To his genuine bewilderment, she seems to take pride in being made of stone, in belonging to a people who command the personalities of raw ore. That smile of hers is, he thinks, one of resignation - is she like the drear folk of the North, cursed to their intolerable, grim brooding because they cannot be bothered to learn another way? Because they have made of cheerless survival their own legacy, a tasteless heritage?
What else should we be but stone? For this he has only laughter, and a disdainful refusal to see in her any bravery. They could have been fire, or a swallowing sea, or wildly wrathful or stupidly resplendent; instead they would be almost nothing at all? A slew of gray mountains hunched against the wind, committed to a duty they feel nothing for? If they would consign him to the same fate, he would sooner beg a swift death.
"Aye, stone does not bend, but it dies the slowest and the most unbearably dull of all deaths." It took generations for those skulking mountains to be chipped to dust, and no songs were written of them. Five hundred years her country may have claimed its borders, and long may its oaths have stood, but was that due only to the reluctance of her people to venture from where they stood? In his own experience, impatient and foolhardy as it tended to be, wars and oaths were never still. A great many of his gambits were made with a dire lack of forethought.
But she does not know this; she seems to think him the cunning sort, a man who had ridden abroad with a painstaking and calculated scheme in mind. Had she never been taken by the urge to swing astride her horse and leap into the uncharted dark? To judge by her solemn bearing, it must have been long years since she had.
She asks after his lands, his banner, and the distance his steed had carried him; a toss of his head flicks away stray gold that has fallen across his eyes, and he heaves a sigh as if her insistence is both rude and troubling. Surely she does not expect obedience and honesty.
"My lands are far, my banner far more fetching than your own, and as I told Ser Fun-Fear, my horse is exhausted from our travels and deserving of some kindly company tonight. I might say the same for myself."
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sforzinda
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Date: 2021-09-15 05:48 am (UTC)What else should we be but stone? For this he has only laughter, and a disdainful refusal to see in her any bravery. They could have been fire, or a swallowing sea, or wildly wrathful or stupidly resplendent; instead they would be almost nothing at all? A slew of gray mountains hunched against the wind, committed to a duty they feel nothing for? If they would consign him to the same fate, he would sooner beg a swift death.
"Aye, stone does not bend, but it dies the slowest and the most unbearably dull of all deaths." It took generations for those skulking mountains to be chipped to dust, and no songs were written of them. Five hundred years her country may have claimed its borders, and long may its oaths have stood, but was that due only to the reluctance of her people to venture from where they stood? In his own experience, impatient and foolhardy as it tended to be, wars and oaths were never still. A great many of his gambits were made with a dire lack of forethought.
But she does not know this; she seems to think him the cunning sort, a man who had ridden abroad with a painstaking and calculated scheme in mind. Had she never been taken by the urge to swing astride her horse and leap into the uncharted dark? To judge by her solemn bearing, it must have been long years since she had.
She asks after his lands, his banner, and the distance his steed had carried him; a toss of his head flicks away stray gold that has fallen across his eyes, and he heaves a sigh as if her insistence is both rude and troubling. Surely she does not expect obedience and honesty.
"My lands are far, my banner far more fetching than your own, and as I told Ser Fun-Fear, my horse is exhausted from our travels and deserving of some kindly company tonight. I might say the same for myself."