a new/old story for me and Sly

[shayna611]

Pear #17. Better or Worse
Story : Misadventures
Rating : PG
Word Count : 4224

The Misadventures of Prince Caelan and Friends - a comedic fantasy in which we hope to mock and play with as many fantasy tropes as we can get our paws on. We actually started this last year but it didn't really get off the ground (there are a handful of background pieces if you check the index) We are now reviving it and we will be going in chronological order (you heard me) and passing it back and forth.



No matter how many times she removed the half dozen clips from her hair, shifted it about, and reattached them, Ella managed to find some grievous error in its arrangement. She frowned at her reflection and with a sigh, set to unfastening them yet again.

This time she left the clips in a heap on the dressing table and turned her attention to her dress. It was the finest in her closet, soft white velvet, trimmed in lace as fine as a pixie’s hair and stitched with thread of gold. But there were wrinkles in her skirt.

“Do I look all right?” she said, and immediately she wanted to slap herself for being so cliché. Though she wondered how much of her compulsive grooming was out of actual concern and how much was a matter of stalling for time.

“Lovely, miss,” Falyn called from across the room without so much as a glance her way.

Gritting her teeth, Ella forced herself to stop running her hands down her skirt. “Not that it matters,” she said. “I highly doubt he’s ever been this close to a woman in his life.” She should have placed the hair clips further away. Already her hand was drifting back to them, her fingers absently running along the sleek strips of lacquered shell, ready to start pinning them back in place. “I think if I am breathing it will be enough for him. If I can even get near him in the first place with all the bloody guards in the way. You don’t think they’ll be posted inside the bedchambers, do you? I couldn’t bear to think of being watched.”

The maid clucked her tongue at that and Ella bristled. It hardly seemed a childish concern to her. “I don’t think so, miss.” He voice and her steps drew closer as Ella busied herself with piling her dark curls atop her head once more. “Look, he sent these up for you. “

“I think they follow him into the latrine,” she said around the strip of tortoise shell and silver tucked in her teeth. Falyn drew up alongside her and the hair fell unceremoniously back across her shoulders and the clip from her mouth to rattle on the floor as she gasped a heartfelt “Oh!” at the bouquet in the girl’s outstretched hands.

“Aren’t they lovely?” Falyn sighed, taking in a last deep whiff of the flowers before Ella relieved her of them.

She cradled the vase in her hands, Riseldian marble, its milky surface veined with the violet of ancient dragons’ blood. Sprays of wispy lavender pixies’ breath and clusters of heavy golden maiden bells sprouted from its slender mouth amidst sprigs of emerald leaves.

“That is sweet.” She plucked one of the bells from its stem and pinned it to her breast before setting the vase on the dressing table where she might look at it as she finished her dressing. “You know, this whole affair might be splendid if I hadn’t sat through all of dinner wondering when someone might tackle me and pry the fork from my hands and declare me a threat.”

“Miss?” The maid put a dainty hand to her open mouth.

“I swear his mother wiped his mouth for him when I wasn’t looking,” said Ella, beginning the process of gathering her curls again. “This should read like something from a fairy tale.” She addressed the mirror, shifting her hair to one hand as the other felt about the dressing table for a clip. “Humble merchant’s daughter weds a prince and they live happily ever after.”

“Pardon my saying so, miss, but you are no cinder princess.” In the glass, she could see Falyn, head shaking, back to unpacking her things. She pulled a blue silk dress from her bag, draped it over an arm, and followed it with one of green lace and another in red. “Now, if I were marrying the prince…”

Ella couldn’t help but laugh at that, and the pile of hair between her fingers bobbed and jiggled. “Now that would be a fairy story,” she said. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. You know I don’t mean it. Besides, you get to stay here in the palace with me and you don’t have to bed that…that…” She snatched another clip off the table and rammed it into place. “You really don’t think the guards will follow us?”

The girl paused on her way back from the closet to cock her head and fold her empty arms across her breast. “I should think even royals must have some sense of decency, miss.” About to continue her pace across the room, she hesitated, her eyes drawn to the balcony doors. “Look, he’s down in the yard. He’s waving to you.”

