Cozy Writing and Characters

Your skin is glowing today!

Shiny;

I did the challenge-challenge by kittycouch on DA, done more recently on Drawfee :)

Mind the third talonflame he flame charged into a window

I Am Poem

No other could rule the land while cupping a handful of amethysts. She sits atop her throne, draped in plain robes she had received in kind from a commoner in the city. From her place silhouetted by a yawning window, light catches her jaw just right, setting her hair aflame at the turn of the day.

She leans an elbow on her knee, her heel propped at the edge of her chair. She seems larger to those who would approach her below, perhaps due to her disregard for decorum, perhaps by the lazy, languid way she overtakes any place she rests her full body. The common commoner tries to mask their surprise when she steps down from her seat to notice she is smaller at her full height.

When she addresses her advisors, she loses her knack for proper tone, and similar to the way she releases her limbs across her chair, she loosens her language to an idiolect unlike any other.

From there, she commands them curious things, wondrous things, spoken in words only known to her. 

One advisor frequents a tavern in the city with an account of the wishes she whispers.

Clicking and roiling the amethysts in her right hand, she leans over to her advisor. And she advises them to free her people.

This request is consequently met with confusion. No war had ravaged this land since before her reign. No revolt has confronted their doorstep during her reign. As far as freedom goes, surely her people have mobility to act as they desire.

When prompted, she simply smiles and shrugs, and leans back in her chair as if falling into a cloud.

Her advisors, made complacent by peace, consider the meaning of her desire, though frivolous on the surface. They consult each other, they consult housekeeps and stablehands of the castle, but none have the response their ruler would seek.

Except, of course, to free her people, however that may be carried out.

Those familiar with her know her to be other—that perhaps she’s thinking on another plane of logic unknown, or she hears that which cannot be heard. Spectators attribute many traits to their fair leader which cannot be confirmed any more than denied.

Knowing this, her advisors attempt a myriad of responses to her query: they host lavish festivals celebrating the townspeople; siphon the city’s wealth into feasts and balls; lend coin to the lowest stragglers. They even distribute sword training to the most unskilled, should they ever arise to wrest freedom for themselves.

Still, their fair leader, upon an evening meeting at the end of every moon cycle, repeats the same hopeful hopeless message, aiming for a target somewhere far and distant. Her advisors attempt what they can to please her—she who never expresses disapproval.

One advisor, on a particularly hazy and sleep-addled night, asks her why she dedicates so much to an unattainable end.

To this, an amethyst plinks to the ground beside her, and she spares it a half-interested glance. In all your work, she tells her counsel, you must ensure the worth of these amethysts is so that gravity never spares them.

And what would that mean for their weight in gold? another questions.

Her right hand tilts as she throws her shoulders up in a shrug, and the trickle of dozens of amethysts clattering to stone fills the hall.

And she smiles. Nothing.

Part 1:

The Amethyst Key: Isolation

Part 2:

A Shadowheart for my friend!