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[anvilled]

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✉️ text — un: hammer.

[principled]

Have you yet found a horse that suits you? I am told there is a garden, separate from the grounds, within riding distance.

1/?

[anvilled]

[ Just a blurry photo of half of Maekar's face from below, mostly blocked by his thumb. He's still learning. ]

2/?

[anvilled]

I

3/?

[anvilled]

[ 10 minutes later: ]

Is this fucking thing working properly

4/done

[anvilled]

They are all insipid creatures hardly suitable for a child
But there may be one or two with spirit

[principled]

[ Ten minutes pass. He considers a response, or returning to their rooms, and refrains from both, when age makes matters of pride simultaneously easier and more difficult. In truth, he finds the devices they've been assigned no less difficult — he simply has, and has always had, more patience. ]

It is working, or so I assume. I cannot yet claim to know what would be considered entirely typical.

Would you ride with me on the morrow? I had thought to venture out after breakfast.

[anvilled]

[ Maekar is still poking at the thing, trying to figure out what he's supposed to be doing with it, when it vibrates in his hand. Luckily, it survives being thrown at the wall and the maid cleaning the fireplace nearby is able to recover from her surprise; he retrieves it with a muttered curse and reads his brother's message. ]

You need not ask brother, I will be there.
Do you expect to find anything in this garden?

[principled]

Some sense, at least, of the boundaries of the place, and some fresh air.
I doubt the greenery will be any more forthcoming than the rest of this place, but it is a recent addition, by my understanding.

[anvilled]

Gardens and dinner parties.
There's no end to the frivolous nature of this house
Have you noticed there are no defences? No wall or tower?

[principled]

They've no need for towers or dungeons to keep us prisoner; it stands to reason they would not need them to repel that which might seek to harm them. Or they expect that such things would give us cause to pay more mind — to this place, to the nature of it — and prefer the alternative.

Then again, the festivities seem just as like to lead to slaughter as to debauchery.

[anvilled]

It sounds like we're trapped at some cursed tourney.

[ Appropriate enough. ]

[principled]

A tourney, at least, would have an end.

[ Which serves as the first indication he's given as to any real annoyance or displeasure. ]

[anvilled]

And a better selection of ale, no doubt

[ A little shared complaining is never a bad thing. ]

Let us go on your ride
Perhaps we'll scare up quarry for a decent hunt.
I've heard these woods have deer, at least.

[principled]

[ In a wave of memory that pushes up like so much seafoam, he thinks of Ashford — of when Daeron and Aegon had still been missing, of Maekar's suggestion of a hunt, then. ]

That will be one familiar thing, at least.
Tomorrow, then.