Shoving the last of the clips in place, Ella stretched up on her toes to peer over the maid’s shoulder. Sure enough, there was Prince Caelan in the yard below. He’d changed since dinner as well, into a tunic of dark silk embroidered up and down with chains of golden dragons, the head of each woven into the tail of the next. A simple circlet of gold sat atop his auburn mane. A pair of guards, armored in gleaming golden dragon mail, flanked him. Ella sighed. “Look at him, all puffed up and pretty. Why, you’d think he did just walk off the page of some fairy-” And then one of the guards threw out an arm to stop the prince’s advance while the other scrambled to remove a small stone from his path. She closed her eyes and sighed again. “-story.”

As she stepped into the garden, Ella tried to banish the thoughts of guards sweeping pebbles from the prince’s path or the glimpse she swore she’d had of his meat being cut for him. He was stnding there among the grass and the bushes bright with roses, in all his gold-trimmed splendor, with the smile of a boy half his age and those eyes. She’d never seen eyes like that, deep blue-green as the sea and sparkling like the stars above.

“Good evening.” said the prince with a bow.

Ella caught the sides of her skirt in her fingers and curtsied low, her eyes never straying from his. “Good evening, Your Highness.”

Caelan winced. “Cael,” he said, with a dismissive wave. “You are to be my wife, after all.”

“Of course,” she said, straightening herself. “Cael.”

The prince - Cael, she corrected herself - looked her over, his smile broadening even further as his eyes settled on the golden bellflower pinned to her dress. “I see you received my gift,” he said.

“I did.” She put a hand up, self consciously, to touch the petals. “Thank you.” she caught herself blushing and quickly put the hand back to her side “So, what are we doing now?”

“I thought I might show you the gardens,” said Cael. “Dinner was so busy, I figured maybe we could get to know each other a bit better alone.” He had one hand out to her now and she felt herself ready to melt into those big blue eyes.

Then one of the guards must have shifted his feet, because there was a rattle of polished scales clacking together. Reminded of thoughts of soldiers standing watch at the bedposts, she cringed. “Right,” she said with a sideways glance at the man who had disturbed their peace. “Alone.”

“Oh!” Cael nearly jumped as he caught the look. “I am sorry! Why, I scarcely even notice them. I am sure you will get used to them too,” he added, offering her his hand again. “But why don’t we take our leave of them for the time being?” That brought a nervous look between the guards, as if they were weighing carefully their task to honor the prince’s wishes against the possibility that he might cause himself harm in a minute’s time outside their watch, but neither said a word.

Ella wasn’t sure she liked the idea of getting used to an armored shadow, but she nodded anyway and slipped her hand into his.

Cael’s fingers were soft. She’d never seen even a woman with hands so unused. She blinked as they curled around her own, which suddenly seemed to her as if they must be as course as those of a stablehand.

“So. Marisabella.” Cael turned and guided her away from the guards and towards an opening in the hedges. If he had noticed the roughness of her hands it wasn’t showing. She shook her head and tried to banish the thought. “Is… is there something shorter I might call you? It’s a lovely name, but it is a tad formal.”

“Ella,” she said stiffly, still trying to distract herself from the notion that she must look a shame, even if it was her finest dress, even if she had done her hair a half dozen times. She was no princess. “Ella will do, Your High- Cael.”

He laughed, and she found herself marveling at the fact that even his laugh was more beautiful than anyone’s had a right to be. And then he stopped short, his hand stiffening around hers. She could feel the tension in his arm, the barely suppressed urge to yank her back. “Look out!” he cried, with a look of horror at the grass before them.

“What?” Grabbing at her skirts, she took a hasty step back, staring at the grass, half expecting something clawed or fanged to race across the path.

“There was a rock!” he said, as if that were just as bad. “You might have tripped.”

“Oh?” She stared hard into the grass, desperately hoping that the rock was at least viciously spiked. But no, the only stone she found was flat and smooth enough that she might have skipped it across the lake at home. “Oh.”

“One can never be too careful,” Cael asserted as she swept past the obstacle.

“I… I suppose not,” said Ella, sourly.

