What to Expect

Khyus, the visiting prince from the Caru-lûth, questions the Angmarin Muirne about the expectations of marriage between the Trév Gállorg and the Dunlendings.

Khyus |It was later on in the evening when many were preparing for the evening meal. Khyus wandered down the path to look over the hills, and the sun that set between them, painting them with golden light. A shadow moved in his field of vision, and when he focused on it, he realized it was the shape of a woman, sitting in the shade of one of the roundhouses, shown in silhouette against the fire she sat before. She was unknown to him, or at least he thought, and so he approached. It was then he realized who it was, and moved at once to speak to her. "You must be the newcomer, from the North," he said in his quiet, gruff tone.

Muirne kept to herself, despite the stares of passers-by, silently gathering herbs from the bundles she'd laid out on the skin mat around her, bundling them into bouquets for the sickbed or the cookpot. When someone spoke to her, she didn't notice right away. It was his direct steps towards her that made her raise her face. "Yes..." she said warily. "My name is Muirne." As if not everyone in the village knew it.

Khyus kept a distance that was respectful, but still conducive to conversation. "Muirne," he repeated with a nod. "My name is Khyus, of the Caru-lûth. The Stag clan, if you are unfamiliar with our tongue." He observed her work and glanced over his shoulder, toward the hall he knew the evening meal would be set in. "You are not with the other women," he commented, "Why is that?"

Muirne 's hands were painted and covered in rings. Her fingers worked deftly, almost automatically at her work. She didn't need to look to know which sprig she picked from her harvest and which it paired with. "I am not like the other women," she said simply.

Khyus smirked faintly at that, and nodded. "Indeed, but they may not know that." He ventured closer, if only to get a look at what she was doing. "Your journey here must have been arduous."

Muirne looked up at him curiously, then moved a pile of stalks bearing white and pink pebbled flowers. She rearranged the others, as if to give some excuse for the action that was independent of allowing him to sit. "Not as arduous as one might think."

Khyus |"Then you were cunning enough to avoid the perils that stood between there and here." He made no movement, and continued to observe. "Is this your occupation in the Trév Gállorg? Or do you put such things to use?"

Muirne hadn't shown that she'd made the effort to give him room, and so did not show if his choice not to join her disappointed or not. She looked down at the herbs she bundled with twine and lay in a basket to distribute amongst the village. "My occupation is to marry, to bear children, and to teach them the ways of our cousin clans, so they may return with them to my homeland."

Khyus |"An alliance, yes. I am interested to hear of your clan, curious about your brenin's decision to deny the fell forces in those lands, as my own have." He paused and squatted to pick up one of the bundles to look out. "Curious about you," he said, looking over to her directly at last. "I was hoping you and I would have the chance to talk at some point, when you are not expected elsewhere."

Muirne smiled kindly, recognizing what he said just by sitting, no matter his words. "I am expected anywhere besides where I am, it sometimes feels." She smirked, motioning to the bouquet of stalks and petals. "I wouldn't eat that, unless you want to be crouched over a shite hole for the next week."

Khyus had brought the bundle to his nose, but paused and looked across to her as she warned him. He promptly set it back in the basket with an uneasy shifting in his crouch. "You are here for a purpose, but you likely did not know it would also be a test."

Muirne chuckled as she reached behind her to retrieve one of the bundles she'd tied earlier. "Here," she said, holding it out to him. "Crush it into hot water to calm nerves, or when sleep eludes you." She took up her work again. "I knew it would test me, but I'm not sure what you mean."

Khyus took the bundle from her and lifted /that/ to his nose to sniff, finding it pleasant. "To see if you have the qualities a man of my clan would look for in a wife, to see where your loyalties will fall, and whether you will bear the same burdens as the rest of us." His dark eyes studied her kohl-lined eyes.

Muirne paused in her bundling, laying her hands in her lap. She wore many skirts when most Dunlending women wore only one. Each was more elaborate than the one beneath it, and a rippling current of embroidered hems wound around her like colored waves around an island. "You seem to speak what my current master thinks, but cannot say." She looked at him more seriously. "And what quality of wife might a man of your clan look for?"

Khyus nodded once. "Perhaps I was not raised with the same notion of diplomacy and duty that Gryffudd was. I would rather my intentions be known. A man of my clan looks for a strong woman who will bear healthy children and protect them when he is away, who will help support the clan and show solidarity, and who is clever enough to know when he needs shelter or a swift kick in the arse." He lifted his chin and rubbed his fingers along his jaw as he smirked. "The last part may be my own opinion."

