Home on the Hill

The capital city of the of Rynmere, here is seated the only King in Idalos.
Malcolm
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15 Ymiden 716
The wooden cottage was nestled against the trees leading into the Royal Glen, framed by the beautiful mountainous terrain of Venora in the neighbouring region. It was equal distance to the capital and the docks, and situated on a flat quarter acre section of fertile Andaris land, dotted with the odd fruit tree. Malcolm's chestnut gelding galloped across the paddock, kicking his back legs out behind him before he turned sharply and raced along the fence-line. The house had been a surprise for Elyna, a place he intended to share with her back when they had dreamed about trying to build a life together, something he explained during their journey home.
The trip from the city had been slow, and by the time they had pulled up outside the front gate, it was almost lunchtime. Benjamin helped Malcolm out of the horse drawn carriage and along the path to the front door where he put the key in the lock to turn it before handing it over to its rightful owner. The Mortalborn slipped the key into the pocket of the pants he had managed to wrestle his way into during the night and pointed to one of the small chairs pushed up against the table in the living room. The hardwood floors were polished, and the walls had seen a fresh coat of white paint. Raw, wooden beams decorated the high ceilings, and a window in the kitchen flooded the room with sunny, Ymiden light.
"The bathroom still needs renovating," Malcolm smiled through the pain at Elyna as he lowered himself into the chair, he had been quiet all the way home, save for a few murmured sentences, and was glad to find that Benjamin didn't seek to stay on for lunch. "I installed a bathtub before I left for Krome last season, it just needs a window now, smaller than the one I added to the bedroom."

If Elyna were to venture into the bedroom she would find all of his old furniture, arranged just as it had been in the city house. A bed with crisp, white sheets and pillows not yet slept on, with a lot more light let in, and views down to the ocean. Sure the cottage was a little secluded, but it had its perks, no smelly city streets just beyond the door, or the thick smell of chimney smoke of a morning and late evening. The living room and kitchen were open plan, a cosy little fireplace tucked against the wall near the table. Malcolm hadn't had a chance to go out and pick any wild flowers yet, but it seemed Kathryn had gone to the trouble on his behalf, a plain clay fired vase on the table packed with red, broad petaled flowers.
"A fresh loaf and some cheese under the cloth in the kitchen," Benjamin smiled, "I'll check in on my way back to the city later this evening. I've got to return the carriage to the docks and go on patrol."
"Thank you, Ben, for everything," Malcolm looked across at him from where he sat. "You're a good friend."
"Make sure he rests," Benjamin looked at Elyna and gave the young woman a hug before taking his leave, "I will send Kathryn up when I get to the docks to come and clean up his wound."
"Elyna and I can manage," Malcolm assured him.

Once the carriage was out of sight Malcolm leaned back on his chair and started undoing his shirt, his bandages would need to be taken off so that his wound could see some air. He didn't want it to fester and was unsure about the clear liquid that kept seeping from it. They had a lot to talk about, so much the man hardly knew where to start, though he supposed Pre's favour might have been a good choice. "Are you all right? I didn't know Pre had visited you..."
Last edited by Malcolm on Tue Oct 08, 2019 12:20 pm, edited 1 time in total. word count: 668
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Elyna
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Even with the slow journey out of the city, Elyna still hadn’t managed to process what had happened. As whenever anything became too difficult to bear, the Skyrider found herself sleepy and longing to crawl into her bed and hide from the world. The warm light on her face from the sun didn’t help, nor did the flood of relief that Malcolm was truly out and away from the cells and the arena. It all came in flashes of recent memory, the Immortals words, the pulsing energy though her veins that had then left her feeling bereft in her own body, missing the threads of power. Her fingertips and forehead tingled and she rubbed her hands on her breaches until the sensation faded.

It was a beautiful home. Whilst Ben helped Malcolm inside, Elyna remained on the cart simply to stare at it. Dazed she found her legs and followed them down the path, watching as the Gelding looked longingly after its Master. Her Master too, really because she truly did belong to the man, no matter what had happened between them. She drifted through the house, curious to explore, fingertips brushing lightly against the walls and surfaces. It was fresh and clean, the air smelt faintly on the sea breeze and she found a lump catching in her throat when she found all of his belongings laid out. A surprise. Somewhere for them to build their lives together.

