up until Jaskier calls him the Butcher of Blaviken and then he falls out of love because you know he has standards. And he is slightly pissed up until they get captured and then he is pissed and sorry for Jaskier.

And then he keeps on getting disappointed with Jaskier especially on the beginning of toss a coin up until he hears the whole song and then Jaskier explains why he did what he did and Geralt falls in love again and has an introspection so Jaskier becomes his travelling companion.

And then they travel together and Geralt just wants to punch a whole drowner pack or go back in Kaer Morhen because in all the years he spent on the Path, Jaskier is the only one who gives him continuous emotional upheavals. Falls in and out of love towards this Bard that loves peole easily without a care for his own self and look this wasn't part of the Witcher curriculum. His heart and mind is in a seasonal love with Jaskier and the worst part is that Jaskier doesn't know.

Now to make this more fun think about this from Jaskier's side. It's the medieval fantasy era and during that time artists treat their Muses so much better than they would when compared to a lover, think about a fan that got close to their idol but little bit more personal and yet dettached at the same time.

Like Jaskier, calls Geralt his muse at the same breath as saying they are friends but back then a Muse was someone the artist saw and put into a pedestal. Flaws are loved and beautiful in their eyes. And Geralt senses this distance but can't articulate the feeling and Jaskier knows it but doesn't say anything because a Muse isn't like a comman man.

So Jaskier is toeing the line between keeping his Muse untarnished and being a friend. There is a fine line between Jaskier the Bard and Jaskier the Witcher's friend, and it begins and ends on Geralt's witcher job. Geralt doesn't notice this at all up until the mountain.

Because Jaskier easily flunctuates between his personas and does it seamlessly that it barely registers to Geralt. Because they don't travel together long enough even if they've traveled together for 10 years before the djinn incident.

Which brings the djinn incident and Yennefer to a whole new meaning.

Because when they meet, Yennefer knows a likeminded soul and Geralt is in the same boat as her. In and out of love. Jaskier is the Istredd to Geralt's Yennefer. And they bond over that and in this moment, Geralt is hurt and sorta tired of loving Jaskier but he doesn't want to stop. Add that with the sex magic and the almost dying and the djinn Geralt decides to fuck with Yennefer because they're on the same boat and nothing can truly come out of this.

And Geralt isn't adverse to friends with benefits and there is, in the depths of his heart, the unspoken desire for Jaskier to take him down on whatever pedestal he was placed on by doing this thing with Yennefer.

But it never happens and its just awkward. Because nothing changes, Jaskier still keeps on treating him the same and he just wants to keep on being in love with jaskier and not fall out of love because of whatever new muse Jaskier found while away from him.

He wants to be more than Jaskier's Muse,to be his only muse, to be a friend and to be his lover but he can't because Jaskier goes where the winds take him and Geralt is afraid that one day he'd walk the path alone and Jaskier won't return to his side.

And then the whole dragon hunt happens and he hears Jaskier's offer and he wants to take it. Agree and make promises that whenever they part there is a place where they will meet and it will be theirs but then he hears the words,

"-for a while."

And Geralt knows that whatever he'd have with Jaskier on the coast won't be permanent it would be a fleeting moment and they'd be back where they started and Geralt.Is.So.Fucking.Tired.

So he simultaenously says all the words he doesn't want to say and the words he want to say and he is fed up with the world and himself because nothing ever comes out right from his mouth and Jaskier is hurt but Geralt has no fucks to give right now.

He just wants Jaskier, wants Jaskier to remain in his life for as long as possible, something permanent that he can hold onto, something that makes him different from the other people Jaskier has come to collect over the years, something more than whatever it was that he had with De Stael.

So Jaskier leaves and he is one muse less and sure it hurt but artists takes their pain turns the ugly into something beautiful and its what Jaskier does. Her Sweet Kiss is his pain and heartbreak turned into a beautiful song and after that he turns to his other muses. Finds other Witchers and interesting people with interesting stories and sometimes ordinary people with their beautiful ordinary stories.

Except his fellows from Oxenfurt realizes this and Jaskier gets an awakening and has committed the most heinous crime, for him, by falling in love with his Muse, Geralt of Rivia the White Wolf. He had debased his Muse by doing so and suddenly the parting is more painful and more just in his eyes because real artists don't do that. They illuminate their Muses and makes them more brilliant, loving them and not loving them at the same time. And Jaskier stops singing because he knows whatever song he'll make next won't hold up to what he had made when Geralt was his Muse.

His other muses were not muses at all but lovers and he has fallen the same way his many colleagues did once in their career. So he takes up writing for awhile because there are stories to be told, stories that are not song worthy but worthy to be told in writings. Jaskier becomes just Jaskier and he grows for it.

In a different way than Jaskier the Bard had grown and he accepts his many failings both as a friend and as a Bard to Geralt.

So the next time they meet, both of them has grown as a person and Geralt takes the first step because he has learned that sometimes no matter how many times he has been hurt that it is better to have known love that left guessing what it would have and he had chosen Jaskier a long time ago. Settled his heart on the gentle palm of Jaskier's calloused hand and trusted that it would be taken care of.

Geralt apologizes for the hurtful words and bears himself naked to Jaskier's eyes, lets himself be known and finds comfort in the knowledge that no matter what Jaskier had once loved all of him. He lays his heart and soul bare to this person who had seen beyond his worst and taught him how to be his best.

And Jaskier accepts him as he is and as he was all the while saying sorry for the hurt he had unintentionally gave him and all of this gives Ciri hope even if the world is in turmoil. Because this is what she would be fighting for, it was more than just surviving and peace for her now.

Because Geralt and Jaskier has shown her something that calls to the primal part of each person's soul. Something that has been discarded by the world for a long time, something thought of as useless and disdained and yet it was what would make the world a better place.

In between the wartorn and ravaged land that the world became underneath Nilfgaard's army, Geralt and Jaskier learned and remembered the gentleness and healing of love.

A love that comes from a place of understanding and striving to be good, to others, to the ones we love, and to ourselves. That separation doesn't always mean good bye, that not all bridges that have been burned can't be rebuilt anew, and that there is always someone who will look at you and see all of you, even the parts of yourself that scare you because they have loved you and decided to keep on loving you.

And for all of the pain they gave each other, intentional or not, they had chosen to love and keep on loving each other. And Geralt knows that Jaskier has made his choice and that choice is him.

[faelune-home]

FFXIV Write 2020 #28: Irenic

(A/N: A touch more uncertain with this one. The first thought I had was MInfilia’s goal for peace with the beast tribes, but I already kinda addressed that. So the second thought I had was of Ishgard rebuilding with the dragons. But I may have lost my way with this one a bit. :/

Post-Heavensward. NPC focused.

Word count:1045

@ffxiv-writers)

Some few meetings between dragons and the populace wouldn’t undo a thousand years worth of distrust and hostility immediately, but it was a better start than anything.

The arrival of a former heretic at the gates with a dragonet had been the spark for the idea for Ser Aymeric. He’d initially been baffled at the reports from Ser Francel, however it had gotten him thinking. Some few designated places in both territories and perhaps…

The Firmament could be the start; the children making their home in the new area wouldn’t be a problem. Even with most of their so far short lives living in fear of dragons, it would be a better start to change the tides of such opinions while they were young. Ehll Tou herself certainly helped, already the talk of the cobbles, ever surrounded by young people. The young dravanian had also pledged to try and convince her own peers in the Sea of Clouds to join her.

The older generations would be harder to convince. Those that fought on the front lines, or that lost family that had. The old scars still weeped and bled, and even those few elder Brumites that wished to reside in the Firmament were wary with the new presence. The best plan Aymeric could consider would use Tailfeather deep in the Forelands as a neutral meeting place, but to travel all the way there when most yet struggled in the frozen highlands was a hindrance to the idea.