Muirne smirked. "I cannot promise to always know when to bark or hold my tongue, as much as I've been raised to." She glanced up at the widest roundhouse on the hill where the prince hosted few family, but many stragglers from the wilds and from foreign clans. And yet her presence was barely tolerated. "I am strong," she said, looking him in the eye. "And I will do anything to protect my children."

Khyus held the bundle of herbs she had given him to his nose again and listened with a single nod. ""The women here are a dutiful to family, then home, then clan. What is your role? What expectations are made of you?" He also looked up at the large house looming on the hill, where preparations were being made, and the hint of smoke and cooking food hung in the air.

Muirne motioned to the bundles she made to pass out among neighbors, in anticipation of their winter ailments. "I am called a death-seer, where I come from. I engage with the spirits, staying death when it comes too close to the sick or coaxing it to welcome those whose time has come."

Khyus looked at her openly for a long moment and nodded his head. "So you are destined to more than to marry and bear children." He lowered his chin and looked at her under his brow with a slight smile. "Some here would call you a witch."

Muirne smirked. Her braids were loose in her hair, swaying in motion with her curls as she looked down at the work in her lap. "I must have children to fulfill my Fém, and I must serve the clan and my husband. I do not think my duties as a wife or as a...witch...are separate from each other." She looked up at him, her grin more arced than her brow. "Tell me, though, what sort of husband should a woman from the north expect?"

Khyus sat upright and rolled his shoulder as he shifted from crouching to truly sitting across from her. "I cannot speak for a woman of the north, but a Caru-lûth woman would expect her husband to protect her and their children, provide food and safety, and defend and lead the clan for its best interests. Is that so different from your clan?"

Muirne |"No," she answered honestly, her tone as clear as her eyes. "In my experience, though, the true matter of a man is revealed in when he will compromise. It is all fine to say he will be his best in good times, but when he cannot fulfill each duty? What will he choose, or what will he give up?"

Khyus kept his gaze serious, underlining the sincerity of his words. "Many value the clan before all else, but a man who is so rigid and unbending will break when tested. There will always be things which cannot be compromised. Family is one of them. To me, that is. I would die for any of my brothers, my mother, and certainly my father, who is brenin, and thus I would die for my clan. The two are not separated so easily."

Muirne nodded, slowly. Her fingers were slower in braiding the herbs and twine. "When you study death your entire life, you learn death is flexible. It sometimes shows mercy when it has no need, and sometimes takes ruthlessly despite all reason. It ebbs and flows..." She felt the thin fibers of a single leaf between her finger and thumb. "People should be that way, I think. Unpredictible and ahead of expectation. Willing to show both ruthlessness and mercy."

Khyus narrowed his eyes, intrigued by what she had said. "And you, as a death-seer, can influence it one way or another?" He seemed genuinely curious, leaning elbows on knees.

Muirne delayed her answer a heartbeat or two. "No," she said, laying the leaf flat against the others it was bundled with. "No. I can try, and sometimes it listens, but it always has the final word." She smiled down at her baskets of sweet-scented medicines. "It listens more often than it does not, but even if it didn't, I would think it not an effort wasted."

Khyus nodded slowly, "Frustrating to see death, to know it is near, but do nothing to affect it one way or another. Not unlike the rest of us who have no idea when it is coming."

Muirne |Something imperceptible shifted in her posture. She didn't slouch where she was straight, or straighten where she'd been bent, but enough tension left her shoulders when her gaze reached out into the sky above the thatched rooftops that there was a noticeable change. "I don't think so," she mused with a fresh voice, full of spring though winter was nigh upon them. "Accepting death is to be free of it. One stops living for the day they die and can live for the days they're alive." She glanced at him, her expression more relaxed under her kohl and woad makeup. "I cannot speak for the warrior, though. I do not know what private rituals and prayers are spoke in the morning mist before battle."

Khyus smiled slightly and moved the small bundle of herbs she had given him between his hands. Later, when he sat to eat, he would catch a hint of it as he lifted the food to eat and remember the conversation. His gaze stayed to hers, worn and weary as it was from the day's travels. "A ritual, perhaps. In the sharpening of spear and blade, the rhythmic grind of stone over iron, or the donning of decorations of battle." His own face bore faded streaks of woad on the right; three fingers to resemble the antlers of a stag. "But for me, it is in quiet and stillness. Breathing while I still can."

