From Sand to Snow
Twenty Seventh Day of the Second Month 294 AC
After some thought, you extend what Dany calls half in jest 'a far protectorate', the kind of agreement you had with He'Nekar before that ancient city was fully integrated in the new Province of Mantarys, favorable trade deals, enchantments suited to the sort of hardscrabble desert life Jorar's letters described, and perhaps protection for any permanent settlements they may have. You assume they would have holy sites, at least from the Dothraki to the triton tribes, to the Free Folk of the Far North, you have always found even the most determined of travelers hold some places to be closer to their gods than others. All this is borne upon the steel wings of a Herald, messenger, warrior, and counsel both. Lya had wrought them well.
Perhaps one day soon they would usher the nomads into the Imperium, but for now as the day's light grows brighter towards golden midday, you have other matters to attend to.
Lunch with the court is not a common affair, at least not as common as you remember it back in King's Landing. Not only are you and your companions out campaigning often, publicly or in secret, but there is very little
work one can actually do with a joint of lamb in one hand and a goblet of Arbor Gold in the other. Oh your mother insists that socializing can ease many hurdles of ruling, and perhaps she is right, but you have always preferred more structured time with clear agendas. Another mark of your stay in Braavos perhaps, where socializing and mingling is usually kept firmly to the evening hours. Because it would be easier to hide the bodies in the dark, as the old saying goes, and not entirely without merit.
Today, however, is not a day to hold to the habits of one's greater comfort, a friend needs an introduction, or perhaps better to say a reintroduction.
Rina enters among the last, flanked on one side by Dany to show royal support and on the other by Melisandre, because if anyone is likely to take her new nature ill in your realm, it is the faithful of the Lord of Light. To your eyes she does not look so different, her movements are more graceful and more certain all at once, and the air grows heavy not just with winter's chill but the mantle of newborn authority in her wake.
If someone is running a five hundred yard dash and decides to jump the last ten, surely it's hardly that exceptional?
Vee had agreed with you utterly, but even she had agreed to be here as a show of solidarity, along with most of the companions not otherwise occupied, in spite of her loathing of feasts and court events. While she has grown no more attached to how most people sees the world, she has come to anticipate them...
Alas that anticipation was not disappointed. The court's air of faintly self-satisfied sophistication shatters like glass in the face of what Rina is, the cold darkness of the North that for ages had heralded the death of crops and the withering of hope, the herald of bleak midwinter. Most of the notables here do not have the words to articulate that instinctive fear, the few who do, mages, scholars, and spirits have been warned beforehand. If Rina is to be able to live her life without being shrouded in glamors and lies, if she is to truly take the fight to the enemy and bring forth Winter's Rebirth, then you will have to explain something of what she is and what she hopes to be. Much as you had with Xor, you will now have to recount how the mortal became fey and what that means.
How do you present Rina's reintroduction into the Court?
[] As a Scholarum mage who attained the culmination of an arcane thesis
[] As a dear friend embracing her legacy in the hopes of forging a brighter future
[] Write in
OOC: One of your Companions turned into a Winter Fey, most people don't know what that is specifically, but six thousand years of Other inspired myths about the horrors from the Cold North means you guys should probably get the official story in public ahead of the rumors. Not yet edited.