And none of this yet considered those like Marcelloix, the returned heretic. Those numbers within the heretics that would wish to return to society, but feared they wouldn’t be accepted for their decisions...or their appearance. Aymeric couldn’t help but wish Lady Iceheart remained with them. So often she spoke of peace and making the Holy See accountable for their crimes, and while she may have been a radical about her actions, to have someone to assist in parley now that a mutual goal was possible would’ve been a blessing from Halone Herself.

“Penny for your thoughts?” The Lord Commander turned to the new voice, away from his musing thoughts staring out at the clouds, only to jump in surprise at the gil coin tossed at him. He caught it, though not without a fumble or almost dropping it, earning a snicker from Hilda.

“Preferably I would like to be handed things, not haphazardly tossed them with a risk of losing them into the Sea of Clouds,” the man huffed.

“Well int someone a bit touchy today? Too much paperwork?” The woman smirked, arched eyebrow betraying her curiosity at his mood.

“That, and various considerations.” He sighed. “Alongside long term reform to the city’s inner workings - over seeing the restoration in the Firmament, redistributing the political powers away from the upper houses and the church into the parliament, reconsidering our historical texts and the teachings we would pass on to our younger generations - I’m afraid I’m also rather lost on how to move forward with our old foes. At least with regards to repairing relations and being able to consider them allies once more.”

“Ah, so a lot of fancy faff I wouldn’t much get,” she scoffed, kicking a stray pebble down the street. “But that is your job innit? Make sure we’re all working out now and getting along. But a lot of folk dun want to play nice.”

“Unfortunately not. I promised Midgardsormr I would do better by my people toward his children and his kin. I would like to start by encouraging discussions but--”

“But you can’t just be having people waltz out of here into the freezing cold to go all the way to some wilderness only to meet another cold reception,” Hilda interrupted. Another wry smile crawled across her lips as she saw the elezen man’s jaw stiffen.

“Aye, that would be the right of it.”

“I can tell you now, whatever ideas you’ve got musing around that fluffy head of yours-” She said, poking his forehead and ignoring the hard look he shot at her, “-everyone down in the Brume at least has mulled over the exact same thoughts five times over. And you’re a smart lad, you probably know this lot up here in the Pillars have the same notions like.”

“And yet no ideas on how to solve it,” he grumbled. Hilda rolled her eyes.

“Oi now, what happened to the man that went round promising to do better by the rest of us? I think he’s crawled into a hole and left his shell behind.”

Aymeric frowned, confused. “You just highlighted my problems, surely you would understand what ails me.”

The woman huffed. “Aye, I pointed ‘em out, but I figured that’d also tell you how to fix it. Plenty of folk aren’t too certain about the big race into a ‘peaceful future’ you’re talking about, ‘specially when we haven’t seen it yet and they don’t much believe in it. Maybe the best thing you can do is actually talk to ‘em and then give whatever daft ideas you have a try. Rather than wallowing ‘bout how it all seems hopeless.”

“If discussion worked, then we would have reached an agreement before now.”

“And you of all people should know that not only do these high house lot like the sound of their own voices and they’ll keep talking in circles till they get what they want, but that’s just it; men won’t stop till the plan suits them. You need to stick in and get them on your side.” Hilda shrugged.

“Like I keep saying, I don’t know much about this nonsense, that’s all your job. But if you need an ear to complain when the day job gets to you, you do know where to find me.” She snatched her gil coin from his grasp and sauntered off, leaving the man alone with his thoughts once more.

He wanted to hope for a better future for Ishgard, once that would include the dravanians. But it was a future that still looked a long way off for them all. He sighed again, looking to the skies.

A stray prayer to Halone, to grant him strength and the way through the gloom left his lips, drifting into the mists.

[blarrghe]

Kali Broska

Wrote this a bit ago, but didn’t post the full thing to the tumblog. Posting now as it fits @zevraholics Zevwarden Week theme of the day - La Petite Mort (Death). Hope that’s cool =] AO3 Link

If it was supposed to be spelled “Brosca”, Kali didn’t know, and she didn’t care. Kali was a casteless dwarven woman (whether you liked it or not, yes, she was a woman), with two fists that were made for three things: fighting, drinking, and more fighting. She spent her entire life acting as the support of her small family, broken as it was. While she provided the money and food, her mother drank her days away unhappily cursing her children for all they didn’t accomplish, and her father, long dead, had left his daughters with nothing but gambling debts. 

The only person in the world Kali trusted in her life before the Blight was her sister, Rica. Rica had charms that Kali didn’t, and she could win the hearts of even noble men with smiles and pleasant words. Kali supported her sister in her attempts to marry up, and never minded that her own line of work was more brutal, while her sister had to stay focused on her appeal - in fact, she preferred things that way. Rica was safe, and she was free to let her fists do the talking most of the time, which suited her fine.

Apart from Rica, Kali had one close friend in her brother-in-crime, Leske. They weren’t exactly affectionate, but the dwarf had saved her skin more than once in a close fight, and she had many times done the same in return. Life in the slums of Dustown is unforgiving. No friendships are made that can outlast all that Orzammar can throw at a casteless duster, and all told, Kali would still say that she only trusted Leske as far as she could throw him, but, she wagered, that was probably pretty far.  

When a job for her Carta boss went south and Kali was forced into exile, her only real thought was to her sister, Rica. With a heavy heart she left Orzammar to join the Wardens, ready to fight darkspawn for as long as the surface days were long, but occupied all the time with thoughts of her sister. Rica had assured her that prospects with a promising noble house were very good, and that she would be made of noble caste within no time, but Kali hated to leave her with nothing to fall back on. She vowed, somehow, to come into cash enough to help her sister, as soon as the ritual and battle at Ostagar were over.

But things did not go as planned, and long months of fighting darkspawn, werewolves, and demons went by before she could return to Orzammar. Upon returning, she found that her fears had in fact been unwarranted, and her sister was - as promised - poised to marry into nobility - royalty, even! Though the progression of the line was being challenged. Kali had never had any love for the royal ruling class of Orzammar; few dusters did. But this young prince promised progress for the low classes and the casteless, and moreover her sister’s fate mattered above any political jabber. So Kali ran the prince’s errands, feeling little different than she did running errands for the Carta, and doing so brought her again face to face with Leske.

When Leske betrayed her, she was angry, but not surprised. While she had been gathering forces against a blight, her old compatriot had been working his way out of imprisonment, climbing the ladder of hard jobs back to a place where coin could be gotten, and she could not blame him for that. She did kill him though, taking his head in battle with furious skill.

Of all the wonders of the surface world, the animals were Kali’s favourite. In Dustown there are only nugs, bugs, and the occasional panic of a stray darkspawn that breaks through the Deep Road defences. But in the forests of Ferelden there were wolves, bears, even sometimes wild cats. She took on a canine companion, whom she called Kallack - war - and allowed, with bemusement, for the elf-assassin she took to her ranks to continually attempt to impress her with his command of and friendship with various creatures.

Kali enjoyed the attention from the assassin, and she found unlikely friendship in the Warden Alistair, as well. The kid was new to battle, and unfamiliar with death, but he had a warrior's heart and the right sort of spirit to share a drink with, and that led into friendship fair enough.

Leliana, she struggled to understand. The bard was kind, and impossibly sweet, but a little mad and sometimes too soft. Still, Kali grew to trust her like another sister, and she said the same of Morrigan, the witch, in short time. Morrigan was strong, like Kali, and determined in her aims. Kali admired her and consulted with her often, finding her opinions and guidance valuable as she fought to gain respect in the humans’ world. With the help of Morrigan’s shapeshifting magic, Kali’s body was bound in the form it should have been, all along, and the process gave her a peace she had never expected to receive. It was dark magic, perhaps, and Wynne disapproved, but Kali could tell little difference, and generally found that Wynne fretted too much, and asked her to wax philosophical much more than was warranted.