Elyna returned to the main room, hesitating at the door in her usual way. It was too much. The thought and consideration he’d given the home spoke more than he’d ever put into words. He had really meant it, he had really wanted them to build a future. Ben’s quick embrace caught her by surprise and she returned him, gripping him tightly before he too departed and left them alone. Malcolm, I’m pregnant. The words were enormous in her mind.

Panic kept her feet rooted to the floor. It was the sight of his bandages that caused her to snap back to the world and she turned to search the kitchen surfaces, what for though? New bandages? A cloth? Anything to keep her hands busy or to help. She couldn’t see anything and didn’t know where anything was. She turned back to him, frowning, “I didn’t know you’d been arrested,” she replied. Prickly. All they’d been through, and all she could give him was panic? She ran her fingertips through her hair and moved to sit across from, dropping without grace into the seat.

The Skyrider gulped, “she came to me in Burhan after I…Mar-.” The words halted on her tongue. She had saved him, somehow and still there were no answers only more questions.

“She told me you’d been poisoned…”
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Malcolm
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Malcolm looked down and focused on the bandages he was still undoing. By my wife, by my family, by the people I love the most, by the people I thought loved me, he wanted to tell her but it still stung, still confused him, as fresh as the wound on his left side, so was his pain regarding his family's betrayal. He grit his teeth and pulled the fused blood and bandages apart gently, throwing his head back and closing his eyes as he fought a painful groan he longed to growl, the sound instead quashed on his tongue. He swallowed the lump in his throat and slowly righted himself on the chair to look at the wound. The flesh around it was red and swollen, but it didn't look infected, not as far as he could tell. There was a little blood, nothing too alarming, that he would clean up in the bathroom.
"Do you mind?" He asked, struggling to his feet, "I think I still have a bit of Victoror the Conqueror under my nails," Malcolm laughed, falling back on his strange sense of humour as usual.

He took a few slow steps around the table and bowed to kiss Elyna's temple, stopping a few inches shy, both because of the pain and the faint mark Pre had left on the woman's forehead. He made the effort to lean in then and held his lips against her warm skin for a moment before excusing himself. "Let me wash up. Eat something, all right?"

After emerging from the bathroom half a break later with a towel wrapped around his waist, Malcolm found Elyna in the kitchen and closed the distance between them to press his form to her back and hold his left hand against her stomach while with his right he reached for a piece of cheese and popped it into his mouth to first smile at her, and then chew. He looked and smelt a lot better now and had gone to the trouble of washing his hair, not that it ever smelt as nice as the noble woman's. Malcolm pressed his nose against her silky dark tresses and closed his eyes, losing himself to the same dreams that had plagued his sleep since their parting right up until the night Vri had bestowed his curse.
Malcolm picked the soft inner out of a crusty slice of bread and balled it up before chewing it down, knowing that he shouldn't overdo it after going so long without food. He turned Elyna around so that he could look at her, the fingers of his left hand combed through her hair gently. He kissed her brow and traced a line between the two, dark arches with the tip of his nose down to the point of the woman's own. He ducked to kiss her on the cheek and pressed a thankful kiss to her full lips.
"You came through," he whispered. "I owe you my life, Ely..."

Malcolm didn't look himself, cheeks gaunt and eyes tired, a pathetic, thin man with lean arms that made his hands almost seem too big for his body. His hair was longer, it hadn't undergone its usual Vanessa trim during his visit to Krome, and looped into loose curls, even now when it was dripping wet, beads of water drawing lines down the length of his upper body.
"You didn't answer my question," he pressed, "are you okay?" It didn't seem to matter, he wouldn't give her time to answer, slow, longing kisses willing her to be the same happy Elyna she had been that day at the fair, before he had dropped her, before she had watched him almost die, before everything had gone so wrong.
Last edited by Malcolm on Tue Oct 08, 2019 12:20 pm, edited 2 times in total. word count: 636
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Elyna
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Elyna shook her head as he stood, with a clear intention to clean his wound and wash up. Of course she didn’t mind. She tilted her head forwards as he passed, closing her eyes as he pressed a lingering kiss to her forehead. His parting words were thoughtful, caring. Something she had come to expect from the Captain. He was always looking after the people around him, putting their needs first. She remained motionless as he left, feeling as though she’d turned to stone in the chair. She was the statue that Tristan had carved with such painstaking care.

