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Old 12-27-2009, 07:46 PM   #684
Feanor of the Peredhil
La Belle Dame sans Merci
 
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Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: perpetual uncertainty
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Feanor of the Peredhil is a guest of Elrond in Rivendell.Feanor of the Peredhil is a guest of Elrond in Rivendell.Feanor of the Peredhil is a guest of Elrond in Rivendell.
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Of all possible scenarios, this was not one Degas had envisioned. Yes, he had fast earned a respect and liking of the man he had so quickly disliked the day before. Yes, he found him to be a good conversationalist, and he trusted him to be a good and honest man, insomuch as any man can be good and honest at all times.

But to adopt his sister? To name her his heir? The child would inherit the title and estate he was conceived into, if not the eorldom. But that had never been the problem. The problem now, from Degas's point of view, was Athanar's sons.

Degas, as a younger son, had known the lands he lived on were not his to inherit. And when his parents died, he had resigned himself to no inheritance at all, as the papers had emerged - falsified though they must be - that left everything to Fenrir. Still, he had not contested this, as he had desire - he chuckled in his mind - to be a minstrel. A traveling, title-less minstrel. A singer at campfires, a lute-strummer earning his keep by spinning yarns and passing news from one place to another.

He had been raised to know his worth, of course, but the reality of his life... He and his sisters were far too pragmatic to deny the new reality of their brother as their lord. They would have nothing he did not wish them to have. They were his underlings, no longer his siblings.

Yet... somehow they did not rebel. Thinking back, Degas could only think he'd held his piece out of fear for his sisters. He thought himself a coward for this, and moved his thoughts quickly onward, aware the table was waiting for his comment.

Athanar's sons were young. It was not that they were younger than him physically, it was that they had not experienced life they way he had. Degas had been orphaned. He had traveled alone, taken up a craft. He had relied on his skills and his diplomacy, not his name, to earn any accolades allowed to him. He had taken up another craft after music: sailing. His callused hands showed it. He had taken to slathering his fingertips in ladies' salves before bed to soften the calluses that made his fingers fumble on the lute and harp. But the point was, he had lived on his own, without the crutch of a title or an inheritance. He had learned to confront life as a man, not as a son, not as a lordling.

And these boys, though they were his peers in the eyes of his elders, had not.

And he could not envision them, these boys that oozed entitlement from every pore, happily giving up wealth or status, no matter how insignificant and undeserved that wealth and status may be. Scarburg was no Edoras, no Aldburg, but it was a holding, and these boys, Degas believed, would not take kindly to their parents adopting a new heir, surpassing their claims to their parents' titles, possessions, and lands.

Degas decided on bluntness. "I believe that it is a fair arrangement that well suits all parties, however I worry that your sons will take umbrage over something they may feel they are entitled to being passed to my sister. I would dislike to learn later that my sister is the object of any resentment they or others may feel."
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