Kali was a woman of few words, she fumbled with writing or responding to letters, and read few books. She could not tell you if Leliana’s songs were worthy of Orlesian courts, nor whether Zevran’s poetry would be considered trite by scholars of such things, but she had no reason to care: to her, these were the finest arts in all the world, and she loved them.

So it was with Kali, her affections were hard-won, but once you had them, they were hard-lost as well. Zevran flattered her, and she began her relationship with him on a thoughtless whim; a pretty thing to warm her bedroll, as he would say. But he strove ever to impress her, and soon, he did. He did not win her heart with his fighting skill, something which Kali admired but could certainly best in contest, but in the way that he could speak in soft rhythms while she simply listened, him never demanding more. And she loved him for the way he understood her life - what it had meant to grow up casteless and penniless, trapped below ground doing dirty work for dirty dealers, without her having to explain any of it. He called her beautiful, stringing together three words that she had never heard woven for her before, and he did so often.

When Morrigan came to her it was with concern, for she knew that Kali would be stubborn and unwilling to dictate choices over Alistair’s body or bed; Alistair naturally asked what she would have him do, and she was honest. By that time Alistair had learned to trust Kali’s leadership, and would have followed her into any insane plan, but Alistair had earned her respect in return, and she had arranged with difficulty for his rule over Ferelden after the battle was ended - a deal made with Anora that Alistair took reluctantly, but with dignity nonetheless. That same dignity she offered Alistair on the eve of battle, telling him to choose of his own volition, and he elected to fight without tricks, fully expecting that if there would be a price to pay, he would beat her to the paying of it.

Kali fought with sword and axe, having learned the art of channeling her anger from the mighty dwarven fighters of the deep roads, and the skills of a champion from her kindred companion, Sten. She was a whirlwind of force in a battle, taking on large and brutish darkspawn without fear, and slaying beasts and evil spirits until her armour ran red with blood. When the dragon came down upon the Wardens on the rooftop, Alistair could not keep his fearsome friend from the fight, and she leapt atop the monster’s back and slew it, relinquishing her soul as she did.

Zevran was not the same after Kali’s death. He wandered back into a life of contract killing and misbehaviour, but with less lightness in his step, and no more evenings filled with poetry. In her final farewell to her bewildered lover, she told Zevran in her own way of how full he had made her heart, how special he had made her feel, how light and happy and full of tingling feeling and deep love; how his love had changed her, shown her a goodness in the world she hadn’t thought to find, guided her through challenges on the surface that in her whole lowly life, she had never dreamed she might face - oh, that she did not have to face those things alone! All of this, she spoke directly into the heart of the reformed Crow with her own three words: “I love you.” She told him, and the two exchanged rings under the stars together, alone and perfect, in a ceremony of their own design - with poetry and love making, and the knowledge that their souls would be forever bonded.

Zevran always knew that his beautiful Warden might be taken from him in the end, and he had spent much of his time with her desperately trying to cling to the strength to accept it. But when that time finally came, that strength failed him, and he took little comfort for a very long time. And even as in time he found new adventures to entertain him, never again did he love, for there were none who could compare, and he wore Kali’s ring until the end of his days.

[dainty-baneberry]

Prompt #26: When Pigs Fly

(Lower La Noscea, Eorzea. Post 3.15 Heavensward and the Scholastic quests.) Candlekeep Quay was a sleepy little port on the edge of Lower La Noscea In years past only the candle-keeps of Oschon's Torch made use of the port. When the nearby and much more heavily settled Moraby Drydocks were damaged in the Calamity, the Quay was pressed into service and expanded. Once the flood of artisans and supplies had seen to the repairs of the Drydocks, Candlekeep Quay was once again forgotten. Dealing only with the most pedestrian of domestic cargo. It was “guarded” by a handful of greenhorn Yellow Jackets. The most pressing thing they had to concern themselves with was the occasional drunk argument over one of the local girls who was a renown flirt. It was of great surprise to those that were station there, then, that at half past the bell of 6pm Storm Sargent Orrick arrived on the ferry from Aleport. He claimed to have been hailed there by a Yellow Jacket named Sylskaetsyn who had penned an urgent missive regarding a crate of contraband that arrived with no name. Sylskaetsyn, confused and having penned no such letter, then became the sole witness to a most peculiar murder. A cloaked figure, dressed all in black stepped out from a pile of barrels, shot Storm Sargeant Orrick at close range in the chest, and disappeared into the wilds of the Salt Strand before anyone could react. Inspector Briardien adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose as he bent down to inspect the corpse of the late Storm Sargent Orrick. At barely 2 bells old it was still considered fresh. The blood splatter from the wound suggested that the weapon used to dispatch the man had been of high caliber. The slender Elezen man's brow puckered a little; “Tell me,  Sylskaetsyn, do you note anything unusual about the Sargeant's shirt?”

“Other than its got a dirty great hole through it... can't say as I do.”  Sylskaetsyn observed. “Scorch marks.” Inspector Briardem pointed at the tell-tale markings. “And not caused by black powder, as one would expect from a projectile revolver. This wound was created by a magitek weapon.” “Magitek!” Sylskaetsyn fully started back a step. “S'wot Imperials use, ain't it? Ain't none of that round here.” “To an extent, aye, indeed it is.” Inspect Briardem rose, adjusting his glasses again and his silvery gray hair besides. The Ishgardian Elezen man was impeccably neat at all times. “There are only two peoples on this Star whom are known to use weaponry that would create a wound with this pattern etched into the victims clothing. Those in the Imperial army, as we have already deduced and Ishgardian Machinists. And if you were to ask me if either are likely to answer whom might have done this, I should ask you when did pigs start to fly.” “Machi-what?” “Precisely.” the Inspector waved  Sylskaetsyn's question away. He had already anticipated that the unpopular Ishgardian discipline would be a complete unknown in this backwater Eorzean port. “Tell me, do you happen to know if the good Sargeant had any enemies?” “D'ye have a week?” a female voice snorted, fairly dripping with disgust. “And there weren't nowt good 'bout him neither!” “Do forgive me, I do not believe I caught your name?” The elezen man peer down his nose at the pretty, if somewhat shabbily dressed miqo'te woman. Her blue black hair was tipped with white and her uniform marked her as a Mealvaan's Gate assessor. “A'zumyn.” The woman stated clearly, striding over. “If you check the dead man's pockets you'll find a book of names of people he were extorting.” That raised Inspector Briardien's eyebrows sharply but he almost instantly collected himself to rifle through the slain Storm Sargeant's pants. As promised within one of the pockets he found a slim, leather bound notebook. The Inspector had no qualms about flicking through the pages, noting 18 different names. All of which appeared to be miqo'te names by the tell tale letter prefix that denoted their tribe. Bar one.

