OK! now fanfic with pics! XD
text : Tellervo
art : me
---
Leliana let those last few strains of song linger, looking around the fire into the faces of her companions—and though he refused to sit with them, she knew Sten was listening intently, as was his way. She'd chosen something soft and soothing for her last song of the night, leaving everyone with dreamy sated smiles on their faces, and even Morrigan, who had not drunk with them but had stayed to listen to Leliana, didn't look so aloof and angry, if only for a moment. Messalyn and Zevran were sitting close, of course, making a game of increasingly intimate touches when they thought no one was looking (Leliana had counted at least three breast gropes during her last song, and wondered how the game could possibly escalate from there without clothing coming off); Wynne was glaring at the two elves and their game when she wasn't openly enjoying the stories; Alistair was looking at Leliana in a most enraptured fashion she was doing her best to ignore for the moment; and Oghren was all but in tears, rubbing at his eyes with his wrist and muttering to himself.
“I think that's enough for tonight.” Everyone but Morrigan groaned in protest as Leliana began putting away her lute, begging for more in escalating voices over each other—sharing the wine with them had perhaps been a foolish idea, in retrospect. So she kept her lute out, and leaned forward towards the fire, looking at each of them across it in turn. “I am out of stories and songs for tonight, but I will do this for you: I will begin a story, one of fancy, and we will go around the fire in a circle, like so,” she demonstrated the rotation with her hand, “and each tell a portion of the story in turn. If the next person interrupts you, do not fret; I expect this to pass around at least once, and you will have another turn. Agreed?”
Again Morrigan maintained her silence, watching the inebriated party with a sly little smile on her face, and Leliana worried that the Witch might bow out of the story, but Morrigan remained sitting, and that troubled Leliana even more somehow. The others agreed enthusiastically, and so Leliana began, strumming a little senseless background tune on her lute.
“Once upon a time, there lived a beautiful Elven princess in Arlathan. Of course, many of the princesses were beautiful, but this one was quite special. Her hair was white as freshly fallen snow, soft as a whisper, her eyes colored like purest ice but full of fire and passion, her skin smooth and dark like falling dusk. But she was not simply beautiful, but tough as well, a truly vivacious woman who put so much passion into everything she did—she was a formidable warrior, an infamous lover, an unmatched dancer--” Across the fire Messalyn mouthed, “Dancer?” with some confusion, but Zevran shushed her quickly. “In short, she was perfect, worth a thousand other princesses. So they called her Princess Diamond, for she was colored like the gem, and among women the very rarest jewel. But she would bend to no lover, man or woman, as she was a free spirit. And to that end, a man sought to trap her.”
“You see, 'twas around the time when humans and elves first came to know one another.” Morrigan gave Leliana a soft, sly smile after butting in, and her words were carefully chosen but almost practiced, as if her mind had been racing ahead of the story to craft her own. “Thinking to make peace with these new neighbors her mother, a most pragmatic woman, sought to forge an alliance by bonds of marriage, and as proof of her good intent offered Princess Diamond, most lovely and skilled of her daughters, to the most powerful of human lords. While he himself was most handsome, Diamond was no fool, and saw what he and his people would do to Arlathan. So, Diamond did something she had never done before: she refused a comely suitor her charms. And even once they were married, the human lord could not avail himself of them, even by force, for she bested him in all contests. So he locked her away in a tower to live out her long days in isolation, guarded by a bevy of knights who had been gelded so they would find little appeal in the Princess.”
At Morrigan's description of the knights the men winced, and rather than let her go on Wynne cleared her throat and began her own portion of the tale. “Diamond had learned many arts from her wise mother, including some now lost to the ages; she could speak to the animals, so her isolation was not complete. The single window in her tower was in her bedroom, and when she rose in the morning she would sing with the birds, and then they would come to keep her company, chit chatting away with her and with each other in their little bird voices.”
“Birds ain't got much to talk about, though,” Oghren interrupted, gesturing with the empty wine bottle in one hand. “Oh why I've found the perfect nesting spot for next year,” Oghren said in his best “little bird voice”. “Have you seen how long Robin's tail feathers are? That hussy!” He suddenly grew serious, looking over the fire at Leliana as if making some sort of judgment. “Boring stuff. And there's only so much a classy lady locked up in a tower can do to entertain herself. Dressing, undressing, making sexy underwear and trying it on—you know, girl's gotta have hobbies. Anyway, so Diamond is bored. And lonely. So she goes to her window and calls down to the knights, 'Yoo-hoo! Boys! I have a little problem up here!' And bein' decent fellas they all come runnin' up to see what's wrong and find her stretched out on her big bed, wearin' nothin' but a robe open just enough to give a peek but not an eyeful, and she says, 'I need you! All of you! Take me--”
“After that incident,” Alistair, blushing madly, had to shout over Oghren's story to get the dwarf to stop, “the lord decided he needed something more than just his unmanned knights. No, he needed something formidable, something no one would mess with, because if he couldn't have Diamond no one else could. Humans had powerful blood magic in those days, and he enslaved a small dragon and brought it in to guard her tower. Unfortunately, it ate the knights, but it at anyone else who came near and Diamond's bird friends, so the lord figured the knights were an acceptable loss. For a while Diamond despaired that she would never be free of her prison, weeping at her window with each sunrise, because it meant another day so utterly alone, but she refused to give up to the lord. One day Diamond heard a voice, a man's voice, soft and comforting, asking, 'Why do you cry, lovely lady? You are fed and housed and protected, and your husband comes to you frequently to shower gifts and praise on you.'