Muirne moved her herbs into the basket and again laid her empty hands in the center of her skirts. "What stills you? What calms your breath?"

Khyus |His heavy brow lifted slightly as he contemplated, unsure of how to answer at first. He took another whiff of the bundle in his hand and smirked. "The brew that will steep from these herbs, no doubt." He chuckled quietly, "But simple things, really. Rain on a thatched roof, the color of the sky at dawn and dusk, the smell of mist in the air on a morning hunt."

Muirne fondly muttered, "Mornings..." She was tempted to pick up the same sort of bundle and smell it, though she knew its scent and knew she could not smell in it the same early-morning mist. She was quiet for a long time. "I miss the sky," she said, abruptly, louder than needed. To counteract the volume she whispered: "The sky calmed me. In Angmar. It shouldn't have. It rained poison down on us, polluted the few pools and streams we had. It was a constant reminder, though, of the enemy that lurked without." A twisted smile crept up her lips. "It was a reminder that the enemy was never unexpected, and that death held the same power over them as it did us."

Khyus |"Let it not be said that the woman from the North is not from strong stock, hailing from a place which rains poison and has a constant threat at its doorstep." He looked up to the sky above them, by now dotted with the first stars of the evening. "Hopefully you will learn to find the same peace in our sky."

Muirne looked at him a long moment before she dragged her gaze to the moonlighting night. "Or potential," she posed. She moved her bundles again to make more room on her mat to creep further out from the roundhouse's thatch overhang. "Nature is unpredictible. That is why most fear it, but that is why I know it can be trusted."

Khyus held her gaze as long as she would offer it, and even a moment longer as she tilted her chin to look up at the sky. Her skin was pale, and she seemed to have an aura about her he found curious and unique. "Only its effect on us is unpredictible. It is what it will always be. But what else do you trust in?"

Muirne smirked, finding better warmth in their talk than in the meager fire beside them. "Not only its effect, but its intention, for it has its own." Her gaze dropped from the sky to the path before her and she realized how much into the open she'd crawled. She took her time edging back into the thatch's shadow. "I trust in tradition."

Khyus |"The traditions of your clan," he asked, clarifying, "Or from the one you will inherit?"

Muirne added the dried stalks of her herbs to the fire. "They are the same, now Really, they always have been, otherwise I would not be here."

Khyus |The clanking chime of a bell was heard, and Khyus turned his head to look up the hill. The meal was ready, and already people were heading for the hall. The man stood and extended a hand for her to steady herself as she stood. "Then worry less about the tests which have been given to you."

Muirne |The same shift in her spine before occured, but opposite. She sat upright, but more poised. "You worry less for me," she teased. She nodded to his offer to help raise her, then again to his feet and the path leading to the breninson's supper-hall. "Blessings with your own tests."

Khyus looked at her for a long moment. That she knew of his own tests, the ones passed to him in being the second born son of a brenin, was intriguing to him. The words might have been a coincidence, but they spoke to him, and he bowed his head. "Perhaps if we each worry, the other will find success in their respective tests." He would lead, or attempt to guide, her when she was ready to move into the hall at the crest of the hill.

Muirne stayed where she was, fingers picking up the craft at the same speed with which he had found her. "Go on," she encouraged. "I will lose my appetite if I attempt to join, and I will ruin the appetite of everyone else if I try." She smiled, looking down at the work that waited her. "I have enough to sustain me."

Khyus stepped back, nodding. "If that is truly your wish." He was not about to pressure the woman, but he seemed curious.

Muirne glanced up the hill at the rounded hall where bread and bowls of stew would be passed between citizens. Sbe was quiet, thinking. "Too straight a branch breaks," she said, then looked up at the Stag. "This is not a battle I will win. Go." She motioned him towards the hilltop and the roundhouse that crested it, already filtering music, smoke, and laughter through its thatch.

Khyus |A few thoughts went through his mind at that point, but the woman's stubbornness won out in the end, though he did seem a little disappointed, the kind worn with a kind smile. "Very well," he said quietly. "Perhaps next time." He pocketed the herbs in his hand, and bowed his head a last time before heading up the hill toward the main house.

Muirne watched him go, her smile lingering longer than it ought. When the rest of the clan crawled into their hovels to feast together, she picked out sustenance from a pocket inside her skirts.

Chat Log: 11/10