A singular Roegadyn name, Delicate Willow, stuck out like a sudden scream in near silence for how jarringly out of place it appeared. “Would you be so kind as to explain to me the manner of extortion the late Orrick was engaged in?” Inspector Briardien requested politely, his eyes still lingering on the name Delicate Willow, even as he smoothed down the front of his cobalt blue bilaud from where it had wrinkled when he bent down. His instincts were tingling. He could not say why, or how but he just knew that this event was somehow related to her. She may not have been involved in the actual killing act. She may even be wholly unaware of it but she was the lead he needed to follow. He was certain of it. “T's a simple enough scam. Loan a little coin to someone down on their luck, nothing official, just between friends. Then make it so its real hard for them to pay it back. Add a interest, a couple late fees and the next thing the mark knows the have an unpayable debt on their hands.” A'zumyn explained. “He almost got me with it, only my mentor at the Arcanists Guild stepped in and returned the coin he loaned me before he had a chance.” “The Admiral banned piracy but the bloody worst of them never can quite give it up.” Sylskaetsyn spat. “So I see.” Inspector Briardien murmured. Delicate Willow. Delicate Willow. The name reminded him of something. Delicate... Diaphanous...Airy....Elegant...Dainty. A bolt shot through Inspector Briardien, stiffening his spine suddenly. In an instant his mind was awash with with visions of a finely built woman. He had been surprised to see her, an Au Ra, in Ishgard of all places. And with one of Stephanivian Haillenarte's Machinist weapons on her hip. A carbine style, Briardien recalled. Long barreled, but slender and easily able to fit under a flowing cloak. “Sylskaetsyn, would you describe the cloaked figure you saw as “tall” ?” Inspector Briardien questioned leadingly. “Just the opposite, in fact! It all happened so quick, its hard t'say with confident what I actually saw with my own two eyes but, I do recall thinking the person might have been a wee little thing t'be hidden behind those barrels for Twelve knows how long, and none of us be any the wiser.” “Yes. Such stillness and dedication to their tasks suggests that this was the work of a professional.  This was very clearly an execution by who had been watching the Quay for a long time, and knew not only to send a letter signed in your name but the exact ferry that the Storm Sargeant would arrive upon. The single shot with a magitek rifle, the quick, clean escape, all these pieces can lead us to only one conclusion. The killer was Frumentari.” Inspector Briardien announced, adjusting his glasses. “Frumen...wha?” “Spies of the Garlean Empire.” “Oh!” “Storm Sargent Orrick no doubt plied his ill-begotten game on the wrong mark and, rather than risk being unmasked, the operative saw the threat to the mission eliminated.”

It made perfect sense to Sylskaetsyn. He may have been the most senior Yellow Jacket in Candlekeep Quay but he was still green, having barely made is 25th Rank before being assigned to watch duty in the forgotten port. He had been almost certain he was going to be set up for the Storm Sargeant's murder until Inspector Briardien had unexpectedly arrived and mostly competently taken over. “I shall see this book of names turned over to the proper authorities so that they may attempt to uncover which of the names may be the Fox in the Hen House. I shall leave you to your reports and...corpse disposal.”

Inspector Briardien informed Sylskaetsyn with a collected Ishgardian bow before he turned towards the Pier. There was a ferry to Aleport with his name on it departing in the next 5 minutes and the Inspector was well desirous to be on it. “Yes! Thank you, Inspector! Not sure what we would have done if you hadn't happened along. Never would have noticed all that, the stuff about it being a professional wot done it, if you had not pointed it out.” Sylskaetsyn insisted, suddenly remembering his manners to thank the slender Elezen man and reply with an Eorzean salute.

Inspector Briardien's reputation for brilliance of mind, especially when it came to deduction, was clearly well deserved in Sylskaetsyn opinion. Inspector Briardien gave a cursory nod, which unseated his glasses and required him to adjust them on the bridge of his aquiline nose once before. As he moved toward his transport a thin smile graced his lips. He was not a betting man. He did not believe in the sport of gambling, or wagering against luck but he would place coin on Delicate Willow being a relative of some sort to the woman known as Dainty Baneberry. Inspector Briardien was no Dragonslayer, nor a Knight. He was technically a noble born but House Manseauguel of Ishgard was not one of any particular note. Yet he knew what the Warrior of Light, the Survivor of the Dragonsong had done for Ishgard. It was impossible for a man of his intellect to be blind to the future she had granted them. An Endless war, ended by her hands. A multi-generational cycle of violence broken so that peace could be known between man and dragon. An ancient crime finally exposed to the world, and those who would continue it made to answer for it. By her doing. Somewhere between Candlekeep Quay and Aleport, over the deepest part of the ocean and while the crew of the ferry were busy navigating through the dark, a small, leather bound notebook did slip from Inspector Briardien's hands and plunge, unseen, into a watery grave. A thin smile fleetingly quirked up the corner of Inspector Briardien's lips; “Ishgard remembers, Warrior of Light.”

[skyfireflight]

The Dragon Prince: A (Speculative) Timeline

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD

This a timeline I've compiled from the show, information from the creators, and my own speculations. Also from this post by @mimosaeyes and this post by @solitae 

Things here may be debunked once we have new information.

Suggestions for edits are welcome!

(And honestly, there's probably going to be a bunch of typos.)

Part of this is under a read more, because it's long.

Timeline:

5,000 years ago

1. The first elves appeared; at this time, they are not differentiated by primal sources

2. Dragons and elves are not united

3. Humans were struggling and suffered from starvation

2,000 years ago

1. The Rise of Elarion

Presumably when the City of Elarion was founded; still possible that it was named after a person.

2. Humanity found their way to magic; this allowed their civilization to begin to thrive

Presumably when Aaravos gifted magic/dark magic to humans.

1,200 years ago

1. The Era of Sol Regem, the first king of the dragons

2. The adventures of Sir Phineas Cursed; travelled together with Delilah Giehl, who became the youngest known university professor at the age of twelve

3. Dark magic has become a problem, with mass poaching of magical creatures

4. The confrontation between the human dark mage Ziard and Sol Regem

Sol Regem gives the ultimatum of either humans giving up dark magic, which humans thought of as what allowed them to live and thrive, or the destruction of the City of Elarion, which was home to hundreds of thousands of people; also calls humans lesser beings.

Ziard refuses to give up dark magic, and shows horried disbelief at the ultimatum. Sol Regem goes to destroy the City of Elarion. Ziard uses dark magic to absorb fire birds in order to try to stop Sol Regem and defend the City of Elarion; Sol Regem sees this and flies back to Ziard. Ziard throws a dark magic fireball at Sol Regem; Sol Regem breathes fire at Ziard. Sol Regem is blinded; Ziard is killed.

Between 1,200 - 1,000 years ago

1. Sol Regem is no longer the king of the dragons

2. Dragons and elves unite

3. The war between dragons/elves and humans begins

Moonshadow elves, Sunfire elves, and Skywing elves are shown to have fought. Whether Earthblood elves or Ocean Primal elves fought is unknown, though some speculate they did not.

Aaravos is also shown on the battlefield, but whether he participated or simply watched (possibly by astral projection) is unclear. It is speculated/assumed that other Startouch elves did not participate.

1,000 years ago

1. The Era of Luna Tenebris, queen of the dragons and the second known dragon monarch

2. The Judgement of the Half Moon

The humans lose the war against the elves and the dragons. Luna Tenebris orders humans to be exiled. All humans are driven out of Eastern Xadia, similar to the real-world Trail of Tears. Sunfire elves and Moonshadow elves are shown to have participated. Whether or not the other four elven races participated is unclear.

3. The Great Xadian Split

Xadia is divided in two. Powerful elven mages create a physical barrier, a river of lava, to keep humans from re-entering Eastern Xadia.

Between 1,000 - 300 years ago

1. The Mage Wars

On the human side of Xadia, powerful human mages become warlords who fight for power. This continues for a long time, and is an era in which Western Xadia is violent and war-torn.

300 years ago

1. The Era of Avizandum, king of the dragons and the third known dragon monarch; married to Zubeia, queen of the dragons. He is known to the humans as "Thunder," and guards the Western/Eastern Xadian border

2. The Orphan Queen, the first queen of Katolis, ancestor of Harrow and Ezran

The Mage Wars end and the human kingdom of Katolis is founded, presumably by the Orphan Queen.

It is assumed that she found her way to Xadia and somehow met/encountered Aaravos, by which she gained the Key of Aaravos and took it back to Katolis. The Key of Aaravos has since been passed down through the royal family of Katolis.

The Orphan Queen's true name, as of now, is unknown.