Pre had bestowed favour upon her and marked her as her own. Benjamin’s’ reaction had been clear enough, though he had tried to contain it. She moved her fingertips over the skin of her forehead, it didn’t feel any different and she hadn’t been able to see what had been left. What would her Mother say? The idea of seeing her Mother again caused panic to rise once more, blinding her. A mark and a bastard. Both great gifts, but Caelan wouldn’t see it that way. The mark, a blessing perhaps and the Baroness wouldn’t be foolish enough to want to offend an Immortal. But the baby? Elyna slid a protective hand over her stomach. It had been little more than two trials since she’d been told and yet…the sense of undeniable devotion was gaining momentum as the breaks slipped by. It was almost enough to overwhelm the sense of panic, almost. Trepidation threatened hysteria.

The Skyrider stood and crossed to the kitchen, collecting a glass of fresh water which she sipped until her hands stopped shaking again. Determined to keep busy, she sliced the bread and cut a few small squares of cheese. He was right, she wasn’t hungry but she should eat something. At least now she knew why she’d been feeling so dizzy for so long, and why she’d experienced so much nausea in waves during the spring. In some ways, it was a relief to know the poison spread through her system and wasn’t clinging to her, trying to kill her. But the relief was short lived and replaced with fear, what effect would the poison have on a baby? What about the strong surge of antidote? She made a ball of breadcrumbs to eat.

She had too many thoughts, and no way to share them. Stood looking out of the window Elyna longed for someone to tell her that everything was going to be okay. Being an adult sucked, especially with such a trail of bad choices behind her. Malcolm caught her up in an embrace and she couldn’t help but smile back at him. It was too easy to get caught up with him, effortless to let the world slip away. But she wasn’t okay. Before she might have let go and sunk into the kiss, a willing participant in her own lapses of judgement. Things had changed.

For a moment, she clung to him, hands gripping his shoulders before her fingertips moved gently his jaw and cheekbones, part of her delighting in the simple ability to touch him again. But she broke the kiss, as she had the first he had ever bestowed. The noblewoman bowed her head, eyes tightly closed as the pain washed up from her chest and stole her from the present. With hurried steps she turned and made her way along the worktops and away from the kitchen with the weight of her thoughts settling back on her shoulders. Elyna realised that she’d need to put as much space as possible between herself and the Mortalborn if she had any chance of resisting the urge to simply sink into oblivion with him.

He was still in pain, and he needed to heal. She forced her own feelings aside and turned to face him again, from a safer distance. His affection was clear, and it hurt. If he loved her, then why had he just walked away? She loved him so much.

The Skyrider took him in with a glance, “did you never realised…that I was right? I was right about everything I told you that day under that tree in the rain. You don’t owe me your life. You saved mine so many times, and in so many ways. You don’t owe me anything. I was right. I got you killed, I got Simon killed…I got…there was a…” Elyna blinked quickly as the tears threatened to burn the back of her eyes. There had been a little boy she’d killed too. Maybe she had saved him, maybe she’d just thrown him into the path of destruction.
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Malcolm
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It broke him every time she rejected him, put space between them as if he were some foul animal that had just crawled into the room. Presently his mind tried to make sense of the new distance between them, racing, was it his wound, did he still smell, had he said something to offend her? As Elyna tried to shed some light on her current state of mind, Malcolm couldn't help but drift away and think of the arrangements that might have been made during her time in Burhan, what had she promised her parents, and more importantly, Marcus? Was there to be a wedding next season, would she be leaving him again for the same reason, honour, duty, tradition?
Elyna's words jolted him back to reality. She was blaming herself for Simon's death and the actions of Malcolm's family. "No," Malcolm's brow furrowed. "No, no, no, my love, never," he tried to assure her, his tone low, not much more than a whisper. "You can't blame yourself for any of these things, we know the dangers we face in our line of work, Simon knew them, and you can't possibly think yourself responsible for the actions of my family. They were power hungry and wrong, whatever power they sought I already gave freely."

