Intro
This is the first part of the first chapter (dubbed The Gift) of something that I hope will be a little longer dealing with the consequences for the main characters Alistair/female mage PC of having agreed to the Dark Ritual. I wanted to take the characters a little further from a time of strife to a time of plenty... and perhaps back again.
Mature content, not in the first chapter but sex, and sex of all kinds plays a large part in DA and I do not think that any fan fic would be true to its source if it did not reflect that to some extent. Let's face it, the Dark Ritual was itself a sexual act, at least on one level.
Acknowlegement
Everything is Bioware's and Gaider's, genius game, great characters, involving world. My stuff is just gloss.
Request
If you read, feel free to offer some comments. It's my first time (no, let's not push that...) and I will be grateful.
Alternative site
http://www.fanfiction.net/u/2219752/
The Gift (part 1 of 3)
The deputy sub steward of the royal household in Denerim could not understand why the King had decided to travel to the Brecilian forest at that time of year. By all accounts he was a sensible man and usually well-informed, did he not know that it was almost a full two months before the grouse season? Of course, the forest was full of halla but even the deputy sub steward was now aware that diplomatic niceties vis-à-vis the Dawlish elves would not permit a hunt of halla, even if there were a desperate need for a cull. Then there was fishing, but again that was better in the salmon spawning season... As for rabbits, there were always rabbits but then rabbits, like rats, could be found everywhere and anywhere, hardly necessitating a full-blown expedition to the far off forest...
If the deputy sub steward were to be fully honest with himself what most aggravated him was that the King's sortie was that his wife was just beginning to recover from the birth of their third child and he had hoped that they would be in a position to resume marital relations within the next few weeks. The King's unexpected little excursion and the preparations for it, Maker bless his socks, put paid to that.
As he had anticipated the first day after their arrival was pure boredom but hard work with all the setting up of the temporary household. The ground was still frozen even though it was spring and it took some time to pitch tents and set up fires and turn a bare piece of earth by a stream into something resembling an encampment.
The second day was a little more entertaining, at the beginning, at least. The deputy sub steward, for some reason he was unable to fathom, was invited along to the King's delegation to the Dalish elven settlement.
The King was in his hunting apparel, a rather fetching shade of green, that clung lightly to his good muscular figure, and went quite well with his short cropped blond hair and light blue eyes rather than in his royal robes, officially greeted the lady Lanaya the current Keeper of the settlement.
She was actually rather attractive, for an elf, that was, thought the deputy sub steward. Although slight in height, she seemed somewhat more solidly build than most elven females with wider hips. Her face was rounder and she even appeared to have dimples. Her eyes were a beautiful shade of blue, her skin as pale as milk, even her facial markings were becoming, emphasizing her fetching, smooth features rather than crowding them.
The King began by making a little speech. He read it very carefully from a small piece of vellum he drew from the sleeve of his tunic. This was strange for the King who was, for the most part, an off the cuff, impulsive, orator, and all the better for it, too. However, this speech was in what the deputy sub steward assumed was Dalish, this impressed him greatly. From what he was told later, the deputy sub steward understood that it was something about how in the new Ferelden all the different nations were to work together in peace and harmony and how this was make everyone stronger and more prosperous. The King had pronounced variants of this same speech everywhere he went for about the last two years.
The deputy sub steward who had not a little training in the obscure art of customer service, also took the opportunity to observe the response of the half dozen or so of Dalish dignitaries present at this speech. They all appeared to be working very hard to remain hieratic and coolly disaffected but his reading of the slight fluctuations in their body language indicated that they too, were impressed.
Once he had finished Keeper Lanaya, or whatever her official title was, leaned towards the King and said in perfect Fereldan:
“Alistair, as always, welcome...”
They then exchanged ceremonial kisses, or at least he assumed they were ceremonial. The King apparently took this opportunity to whisper something in her delicately pointed ear. The deputy sub steward would later swear that he saw a sudden blush creep into her cheeks in reply.
There followed an exchange of gifts. These, the Deputy sub steward knew more about these because he had been directly involved in their procurement. “Dwarven crafts and goods for the elves, and elven crafts and goods for the dwarves. And some of our own stuff, whatever that is, thrown in”, the King had pronounced. So the household stewards had scoured the local markets for dwarven goods and used the Denerim palace commercial grapevine to suggest to any dwarven merchants about the area that now might be a good time to visit the capital.
Several mornings were thus spent with the King reviewing the goods preselected by the stewards. It was the King himself who had chosen the diamond pendent. A single diamond, translucent, white, exquisitely cut, with just a hint of pale blue throughout, on a plain, silverite, chain. The deputy sub steward recalled distinctly the King holding it up to the light from the windows in the high hall and nodding approvingly to the Head Steward as it glittered in his hand seeming to illuminate all of itself what was until then a gloomy Denerim day.
After he had handed over the other gifts, the King produced this one, holding it up to the light as he had done in the great hall. The expression on Keeper Lanaya’s face was difficult to read but the deputy sub steward thought the emotion it most closely expressed was sheer astonishment. After a few moments she mumbled something to the King and turned around. The King gently lowered the pendent over her head and clasped it at the nape of her neck, taking good care, it seemed, not to touch her.
Then there was a picnic or some sort of feast outdoors. The food was too herby and did not have enough salt. The cheese, however, was excellent and he overheard the King say as much to Keeper Lanaya. She seemed pleased and flushed again, the jewel shining at her breast. Dalish ale, on the other hand, was far too weak, and did not compliment the cheese well. The deputy sub steward noted he much preferred the dwarven brews. But he soon found himself reaching for more of the feeble ale when the poetry recitals and the detailed narration of intricate elven legends and lore began. And never seemed to end.
Eventually after a few hours, even the King, who had been provided with an interpreter and who earlier appeared to listen with some enthusiasm, began to look bored and visibly drooped at the end of the table. By then evening had began to fall, the deputy sub steward together with others in the royal retinue and some delegated elves lit torches and proceeded to escort the King back to his camp.
Then it began to rain. The party members’ heavy warm clothing became after little more than half an hour a freezing, water-saturated mess. The King impatiently removed his woollen cloak, shoved it into the arms of his knight escort, Ser Lawler, took a torch, and picking up the pace began heading towards camp splashing through the fresh mud at a lively trot that his retinue tried, with the exception of Lawler, mostly in vain, to match.
Modifié par Maria13, 29 septembre 2011 - 02:16 .
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