3. The Fallen Star, assumed/speculated to be Aaravos, the Startouch Archmage.

This is possibly when Avizandum discovers Aaravos's involvement with humans. Aaravos is imprisoned.

4. A spell is cast so that all text that humans have on Aaravos is unreadable

Between 300 - 100 years ago

1. The other four human kingdoms, Del Bar, Evenere, Neolandia, and Duren are founded

2. Western Xadia is now called the Human Kingdoms, or the Pentarchy; Eastern Xadia is simply referred to as "Xadia"

3. Unnamed Battle between Katolis and Xadia

It was assumed that the battle shown in the intro in the very first episode was when King Harrow of Katolis killed Avizandum in revenge for the death of his wife, Queen Sarai of Katolis. However, season 3 has revealed that this is not the case.

This battle took place sometime after Katolis was founded. Katolis's banners show the symbol for the queen's crown, so I speculate that Katolis was ruled by a queen, not a king, at this time. Whether this queen is the Orphan Queen, or one of her later descendants, is unknown.

Avizandum, Moonshadow elves, Skywing elves, and Sunfire elves are shown to have participated. Whether Earthblood elves or Ocean Primal elves participated is unknown.

Sunfire Queen Aditi, grandmother to Janai and Sunfire Queen Khessa, is also shown to have fought in this battle. Her fate is unknown, though it is speculated to have something to do with humans.

Though elven lifespans vary by race, they live about as long as humans, with the exception of the Startouch elves. While the battle could have taken place closer to 300 years ago, around the time Katolis was founded, it is unlikely that Queen Aditi was alive at this time. I speculate that it is more likely for this to have occurred closer to about 100 years ago. However, if this battle did take place 300 years ago when Katolis was founded, it is possible that Aaravos was involved, which could be how he knows what happened to Queen Aditi; his involvement could also have been a factor in why he was imprisoned.

The specifics as to why this battle occurred, or whether it was one battle or part of a longer war, is unknown.

18 years ago

1. Soren is born on January 19th

17 years ago

1. Claudia was born on June 16th*

16 years ago

1. A famine begins in Duren

2. Rayla is born on July 31st

15 years ago

1. Callum is born on July 15th

15 - 11 years ago

1. Sarai, Callum's mother, marries Harrow, crown prince of Katolis

11 years ago

1. Aanya is born on June 22nd

10 years ago

1. Ezran is born on March 19th

9 years ago

1. Harrow's father, king of Katolis, dies

2. Harrow and Sarai are crowned king and queen of Katolis

3. Queens Neha and Annika of Duren ask King Harrow of Katolis for aid; 100,000 of their people risk death from starvation that coming winter

Harrow agrees, promising half of Katolis' food. However, he barely has enough food for his own people; this would mean 50,000 people in each kingdom would die.

On a discovery made by High Mage Lord Viren, he, Harrow, Sarai, the queens of Duren, and some soldiers go to Xadia and kill a magma titan to use its heart in a spell that will warm the land and provide food to save their people.

However, before they can return over the border, Avizandum finds and attacks them.

4. Queen Neha and Queen Annika are killed by Avizandum

5. Queen Sarai is killed by Avizandum

6. The famine in Duren ends; 100,000 people are saved.

7. Aanya becomes queen of Duren

8. The egg of the Dragon Prince, Azymondias (also known as Zym) may have been laid sometime this year

9. Rayla's parents may have joined the Dragon Guard sometime this year, after the egg was laid

4 or 5 months ago

(note: Runaan says that "four full moons passed" since the king of the dragons was killed; whether or not he is counting the current full moon is unclear.)

1. Harrow kills Avizandum to in revenge for Sarai's death

Harrow drives Sarai’s spear, which was enchanted by dark magic as a weapon of revenge, into Avizandum’s heart. Avizandum turns to stone.

2. Viren infiltrates the dragon monarchs' lair, taking Aaravos's mirror and kidnapping the Dragon Prince egg

Zubeia is not present. While the rest of the Dragon Guard flee, Rayla's parents stay and fight Viren. Rayla's parents are restrained in magical blocks of ice.

Viren intends to destroy the egg, to prevent the new dragon from being a future threat. Rayla's mother convinces Viren to keep the egg alive.

Afterwards, the elves and dragons believe that Rayla's parents fled with the rest of the Dragon Guard, and that Dragon Prince egg was destroyed.

3. Rayla's parents are trapped in coins by Viren through dark magic

4. The Era of Avizandum ends

5. A new era, that will be later known as The Return of Aaravos, begins

Between 4 months ago - Now

1. Soren becomes the youngest crownguard of Katolis

Now (0 days)

1. Sent by Zubeia to kill Harrow and Ezran in revenge, six Moonshadow elf assassins arrive in Katolis

They are discovered by the guard Marcos. Rayla is sent to kill him, but spares him. This allows King Harrow and his guards to prepare for the coming attack; Harrow sends Callum and Ezran away to the Banther Lodge. Runaan calls Rayla off the mission.

2. Rayla infiltrates Katolis' castle to kill Harrow and Ezran and rectify her mistake

3. Ezran, Callum, and Rayla find the stolen Dragon Prince egg

Rayla asks Runaan to call off the mission, and the princes show him the Dragon Prince egg. Runaan refuses; Rayla fights Runaan to stall him.

4. Ezran, Callum, Rayla, and Bait begin the journey to take the egg of Dragon Prince back to Zubeia in Xadia, in order to try to stop the war and bring peace between Xadia and the Human Kingdoms

5. Runaan kills Harrow

6. Runaan is captured, and Viren imprisons him in his secret dungeon

1 day later  (one day)

1. Callum gets the Key of Aaravos    

Rayla goes to the Banther Lodge to get the "glow cube," but is found by General Amaya, the princes' aunt. Callum lies to get her to let Rayla go, but it backfires, and the children flee.

1 day later (two days)

1. Viren sends his children, Soren and Claudia, to search for Callum, Ezran, and the Dragon Prince egg; he imprisons Commander Gren in his secret dungeon

Unbeknownst to Claudia, Viren indirectly tells Soren to kill the princes.

Unbeknownst to Soren, Viren tells Claudia to choose the Dragon Prince egg over Soren if necessary.

2 days later (four days)

1. The gang, along with Ellis and Ava, climb the Cursed Caldera; they meet Lujanne, a Moonshadow elf mage

2. The Dragon Prince, Azymondias, is hatched

3. Runaan is trapped in a coin by Viren through dark magic

3 days later (one week)

1. Claudia and Soren find the gang at the Moon Nexus

2. Amaya fights Sunfire elves, and Sunfire knight Janai for the first time, at the Breach

1 day later (eight days)

1. Callum finds out about Harrow's, his stepfather's, death

2. Claudia and Soren's betrayal; the gang leaves the Moon Nexus

3. Corvus is captured on the Moon Nexus by Soren and Claudia

4. Viren sees Aaravos through the mirror for the first time

2 days later (ten days)

1. The gang meet Villads, who sails them across the small sea

2. Sunfire elves and Sunfire Knight Janai take over Katolis's fortress on the Xadian side of the Breach

1 day later (eleven days)

1. Callum reads Harrow's letter and learns about the Key of Aaravos

2. Viren meets with the monarchs of the four other Human Kingdoms to convince them to unite against Xadia; they refuse

3. Zubeia falls into a grief-induced coma

2 days later (thirteen days)

1. Pyrrha attacks a Katolis town

A sun dragon, Pyrrha, flies over a Katolis town. Soren and Claudia shoot at her, but miss. In retaliation instead of just understanding how scary she was and flying away, she sets fire to the town. Claudia and Soren shoot her down and chain her.