The danger averted, Cael brightened again. They turned the corner into a grove walled by rose bushes and filled with golden bells and bright white daisies. There was a bench to one side, its iron legs sculpted into curling vines. “What do you think of the palace so far?”

“Oh it is lovely.” The guards were still visible, back at the doors, but only if she peered between the tops of the bushes and the bottom branches of the trees. Somehow it was comforting to be able to pinpoint their location and assure herself they were not in range to hear her. “It is so large though.” It had taken her a good half hour just to walk to her chambers from the gate that morning. “I am afraid I will likely lose my way a good many times before I’ve figured it all out!”

Cael laughed. “Yes, there is that. I am sure you will be fine though.”

“I am sure there will be plenty here to keep me occupied. I saw the stables as I was coming in this morning.”

“Ah, yes. We have quite a number of very fine lizards. Even a few herd beasts,” he said, proudly.

“Do you ride often?”

The look of horror that he took on had her quickly cursing herself for asking such a thing. “Goodness, no! Do you have any idea-”

“Right.” she sighed, frowning down at her skirts rather than face that a moment longer. “Of course. It’s dangerous.”

“You are certainly welcome to go riding,” he said. “Not that I wish you any injury!” he was quick to add. “But, you see, it is simply not the same degree of likelihood that it would…” He sighed. “Argus Clabrin is master of the stables. He is a good fellow. I will ask him to set you up with a mount.”

“I…would appreciate that.” Out of the corner of her eye she caught him fingering the buttons on his shirt sleeve, and she felt dreadful. Here he was, just as nervous as she at his own inadequacy. Who was she to judge? She slid her hand back into his as they rounded another turn along the path.

“My pleasure. And if there is anything else you wish to see, well, you will be a Princess in a month’s time, there is nothing off limits. Drat!”

“What is it?” she asked as they came to a stop once more.

“Nothing,” said Cael. “just my shoe.”

She wasn’t sure what possessed her to say it, the words just seemed to fall from her. “Should I call-”

He pulled away from her then, a dark look aimed her way. “I assure you I can tie my own shoe,” he snapped.

“I…I’m sorry.”

“You think me useless, don’t you?” She swore she heard a tone approaching tears in his voice, and she found herself wishing they hadn’t left the guards behind after all.

“I-”

The prince was livid now. “You think me a poor, incompetant excuse for a man, unfit to wipe his own backside, and you say it with every breath, peering down your nose at me as you do.”

Ella had had quite enough of everyone’s catering to the prince’s fragility and at his indignance something in her snapped. “They only let you feed yourself with a spoon,” was the first thing that came to mind.

“Knives are sharp!”

“Your bed’s no more than a foot off the floor.”

“Do you know the trauma a bump to the head can-”

“You bathe with a sponge.” She was ticking items off on her fingers now and shaking, though she knew not if it was from anger or from fear that she had stepped too far.

“Drowning does not require more than a few inches of-”

Ella let her hands dropped, fingers still spread, to stare at him in disbelief. “You prove your own point.”

Cael sighed, a sound far too weary for such a pampered boy. “You will have heard of my brothers, I suspect,” he said. And now he started counting on his fingers. “Cedric choked to death on a chicken bone. An urn landed on Liam.” She swallowed hard as he extended another finger. “Roland fell…on a pair of knitting needles.” He gave a pause to let the absurdity of that one sink in, and Ella swallowed again. “Bertram drowned in the fish pond. Need I go on?”

“…I’m…I’m so sorry.”

Cael shrugged, a weary, awkward slump of his thin shoulders. “They were all gone before I was old enough to remember,“ he said. She reached for his hand and he let her take it. “I’m their last chance. They just wanted to make sure they didn’t lose me too.“ His fingers wound through her own. “If I’m lost, then there’s nothing to stop the Dark Lord, or any of a half dozen different factions of zealots who still remember the kings of old. You understand, don’t you?”

Those eyes were on her again, wide and deep as the waters they resembled, and Ella had the sense in the pit of her gut as if she’d just kicked a puppy. “Right,” she said, with a gentle squeeze to the soft hand cradled in her own. “I suppose… But one should not need to stop living in order to stay alive.”

