"Oh, believe me, it has always been about making money. Why else would I care what my audience wants?" Really, it had been about staying alive, staying well-liked and relevant, but in Vermidis money had been attached to all three.
"With that in mind, what of an equivalent exchange? My first for your own." A bat of lashes, not quite a wink, just for the fun of it.
"The first I can remember is one my father liked to tell. It was older than our country, something from the deserts and dry mountains of Idoran." One of those tacitly disapproved tales, that Iris punished and the other districts played coy in allowing. "It involves a man of Serran falling for a lady of Vorrena, and how he fashioned a cloak of glass and sky to sneak across the border to see her." His father had liked to tell it while looking at his mother, and she would read the familiar words on his lips, and settle in with a smile.
Funny, how burning the Dane Manor down did nothing for missing them.
Letting the young man's idly plucking fingers guide the tempo and flow of the tale, Cael spun it until the sun found its zenith, and started to sink toward the trees. Winding between description and anecdotal exchange, he built the characters, the stakes; wove the cloak of night and mirrors to make a man invisible; drew them eventually to the romantic conclusion.
"It seems idyllic, but the cloak is something they keep. They manage to find each other, but they have to hide from a world that doesn't want them to be together. A man in Serran will blame her family; a man in Vorrena will blame his. Now that I'm old enough, I think it was just a story to express the secret lives of people on the border, who might not want the wars men start from thrones at the center of their countries."
no subject
"With that in mind, what of an equivalent exchange? My first for your own." A bat of lashes, not quite a wink, just for the fun of it.
"The first I can remember is one my father liked to tell. It was older than our country, something from the deserts and dry mountains of Idoran." One of those tacitly disapproved tales, that Iris punished and the other districts played coy in allowing. "It involves a man of Serran falling for a lady of Vorrena, and how he fashioned a cloak of glass and sky to sneak across the border to see her." His father had liked to tell it while looking at his mother, and she would read the familiar words on his lips, and settle in with a smile.
Funny, how burning the Dane Manor down did nothing for missing them.
Letting the young man's idly plucking fingers guide the tempo and flow of the tale, Cael spun it until the sun found its zenith, and started to sink toward the trees. Winding between description and anecdotal exchange, he built the characters, the stakes; wove the cloak of night and mirrors to make a man invisible; drew them eventually to the romantic conclusion.
"It seems idyllic, but the cloak is something they keep. They manage to find each other, but they have to hide from a world that doesn't want them to be together. A man in Serran will blame her family; a man in Vorrena will blame his. Now that I'm old enough, I think it was just a story to express the secret lives of people on the border, who might not want the wars men start from thrones at the center of their countries."