2. Callum uses dark magic for the first time

Rayla goes to help the dragon. Callum goes after her, and saves Rayla and unchains the dragon by using dark magic. Callum falls unconscious soon after

3. Soren gets severely injured by the dragon; his spine is broken, and he is paralyzed

4. Viren makes a magical bond with Aaravos

1 day later (two weeks)

1. Corvus finds the gang

2. Ezran learns that Harrow, his father, is dead

3. Ezran and Claudia reconcile and have a heart to heart

4. Callum learns the sky arcanum and gains sky magic

5. Claudia kills a deer to heal Soren through dark magic

6. Ezran decides to go back home with Corvus, to take his place as king

7. Claudia and Soren begin their way back to the castle

8. Viren sends out shadow assassins to the other four human kingdoms, at Aaravos's advice

9. Viren is arrested on charges of treason

10. Gren is found and freed from Viren's dungeon

1 day later (fifteen days)

1. Rayla, Callum, and Zym arrive in Xadia

The three are confronted by Sol Regem, who the gang cleverly trick and entrap in order to get past him into Xadia without getting killed.

2. Amaya and Gren reunite at the Breach

3. The Breach is sealed

The Standing Battalion of Katolis set off explosives along the Breach, caving in the stone and sealing the path with an impassable flow of lava.

4. Amaya is captured by Sunfire elves

5. Ezran is crowned king

1 day later (sixteen days)

1. Soren and Claudia are arrested for treason; Ezran releases them

2. Soren and Claudia speak to Viren; at Aaravos's advice, Viren lies about telling Soren to kill the princes

3. Janai interrogates Amaya

4. The Sunfire Queen Khessa puts Amaya through the Trial of Light; Amaya is found to be pure of heart and is allowed to live

5. Rayla and Callum arrive at Rayla's home, the Silvergrove; they discover Rayla's been banished, and meet Ethari

When the other Moonshadow assassins died, but Rayla lived, the Moonshadow elves of Silvergrove assumed that she abandoned them. Rayla and Callum speak to Ethari about what really happened and their plan to return Zym to Zubeia. Ethari reveals that Zubeia is dying, and gives them animal mounts to ride. Ethari then sends a message to Zubeia.

1 day later (seventeen days)

1. Nyx intercepts Ethari's message

2. Prince Kasef gives Ezran an ultimatum; either Katolis joins the fight against Xadia, or the armies of 3 kingdoms, Neolandia, Evenere, and Del Bar, will attack Katolis the next day at dawn

3. Rayla and Callum meet Nyx; they agree to ride on her ambler across the Midnight Desert

4. Ezran is tricked by Councilman Saleer into abdicating and releasing Viren so the 3 armies won't attack Katolis; Ezran gives Bait to Barius the Baker for safe keeping, and is put in prison

5. Rayla kisses Callum

6. Nyx kidnaps Zym; Rayla and Callum go after them

7. Callum's mount, Runaan's moonstrider, is killed by soulfangs

1 day later (eighteen days)

1. Viren declares himself king of Katolis

2. Soren sneaks Ezran and Bait out of the castle; Ezran and Bait head to Xadia on Phoe-Phoe the moon phoenix

3. Opeli, Corvus, and Barius leave Katolis to seek help from the kingdom of Duren

4. Viren declares war on Xadia

5. Marcos, and some other soldiers, refuse to fight; they are marked by a "broken link" insignia

6. Lujanne disguises herself as a human and goes to interact with human townspeople

7. Rayla and Callum rescue Zym; Rayla saves Nyx from soulfang serpents

8. Callum and Rayla share their first mutual kiss

1 day later (nineteen days)

1. Rayla, Callum, and Zym arrive at the Storm Spire, the royal sky dragons' lair

2. Ezran and Bait arrive in Xadia and reunite with Callum, Rayla, and Zym

3. Phoe-Phoe dies; Ezran keeps her feather so she can be reborn

4. The armies of Katolis, Del Bar, Evenere, and Neolandia cross the border into Xadia

5. Aaravos and Viren infiltrate Lux Aurea; the two corrupt the Sun Forge with dark magic, and Aaravos kills Sunfire Queen Khessa

6. Amaya is released from prison

7. With the stolen corrupted Sunfire staff, Viren changes the human soldiers into Dark Heat-being Mode

8. Soren leaves Viren and Claudia

9. The gang climbs to the top of the Storm Spire

Callum learns a new sky magic spell, Ezran learns about Rayla and Callum's relationship, the gang meets Ibis, and sees Zubeia and discover she is in a coma. Ezran tries to wake Zubeia, but to no avail.

10. Opeli, Corvus, and Barius meet with Aanya in Duren

1 day later (twenty days)

1. Soren arrives at the Storm Spire

2. Ibis scouts from the sky, and meets with Amaya and Janai

3. With the moon opal pendant that Rayla gave him, Callum uses a Moon spell to see the past; he and Rayla discover what really happened with Rayla's parents

4. Amaya and Janai arrive at the Storm Spire; Sunfire elf soldiers from Lux Aurea gather to defend Zubeia and Zym

1 day later (twenty-one days)

1. Viren's Dark Heat-being army arrive at the Storm Spire

2. The Battle at the Storm Spire

General Amaya, Soren, Janai, Callum, and Sunfire elf soldiers defend the base of the Storm Spire, while Rayla and Bait guard Zym and the dragon queen. Duren's army, led by Aanya, and Katolis's army of "deserters," led by Corvus, Gren, Opeli, and Barius, arrive as reinforcements. The Dark Heat-being army is subdued, and the elven and human allied forces win. Viren and Aaravos climb the Storm Spire and capture Zym, but are stopped by Rayla.

3. Callum learns the Mage Wing spell

To rescue Zym, Rayla tackles Viren off of the pinnacle of the Storm Spire. Callum jumps after her, and successfully casts the Mage Wing spell, catching Rayla and saving her life.

4. Viren dies

5. Zubeia wakes from her coma; she and Zym are reunited

6. Aaravos's caterpillar forms a cocoon

2 days later (twenty-three days)

1. Viren is resurrected by Claudia through dark magic

It is assumed she did so by killing a Dark Heat-being mode human soldier, but what other methods or ingredients she may have used are unknown.

* Depending on what day in May the current timeline started, Claudia might have turned 17 years old during season 3.

Total time of first 3 seasons: 24 days

[chloe-clegane]

My Devotion and Mah Protection, Our Love - Chapter 3

These Precious Family Moments

Summary - Now that they've arrived it's time to spend a bit more time with family.

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AO3

The morning after they arrived Rayla was woken up by a peppering of kisses on her face and neck. Callum was on his side beside her under the covers and his hand was grazing the hem of her night shift. Her clean nice smelling hadn’t been traveling for a week and a half nightshirt.

“Goo’mornin’ to you too” She giggled.

He mumbled good morning while kissing her neck. She stretched her arms and tried to shake off the remnants of sleep. Then she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him in for a kiss.

“Campin’ was nice and all, but I like clean sheets.” She rubbed her arms and body against the bed to emphasize.

“You know? I think I can agree with that” He kissed her again and then looked at her with what is arguably her favorite grin, wicked licentious prince grin (although she assumed that that name was unsalvagable after yesterday). She hummed her happy contented hum and bit her lip. That was the approval Callum had been waiting for and his hands pushed the fabric up and out of his way. He moved his peppery kisses down from her chest and past her stomach and they turned slow and purposeful the lower then got. She shifted her legs open for him and he repositioned himself. Then he stopped and looked at her with a smirk. “You know the sheets aren’t the only thing that’s fresh and clean”

“RUDE!” She moved to kick him but be grabbed her arse and she laughed. Then without warning, he licked her opening and she moaned louder than she would have preferred. She could feel the cocky grin from between her legs. He moved his tongue back and forth and up and down. She laced her fingers in his hair and settled into the very welcome wakeup call. She sighed and gasped every time he flicked that sweet little bundle of nerves. She felt her leg twitch and the tingling sensation built from her back. She did her best to control the volume of the “oooohhhhh” that left her lips. “Callum-OOHH!” after she came down from the high she tried to catch her breath. He kissed the inside of her thigh a few more times.