He brightened again as he squeezed her back. “Once I have a son, then the line is secured and the spell can continue through him and everyone can breathe a little easier.”

The tight feeling in her stomach suddenly lurched up into her throat. “A son,” she said. “Yes. Yes, I suppose there is a reason for all of this, after all.”

The prince dropped her hand. He threw a hand to his mouth as a blush crept across his cheeks. “I did not mean to be forward with you.”

“Well,” said Ella, and she felt a warmth in her own face as well. “You will have to be eventually.” The thought came back to her then of guards in the bedchamber and she gave a nod back to where they had left them. “They’re not…going to follow us, when we…”

Cael looked puzzled for a moment, then he burned an even deeper shade of red. “Oh!” he said, following her look. “No! No. I, er, I should hope not.”

Ella giggled and as she caught his hand again, he laughed too.

“So,” she said, “what do you do, when you’re not avoiding sharp objects, high places, and strenuous activities?”

“Well, I… I like to read,” said Cael as they set out along the path again.

“Oh?” That didn’t sound half bad, she thought. She’d spent so many days in a cramped cabin on one or another of her father’s ships she’d filled nearly two whole walls of her room at home with novels.

“Anything I can get my hands on,” he said. “History, science, philosophies. I particularly enjoyed Alphonse Vergouse’s dissertation on the Baklorchtmian Gods and how the assumption that they were created just for the justification of human sacrifice doesn’t hold water, because half the pantheon doesn’t actually condone…” The fact that she was hopelessly lost must have shone on her face because he trailed off, crestfallen. “You’re not familiar with Vergouse, are you?” he said, and she offered a smile that she hoped said she hadn’t a clue in the least offensive way possible. Caelan frowned and scratched around the crown on his head. “I suppose you would have to understand Ileille to read it, wouldn’t you, at least I don’t think it’s been translated-”

“You…speak Ileille?” she asked, awestuck. She’d only been to the isles a few times, never long enough to pick up much of anything more than a greeting. She swore the language sounded like birdsong.

“Actually, I can speak five different languages. Well, six if you count Troll, but I don’t know that Troll is so much spoken as it is gargled. And…I’m boring you, aren’t I?”

Ella realized she’d been gaping at him and quickly shook her head. “No, no,” she said. “Not at all…it’s just…”

“It’s just that you thought I was a bumbling fool who needed his shoes tied for him and now you think you might be in over your head.”

She opened her mouth once, twice, to refute the claim, then sighed. “Perhaps.” Was he grinning at her now?

Cael shrugged, and he pulled her closer and gave her arm a pat as they followed yet another bend. “It’s useless, most of it. I’ve never really seen the point to being able to converse in half a dozen languages when there’s no one but a teacher to converse with. I mean, how many people do you know that speak Troll? You can imagine it doesn’t come up very often. And here I go again. So what do you like to read?”

She found herself blushing again. “Nothing quite so… profound,” she admitted. “Cheap romances mostly. I’m rather fond of Caitria Rothen.”

“The Blood Rose?”

Sure her cheeks were now as deep a crimson as they had ever been, she swallowed. “Yes.”

“I loved that one!” said Cael, and Ella’s jaw dropped. Was he mocking or humoring her? Or perhaps he really did like- “When Sir Renfred scaled the tower to rescue the Lady Olwyn…“ He stopped, clutching tighter at her arm as he turned to face her. “Do people really do that?” he said, eagerly, and again he looked more like a boy than he should. “Out there, I mean?” he amended, with a rough swing of his arm at the trees.

Ella laughed and clapped a hand over his. “Only in tales, I’m afraid.”

“Pity. Of course, I suspected as much.” His eyes fell back to the grass as they continued on. “Dragons are real though, aren’t they? I mean, I’ve seen their bodies diagramed in respectable texts.”

“Oh yes. Dragons are quite real.” Of course, she’d never seen more than a diagram herself. “They just don’t go kidnapping maidens as far as I know.”

The path came to a sudden end, spilling out into a broad bowl lined with flowers. Golden bells and daisies big as saucers swayed in the evening breeze. Tall sprigs of lilies, closed for the night, stood up among clouds of fragrant pixie breath.