Malcolm didn't understand that the reasons for his death had been a lot more sinister, that his son Marcus was a dangerous man, making deals with all the wrong people in order to try and better himself, to take shortcuts, or that Elyna's own brother was in on these deals, and her ex-lover Yoreth, who he had ordered an old investigation be opened up again in an attempt to track the rebel down.
Malcolm moved across the kitchen to join Elyna but stood, afraid to touch her, to have her recoil from him again as if his skin were made of fire and ice. He wanted to hold her and tell her that everything had turned out as fate had intended, that all of this was for her, the house, his battle to stay alive, and the fight he had ahead of him to keep her, to prove that he was worth breaking the rules for.
An ache in his gut reminded him that he wasn't supposed to be on his feet, at least not for a few days, and this was soon accompanied by a lightheaded sensation that saw him reached out for the wall nearby. He didn't know if it was the lack of food in his system or the blood loss, but something was willing to take him off his feet and Malcolm couldn't deny it the honour much longer.
"Please don't leave," he begged her, both with his words and his eyes, his green stare fixed on her honey coloured gaze, lightened significantly by the immortal's blessing. "Stay?" The Mortalborn asked as he backed towards the open door leading into the bedroom, he wasn't sure how long sleep intended to claim him for, but grew more and more willing to fold to the demands his body was nagging him to cave to. "I need to rest, but I can't unless I know you're here, unless I know you're safe, promise me you don't believe the things you said?"

He felt as if he could see her now, standing in on tiptoes as the water lapped about her jaw, threatening to pull her under with the weight of sorrow that seemed to weigh on her shoulders. Malcolm had made a promise to the noble woman, that he wouldn't let her drowned, that her woes would not consume her. "Elyna this house is yours," he returned to her and set the key in her hands before closing his own about her's lightly. He didn't say anymore, only touched his forehead to the woman's gently before retreating to the bedroom to rest.
Last edited by Malcolm on Tue Oct 08, 2019 12:20 pm, edited 1 time in total. word count: 671
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Elyna
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His family? His family had been behind the poisoning and the arena? No. No that couldn’t be true, and yet it rung like a bell with clarity. He wasn’t lying. She knew that he wouldn’t lie to her, and she didn’t need the Immortal bestowed gift to tell her either. She sucked in a breath and continued to watch him. She did believe what she’d said, every word of it.

“I’m not going anywhere Malcolm,” she slid the key into the pocket of her breaches and trailed after him into the bedroom, “please rest,” it was her turn to beg as he settled on the bed. She was afraid that if he didn’t lie down soon, he would fall down and she was in no position to try and catch him. He’d lost a dramatic amount of weight, but he was still far taller than she, and heavy; not that she was in the peak of her own health and fitness.

Elyna watched from the doorway as sleep claimed him. She kept her promise and she stayed. Someone was determined to have the Mortalborn killed, and she wasn’t convinced that whoever it was had given up yet. Even if he hadn’t been recovering, she would have stayed to help protect him.

This house was for her. She filled the breaks of his sleep with a careful exploration, soaking in the affection that had gone into careful choices. She fed the horse outside and checked the gelding’s water level. She even managed to brush out the horses mane without being bitten, or trod over.

There was nothing for her to tidy, and so she set a simple trap and was relief to catch a rabbit. The next trial she would return to the city and return with more supplies, but if Malcolm needed anything, it was meat. The rabbit was skinned outside with a long knife, shredded and then cooked in a broth, chunks of the bread crust thrown in, along with some herbs from the hedgerow. It would do, and it would ease the knowing hunger of his belly.

Elyna managed to eat a small bowlful herself and left the pot to simmer. A house for her, a home for them both? The words circled in her mind as she folded her arms on the table and fell asleep watching the firelight dance in the shadows.

He’d slipped and called her his love. He’d begged her to stay. So why did she cry in her sleep? Salty tears running down her cheeks before, startled she say up and blinked in the glooming. Her fingertips gave off their own soft glow and she marvelled at them. She hadn’t known about the house, and expecting to return to his home in the city, she hadn’t packed to be away. Elyna returned to the bedroom to watch Malcolm sleeping.

His family had done this too him? She wondered if that would ever make sense to her, if she had breaks, or trials or arcs to digest the idea. It made no more sense than the mark left on her by the Immortal or the favour bestowed. She hadn’t made a choice to help Malcolm. There hadn’t been a choice, not for her. Elyna crossed the room as silently a she could and set the key on the floor, beside the bed. Then she sat beside it, resting her spine against the mattress and tilting her had back with a sigh.
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Elyna

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Location: The House I share with Malcolm
Malcolm: His Family Arranged his Death

Malcolm

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Land Ownership: Interior Design


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Spoiler
The plot thickens! Elynas brother is in on it?! What!
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