“Did you like that? I couldn’t really tell.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and had stupidest smug grin oh his face. Stupidly cute.  

“Oh shut up!” She slapped him playfully with a pillow. It quickly devolved into tickling, squealing, and giggling. They just ended up making out.

He pulled away to look at her. “You know we slept in right? Half the day is already gone.”

“Seriously?” She looked out the window, the sun did in fact seem high in the sky

“Let’s get up! I want to do something important today” He jumped out of bed and started pulling his clothes on while he spoke. “You stay here, freshen up, get dressed and I’ll go get us some breakfast-er lunch... Lunfast?” he looked thoughtful.

“Mah people call it brunch... ya weird human”

“Oh… That sounds better than my version”

She rolled her eyes “ok go get food, I’ll get ready.” She muttered about him being a goober as he left.

Rayla lounged in the bed for a few more minutes enjoying her post-orgasm gladness. She looked around the room in the light of day. She’d only been to Katolis two other times with Callum since the original visit. Both of those times she had been sneaking into his room to sleep at night and then returning to her own before a soul could see. They were always much more careful here and at the Silvergrove than they were anywhere else. So now she looked around the room and took it in.

She got up, washed her face and changed her clothes. She looked around at the sketches, tracing her fingers over them, there were so many. It was interesting that during their infrequent and arguably short visits he hasn’t seemed to change anything. These 4 walls were a time capsuled of his life before… all of it changed. The desk was cleared off but things were sticking out of the drawers she opened one. It was more sketches. Some were funny little cartoons. One weird one looked like a marshmallow dessert man being burned, or she supposed, toasted alive by a Dragon. It made her smile because it was exactly the kooky humor she’d fallen in love with. She returned it and closed the drawer.

She made her way over to the wardrobe, she’d seen this before, she put a few things in it last night. But she looked and pushed to the back at the clothes he’d grown out of.

“Hey are you being creepy?” he was amused.

“No! Just picturin’ yer life, before I met you.” She smiled, and she knew it must look sappy.

He sat down the tray “Hey we both know my life was incomplete without you so whatever.” he smiled and directed her towards the food. “Eat!”

She japed about not sharing because he’d already eaten breakfast. He told her that although she is delicious, she was also not very filling.    

They rode into the burial site of the kings and queens of Katolis. The clifts were adorned with giant statues of long-gone rulers. It was a little intimidating but also somehow peaceful. Rayla had been here one other time. Her first time to Katolis as an actual visitor. They had come for the winter holiday. Part of the festivities was paying respects to the late Queen Sarai, it was her birthday. They had come in the snow at sunset, they lit up her statue with candles. Her sons laid out jelly tarts as an offering, poppyseed and honey, her favorite.

That was the first time they had to carry out this tradition without their father. It added an additional layer of hurt for Callum and a new kind of hurt for his brother. Candles were lit for both their parents now. They had stayed long after the courtiers and townsfolk had left. In the candlelight, Callum had introduced her to his mother. It was a sad, bittersweet moment. Rayla had wiped his tears and held not only Callum but Ezran too. Together, the three of them stayed wrapped in a blanket eating dessert while Callum told stories. Rayla knew Ezran had heard them before but it was the way the young boy learned to mourn the woman he never got to know.

This time it was in the light of day and not flame. When they arrived at Queen Sarai’s statue they dismounted. Rayla stood looking up at the effigy, her hand outstretched, her face captured her compassion. Callum reached for Rayla’s hand and brought her out of her trance. She smiled sadly at him and they approached the statue and knelt before it. Quietly Callum removed two candles and some jelly tarts and laid them out. He used sun magic to light the candles with his fingers. Neither spoke for a few moments, she watched him intently. Finally, he took her hand and looked up at his mother.

“Hi, mom… I miss you, I think at this point you know I always do.” He paused and took a deep breath to keep himself steady. “You remember Rayla of course... from your birthday from a few years ago. Well… we have big news.” He looked at Rayla with a smile full of sorrow, she squeezed his hand. “We’re getting married mom. And I’m so happy, I want you to know that” Callum’s tears rolled down his cheeks but he kept his breath and voice controlled. It occurred to her that her own tears had begun to flow. “Mom, I think you would love her. She’s brave and kind, sorta like you. She loves me and looks out for me.” This time his voice was starting to break. She loved him so much and seeing him like this never failed to break her heart “Dad used to say that you made him better. She does the for me…” she rubbed his back while he wiped his tears. “I love you mom, I hope you like the jelly tarts” He finished his speech and let the flood gates open. Rayla held him while he cried, kissed his forehead as the swayed with the breeze. He eventually looked up at her and smiled.

“I love you Rayla”

“I love you too Callum” After that, they stayed for a while. She spoke a few words, at first it felt awkward to speak these kinds of things aloud, but she knew it meant the world to the person she loved. She looked at that kind face and asked for approval and promised to keep her son happy and to love him always. The expression on the statue was so soft and it was easy to imagine she was starring right back at her. Eventually, the tears dried and they headed back to the castle.

As they rode Rayla thought about her own parents. Trapped in some dark magic prison. Who knows if they were awake and aware or suspended in a silent coma… She hoped it was the latter. When Callum had watched the memory of her patents battle with Viren he saw the coins but really they knew nothing about them. Rayla had sat Ethari down and discussed it after the battle at the storm spire. It gave him faint hope, Runnan’s flower had never touched the bottom of the pool so he was convinced that Tiadrin and Lain were not the only ones trapped. The magic flower also had a soft glow, thus the dormant and not dead theory. Rayla had always felt hope was a double-edged sword, it brings comfort and reassurance but it also risked greater devastation and disappointment. So she did what she always does, shove it to the back of her mind and stop thinking about it.

By the time they made it back into the town Callum had broken the silence and returned to his usual goofy self.

“Hey Rayla,” he was grinning eagerly. “knock knock.”

“Nooooooooooo, I haaaaate these” she whined and tossed her head back.

“This one’s good I promise, c’mom” he pleaded.

She grumbled, “Who’s there?”.

“Banther” He was holding in a laugh like if you poked him too hard it would pop out.

“Banther who?” It came out as a sigh.

“Your banth-er falling down” He was cackling. She didn’t get the joke and just looked at him with a blank face. “Haha you know? Because Banther sounds like Pants-are” He was clearly pleased with himself. Laughing uncontrollably

“Uuuuugggggggghhhhhhh Callum, that’s the worst one!” She had her face in her palm “It’s so bad!”

He composed himself and smirked. “You just don’t understand my refined sense of humor,”.

She feigned surprise “Oh! Is that it then?”.

Suddenly a rock hit the ground forcefully in front of them, Rayla’s shadowpaw spooked but she tightened the reigns and looked where it had come from. A man stood in a doorway, scowling.

“Go back to Xadia you grubby monster!” Then he slammed the door.

Callum’s hand shot up to draw a rune but she grabbed his wrist. “It’s not worth it, let’s just hurry up.”

“Rayla that was a fucking rock!” He growled

“He threw it at the ground, not at me.” She tried to say it calmly but she knew her anxiety was slipping through.

“But-” he argued.

“I want tae go back, let’s go back... please” she was pleading with her eyes and her words.

He scowled and they picked up their pace.

When the arrived back at the castle he mumbled he was going to train. Rayla knew that just translated to I’m going to throw lightning at things until I feel better. It’s turned out to be a very emotional day… for both of them. The situation made her uncomfortable, she wanted to pull out her blades and teach him a lesson as much as Callum did. But it was just one angry old man.  