“Oh, dear.” was all she could think to say.

“This is my favorite part,” said Cael, entering the grotto a step behind her.

“It’s…It’s simply… Are those pixies?” Lights in ever hue of the rainbow blinked on and off amidst the blooms. Squinting, she thought she caught a wisp of hair here, a pair of iridescent wings there. In the south, she’d heard, pixies were so common that people stuffed them in glass cages and used them for light sources, but she’d never had the chance to see one.

“Careful,” said Cael. “They bite.”

Ella turned to him, a brow raised, a smile cocked. “And they permit you near them?” she teased.

Cael laughed at that. “No one’s ever died from a pixie bite.”

“You never know,” she said, edging towards the nearest cluster of blossoms. She bent to peer among the leaves and she was sure she saw more than one round little face looking back at her from the shadows as the faeries’ lights flashed and faded. She reached a hand into the undergrowth and leaves and petals rustled as the little creatures fled. With a sigh, she withdrew.

“So,” Cael said slowly. He was standing at the edge of the bowl, hands stuffed deep in his pockets in a most unreal fashion. “Tell me, how do you really feel about this?”

“The garden?” she said, trailing her fingers up over the rim of a pink pitcher flower. “It’s lovely. Really, I haven’t seen a nicer one-” She trailed off as his brows knit and his lips twisted.

“Not the garden, the marriage.”

Ella sighed. What did she think of the marriage? “Oh, I always knew Father would sell me off to someone eventually.” She opted for the safe answer. “I never dreamed the deal might include a throne.”

“I meant what did you think of marrying me?”

There was that lump in her throat again. “Well,” she said. “I have only just met you.” That didn’t seem to improve his mood. She drew a deep breath and licked her lips as she looked back to the pitcher flower. A glowing golden pixie had lighted on another of its kind not far away to take a drink of the dew and nectar collected in its cup. “You know, I’d heard the Prince is a fool. The whisper goes that the land is doomed when your father passes. And I must admit, when I saw the way they all hover about you… But you’re not a fool, are you?” When she looked up, she caught those blue-green eyes of his. The circlet on his head gleamed in the flickering pixie light. Cael’s jaw was set, his expression blank, waiting for her answer. “You know full well you live in a cage. Six languages and you can appreciate Rothen; I think I can live with that.”

The stony expression broke and he was fidgetting at his crown and blushing like a girl again. “I am glad to hear I pass.”

Ella shrugged. “You asked.”

“I suppose I did,” he said with a grin.

Ella took his hand and caught hold of his eyes with her own. “Say something to me.” He gave her the blank look of the fool she had just assured him he was not. “Something I won’t understand.”

The prince frowned for a moment and then belched out something completely unintelligible to her ears that sounded like the grating of a great many rocks against one another.

Laughing, she patted the hand clutched in her own. “Not in Troll!” she said, fighting to catch her breath as he grinned foolishly at her. “Never, never try to woo a girl with Troll!”

“You said-”

“I know what I said, and you know what I meant.”

He was silent a moment, thoughtful, and she found herself drawing closer, sinking into the depths of those eyes. Then, “Sif ni’aburuves j'wari.”

Ella raised a brow.

“I like your laugh,” he said.

When they’d both stopped laughing again, she found the courage to ask, “So what do you think of all of this? Of me?”

“Fus swar ninointoi afureswa ni, j'mepe.”

He was smiling at her, perfect teeth peeking from between perfect lips. Ella leaned in, her heart aflutter, awaiting a translation.

He ran a hand up over her cheek and under the carefully arranged mop of dark curls. “I think you’re beautiful,” he said, softly.

“You do, do you?” They were only a breath apart now, standing there in the pool of flowers, bathed in the multi-colored pixie glow.

“I could repeat it for you in Troll if you like.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

It only took the slightest of efforts to tip up onto her toes and press her lips to his. The hand on her cheek slid round behind her neck and pulled her tight. For someone she had doubted had ever been so close to a woman, she had to admit he wasn’t half bad at kissing.