“Diamond looked all about, but couldn't find the source of the voice, and exclaimed aloud, 'I must be going mad!' The man responded, 'No, my dear, you are not going mad. But why do you cry?' 'Whoever you are,' she said, 'either help me escape from this prison or leave before my husband kills you!' 'I can do neither, but I will keep you company. You cry because you do not want what he has provided you with?'”
Zevran cleared his throat softly before interrupting, and did a lovely falsetto for Diamond. “'My husband keeps me here because I will not sleep with him—he is cruel and will hurt my people as soon as it benefits him, so I refuse to consummate our marriage.' 'I see,' said the stranger,” Zevran switched voices with little fuss, giving the stranger a rich, rumbling voice—he was not so good at voices as Leliana, but he was clearly enjoying himself, and it made a difference. “'He keeps you locked away like some precious jewel, in his possession but never truly his. He means to keep you here forever?' 'Until I fade away from loneliness,' she answered, 'Please, leave before the dragon scents you. Tell my mother what he has done with me.' 'I am unable, but I will return to you tomorrow, my dear. You may count on it.'
“And so the stranger did return the next day, but Diamond never saw him. She supposed he must be standing at the very base of the tower out of her sight, and that he must have some trick to keep the dragon from scenting him. He returned every day after, and Diamond began to count on his presence. They passed two years thus, and Diamond found herself drawing portraits of what the stranger must look like and hanging them about her room, fantasizing, for he told her stories of all the places he had been, and she told him that before marrying she had never left her mother's palace, always kept like some precious jewel, and he promised to take her anywhere she desired once she was free. He was only absent on days when it rained, and those days Diamond found herself terribly lonely, but it was bearable.
Finally, one day, the stranger said to her, 'My dear, we must stop meeting like this. His lordship will one day find out, and it will be the end of me. I will take you from this place, but you must tell me that you are mine.' Diamond, sensing some trap, answered, 'I have grown terribly fond of you, but I belong to no one.' 'I am glad to know you feel for me too, but, ah, how do I say this... it is not so much about keeping you like a thing but about the words. Its terribly important, and I cannot take you away from here without those words.' 'You mean... like a password on some magic in the tower?' 'Something. Please?' 'Fine.' And clearing her throat, Diamond leaned out her window slightly and, in her most melodramatic fainting maiden voice, called out at the top of her lungs, 'Take me, mysterious stranger, I am yours!'
“But moments later the dragon, somewhere around the building from her window, howled in terrible pain, and it went on for quite a while until Diamond became very concerned—aside from snacking on wayward visitors the dragon seemed well-dispositioned, and it was a beautiful creature stretching its wings in the morning sun, and she had grown rather fond of it. When the howling ceased she called out for her friend, and receiving no response fell to the floor in front of her window weeping, for she believed the dragon had finally eaten him as well. She was so earnest in her lamentations that Diamond noticed nothing else out of the ordinary, and when she felt an arm wrap around her shoulder she startled, striking out and hitting her new visitor across the face! Before her was a handsome elven man, blond and bronze-skinned, laid out on the floor by her solid hit, and after she overcame her shock she helped him up. 'Are you the stranger who has kept me company these past two years?' 'Yes, my dear,' and he touched the side of her face, stroking her cheek affectionately,” Zevran mimicked the gesture on Messalyn's face, for the elven Warden had snuggled up to him at some point during his portion of the story and was smiling softly up at him. “'And I was the dragon. I am an infamous thief, and his lordship caught me, then changed me using his blood magic into the beast guarding your tower. I was to remain so until I could finish my task, which was simply 'steal his most prized possession'. You are not what my employer had in mind, but you are certainly the most treasured gem in his horde. You need only kiss me to make sure the enchantment is broken, and we will leave this place together—scaling the tower is no problem for one of my talents.' So, how does the story end, my princess?”
Messalyn kissed Zevran, of course, a soft and delicate thing that made the others uncomfortable, Morrigan standing and stalking away from the fire in disgust, Alistair blushing and trying to find something else to focus on, Wynne scowling as the kiss deepened into something that really should've been more private—only Oghren seemed undisturbed by the display, openly leering as Zevran's hand wandered up under Messalyn's shirt to caress her soft flesh, and Leliana laughed at all of them, glancing over to Alistair with a mischievous glint in her eye. “I don't think I've ever had a story end with this sort of 'happy ending' before!”
soooooo! it was very fun to draw but now I need holydays! *dead >_< *
I love the pics!
And Dog being Dog, of course, hehe.
Very nice.
Retour en haut