As per her usual strategy, she let her fiance vent his frustrations for a half hour or so. Then she went to him, they talked through a few big-big feelings and he agreed that the visit to his mom had affected his temper, it flared more than it should have. After all, it was just one angry old man. They’ve dealt with much worse, they’re’s nothing to worry about.

After dinner, Ezran, Soren, Amaya, Janai, Callum, and Rayla were all spending time together in the royal family’s den. It was a cozy room with a large hearth. There were two couches near the fire with a small table between them, then there was a bigger table suitable for games with cushioned chairs. The room had a large bookshelf in one corner full of exciting novels, towards the bottom were children’s storybooks. Beside it was what looked like a toy chest and a bit cozy armchair, large enough for cuddling. Rayla imagined a very small Callum in the lap of an adoring woman, holding toys and listening to stories. She could picture that kind face that looked down at her today, looking down at a small boy with happy bright green eyes. That sweet little boy had become a wonderful man, now sitting in that same chair with his bare feet tucked under him, drawing in his sketchbook. She loved this man.  

She smiled at him and then pulled herself out of her reverie. Right now Rayla had more important things to worry about. Beating Soren! She called her numbers and rolled the dice.

“HA!” She roared and pulled Soren’s loot towards her end of the table. Currently, it was a few coins, a candy bar, a leather bracelet, and a pretty rock.

“AGH! NO!” He whined.

“You ready tae admit defeat human?!” She knew she was grinning her intense competitive grin.

Soren was clearly working on some mental math. Based on how badly she was beating him, she could only imagine it wasn’t very good math. “Ok one more” He pulled a dagger from his boot and placed it on the table. It looked well made and had a mother of pearl inlay on the pommel. She’d gladly take this off her friend’s hands.

He called and rolled, his numbers were good. Rayla took a moment to contemplate the dice she would select from the pile. When all of a sudden there was a guard at the door.

“Excuse me, Your Majesty, there is a Moonshadow elf gentlemen here to see the Prince and his companion Rayla. Should I allow him in?” Rayla’s head whipped up, what? who?

Ezran looked up from the board game he’d been playing with Janai and Amaya “Yes of course. Bring him here”

“Very good Your Majesty” he closed the door. Everyone’s attention was brought away from what they were doing. Rayla tried to bring her mind back to the game, she called her numbers, threw her dice and then the door opened.

“YES I BEAT YOU! TAKE THAT RAYLA!” She barely heard Soren’s cries of victory or saw him pulling the pot across the table.

“ETHARI!” She jumped to her feet and ran to him. He caught her and they embraced. “What are you doin’ here?!”

“Rayla I got your letter and I left as soon as ah could. Ah had tae talk tae you in person” He held her shoulders and looked at her seriously.

“Wait, no!” Callum tried to get up out of the chair but the foot he was sitting on had fallen asleep and he tumbled forward. “Ethati you can’t say no or stop us from-”

“What are you talkin’ about?” Ethari looked confused and then laughed “I’m not here tae stop you both” He hugged her again. “Ah needed to tell you congratulations in person. Plus you said nothing of when the weddin’ would be, ah was afraid ah would miss it.”

“Aghhhh that tingles” Callum muttered, wiggling his toes while he sat on the floor “So we have your blessing then?”

“Callum you don’ need it.” He smiled sweetly “but yes. There is an energy that connects people, ah had that with Runnan and Rayla, your parents had it, ah see it in you two.” He had always been one to believe in greater forces in the world, trust instinct, and serendipity.

She held Ethari and tried not to cry. Oh, how she loathed crying in front of other people and it’s been happening far too often. She hadn’t anticipated him refusing but similar to Callum’s family, they expected some small amount of apprehension. She looked down at her Fiance agh, I love him sooooo muuuuch. Admittedly it was a very strang reaction to a grown man rolling around on the floor hissing and shaking his foot. He started pulling himself up and she grabbed him by his jacket and jerked him over into a hug with her Uncle. Rayla was so unbelievably happy it warmed her from the inside out.

Ezran spoke up, kind as always. “Ethari, welcome to our home, it’s good to meet you again.”

“Oh yes, and an impressive home it is” He bowed but Ezran urged him not to. “Ah thank you for receivin’ me like this, probably should have written ahead of time. Ah didn’t think about it until I had already left” he chuckled, made a face and knocked on his forehead.

“We’re going to be family soon, you’ll always be welcome here” Ez smiled so genuinely.

Rayla stood back a little and looked at her uncle, he was road-weary “You’ve been travelin’, you must be tired” Rayla started to fret. “Are you hungry?”

Ethari was never one to complain “Oh it’s alright, I just uh” Almost on cue his stomach rumbled and he shrugged.

Ezran spoke to the guard “Would you please ask Barius to make a plate for Ethari and bring it here. Please also see to it that a room is ready and a bath prepared”

Her uncle wiggled his eyebrows at Rayla and whispered “ah feel so fancy”

“You’ll get used tae it” she winked.

“Oh and bring some wine. I would like to toast our expanding family” Rayla tried not to laugh when Amaya mean mugged her nephew, when Ez saw it he recoiled “uh… and a cup of juice…” he looked deflated but Rayla winked at him.

Now it was Amaya’s turn to stand, Janai translated for her (she’d become very good at sigh language in the last few years). “Please sit with us and feel welcome” She pulled the extra chair out and gestured for him to sit. He thanked her and accepted, she returned to her own seat beside him. “We’ve never been formally introduced. I am Callum and Ezran’s aunt General Amaya, this is my girlfriend Janai, Queen of Lux Aurea”

Ethari’s eyes went wide and he scrambled to bow. Janai pinned his arm to the table and spoke for herself laughing. “No need to bow. If this was my royal court, or if I was my late sister it would be another story. I don’t need so much formality.”

“Yeah this is called the family den for a reason” Ezran pointed out. “Bowing is banned in this room”

“Oh, ah see, well I’ll be sure to respect the laws of the den.” her uncle smiled.

Amaya pointed at Callum with her thumb “I’m surprised you want her to marry this weirdo, I love him but still” She smirked. Rayla knew the teasing was still retribution for the licentious prince thing. Callum cried out about her being mean to him. They all fell into a friendly conversation after that.

Rayla came up behind Ethari, resting her chin on his head and wrapping her arms around his neck. She always forgets how much she missed him until they’re reunited. Her Uncle Ethari had a calming presence in her life. The person she would go to with her problems when her parents were gone. He would braid her hair and they would talk and talk. He placed his hand over hers and they swayed slightly. Without using words the two of them had a tender exchange. The distance was gone.

Callum had put his sketchbook away and pulled his armchair closer to the table. It was their turn to have a silent exchange. He was happy her uncle was here and he loved seeing her happy like this.

Soon a generous tray was brought for Ethari, it seems the cook wasn’t sure what to serve the elf and so he sent about four options. Along with the juice and wine, he also sent up a large batch of warm jelly tarts. Everyone ate and toasted the happy couple and they picked out another game that would accommodate the whole group.

Rayla finished her cup of wine and poured another small cup. While the board game rules were being explained. Rayla quietly took Ezran’s cup and swapped it with her own. She put her finger to her lips and winked. They shared a grin. Callum shot her a look that said do not get my baby brother drunk! She went and sat in his lap and whispered in his ear. “You saw nothing.” she kissed his cheek “it was just a wee bit” Ez grinned at her as he tried to drink the alcohol without making a face.

Callum pulled her close “You’re a bad influence”

“Yeah but you like it” she teased.

“You got me there. Hey Rayla?

“Yeah?”

“This ” He motioned with a look “feels perfect” They shared a warm smile and a loving kiss before being harassed by the group. His Aunt instructed the “Get a room”.