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Old 02-16-2016, 05:24 AM   #275
littlemanpoet
Itinerant Songster
 
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: The Edge of Faerie
Posts: 7,072
littlemanpoet is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.littlemanpoet is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
Rowenna

Rowenna walked through the downpour. She had taken off her cloak inside and forgotten to put it back on. It was cold. She was drenched in seconds. She did not care. Right now she hated Saeryn. She knew it wouldn't last, but this was now. She was enraged at herself for having retreated from the fight, but she had seen that it was going badly for her, and the only way to win would have been to openly test Saeryn's word that Eodwine would favor her instead of his own wife. She would not do that. If Eodwine favored Saeryn, then it would go badly for Rowenna; if Eodwine favored Rowenna, Scarburg could become a very bad place to be.

It already was a bad place for her to be.

She sent the water spraying with each footstep, for the puddles were growing; even with the new trench. She reached the scar and began to climb. Soon, the light from the settlement ended and she was feeling her way, scrabbling in the mud and sliding stone and sand of the scar.

It was already a bad place to be because there would be no end of fighting with Saeryn, and the advantage belonged squarely with Saeryn. Rowenna liked her, she was an honest and well meaning lady, wife, and mother, but that did not lessen that she was impossible.

Rowenna reached the highest point of the scar and looked out. The darkness was complete: she could see nothing. All she could hear was the rains striking the ground or puddles.

Scyld had just watched the whole thing. That was his way. If they were a couple, a real couple, he might have come to her defense. But they were not a couple, and there was no use teasing herself about it. She knew that if she did not get back inside soon, she would most likely sicken and maybe worse, but she could not bring herself to do it. Instead, half realizing it, her feet were taking her down the last of the hillocks of the scar, and out onto the open plain. Her fingers were numb and she could barely feel her feet. Her arms shook and her teeth chattered, but she kept moving forward, away from the scar, into the night, her thoughts a mess of spinning threads.

Eodwine

Eodwine watched the whole thing pass. He found it hard to swallow his food for the distaste of what was happening before his eyes. He would not interfere with his wife's actions; it would not be good for the folk to see them at odds, but this would have to be dealt with. He also realized that his displeasure was not, for the most, in how Saeryn dealt with Rowenna. No, it was something else, something he did not know quite how to say. He realized that he was simply in a foul mood. They came on him rarely, but when they did, there was no helping it. Maybe it had been brought on by the difficulties of the dung pit and the trench, but if so then only in part. The best thing he could do was lay low until it passed. It was what he should do. He finished his food and thought to get up and go in. But he stayed sitting where he was, waiting for his wife to finish with her many tasks.

Last edited by littlemanpoet; 02-16-2016 at 11:53 AM.
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