kingdomcomes | THE MISTRESS' FEAST

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THE MISTRESS' FEAST

With the return of the winner of the Fuckfest, the Mistress has formally announced an important and exclusive feast--and decreed that all of her extra-dimensional pets (that means you) are to attend. This news is delivered by the guards, both native to this world and otherwise, who are also tasked with distributing butt-plugs that have the words "Congratulations on not dying of exposure" engraved in their bases.

If you try not to attend, you will be forced into it anyway. It is compulsory on pain of death. Sorry. However, upon being escorted/invited into the great hall of the castle, you are welcomed by a fantastic and bustling scene. Music plays, performers dance, and the smell of food hangs in the air as platters are carried around by servants who take the time to offer portions to each guest. Not to mention the wine! The ambassadors and other guests in attendance are in varying states of undress, but no one is completely naked—and at least those who come close are not sitting on top of the table or anything. There is almost a sense of decorum to this particular event.

At the very head of the table, clad in an extraordinarily expensive-looking set of BDSM lingerie and her horned crown, sits the Mistress. Flanked by two of her highest ranking guards, she laughs and smirks at the chatter of the ambassadors sitting nearby, paying no attention to anyone else except those who have already earned her good graces.

Regardless of your job, you will all be seated all together at the very end of the table, furthest away from the Mistress. Yenh, the fuckfest winner, gets the honor of being at the end, but there’s a lot flowers and statues blocking the view anyway. She's out of earshot for whatever dinner discussions you'd like to have—but her loyal guards, servants, and the less-well-received ambassadors are not.

Once the feasting winds down, the Mistress rises and climbs the steps to the throne at the end of the room. She settles in and only now lays her eyes upon the Kingdom's special arrivals.

"Come and claim your rewards. Don't be shy."

She turns her gaze toward Estinien, the sole person who did not participate in the Fuckfest while it was ongoing, and grins. "You, too."

Once the dinner is over, nothing stops you from milling about to socialize, get caught up in an ambassador's after-dinner sex party, or to just leave with your shiny new prizes.

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[Éowyn notes that tone. It makes more sense to her, frankly, than religious fervour would; she is not a religious woman, but she understands fealty.]

[She smiles a little, sitting down nearby.] Protection and power are a great boon in this place, I imagine. Will you tell me more of her, this Hydaelyn?

It would be my pleasure. [Settling back, she curls her tail neatly around herself and rests her hands, fingers curled, in her lap.]

Hydaelyn is... matronly. Kind, yet distant, foreign, and even unknowable. The very heart of our star. Yet, I do understand this: She wishes to safeguard the realm and its people against the triumph of Darkness.

I have given my life over to executing Her will. [Yenh lays a hand over her heart.] Here, too. This may not be Her star, but I cannot fathom She would ask me to turn my blinder eye on those in need.

She sounds a worthy liege. [Éowyn nods gravely, considering.] They say such beings exist in my lands, yet I know it not, and all my service has been to more earthly lords. Does she... speak to you?

Only when She deems necessary; otherwise, I am left to walk my own path.

[It is interesting for Yenh to hear that Éowyn has no experience with her local gods, seeing as she can barely throw a rock without hitting one in Eorzea.]

[She gives her companion a smile.]

There is honor in serving earthly lords. I've done the same. I am extraordinarily lucky to have Aymeric's presence here; he is one such man, to whom I would entrust my very life.

Oh - he is your lord? I did not know!

In truth, I did not even know you were of the same lands.

After a fashion! He is one in whom I place my trust. I am also not of his land—but I leant my strength toward bringing their war to a close, and earned myself a place among them.

[Not officially, perhaps, but Aymeric welcoming her home after slaying demigods was the nearly the same thing, wasn't it? Never mind that, in some circles, she was still whispered about with scorn and distaste.]

He is also but one of the few whom I would truly call a friend.

A boon indeed, then, to have him here. In so strange a place, friends are a foundation much needed.

[...Speaking of...]

When we spoke on the network, you spoke of friendship between us?

Ah, yes! I remember well your favorite activities: hunting, riding, and feasting! [To that, she offers the other woman an awkward smile.]

Lo and behold, we find ourselves at a feast. Present company and a choice few others excepted, it isn't the celebration I would have asked for, but it is a feast nonetheless.

[She is rambling a bit, but then again, it is harder to make bold declarations of friendship in person than over pen and paper.]

What do you think of it? Er, not necessarily the feast, but...

[Éowyn smiles back, much less awkwardly.]

Of the feast, I would say it is, if naught else, auspicious that we should meet here. Of the friendship, I would be more than glad.

...It's so quiet, though. The festivities, I mean.

[That might sound weird, because even here, the hall is far from silent. But Éowyn is used to singing and tale-telling at parties, even state occasions. It's strange to her that only the musicians are singing, everyone else merely talking or... doing whatever it is she can see some of them doing, which definitely doesn't seem appropriate to a state dinner.]

[Yenh tilts her head to accompany her question.]

Is it? Your land's feasts must be something to behold, if this strikes you as subdued. [Her eyes wander toward the fact that someone has just pulled a swing down across the hall, and they are about to board it while completely nude.]

Or mayhap I've not been invited to the proper occasions.

[Éowyn laughs, shaking her head.]

Not subdued. Not by any means. But...

...Well, 'tis a different kind of loud, I suppose.

Ah! I believe I understand. Less with the, um, moaning?

[Her ear tilts instinctively toward a shouted dirty word as someone reaches their first orgasm for the night in record time. She then immediately forces her ear back forward.]

Yes. Less of that. More singing, and music, and tales told...

I had hoped to learn more of this land, in coming here.

[Yenh offers her a wry smile.]

I believe I've already had my fill of learning this realm's ways for the evening. Or at least of the Mistress' ways.

May I ask more of your land?

Gladly!

[Éowyn smiles, actually looking enthusiastic for once. She feels a lot better about home, now she's confirmed that she isn't truly abandoning her duties there.]

What would you know?

[That enthusiasm is contagious, and the look on her face warms quickly.]

Anything at all! Though I know such a broad question does little to narrow it down, and I shall listen if you chose to offer a schoolbook take, but that isn't necessarily good conversation.

So, tell me: what are your favorite things about it?

[She laughs, shaking her head a little, at that comment. Yenh's right, that doesn't narrow it down much.]

[The question helps. She considers a moment, then answers, a certain dreaminess in her voice.]

When the sun goes down over the halls of Edoras - where my uncle reigns and I have lived since childhood - the light catches the rooves, and turns the thatch to beaten gold. And it catches the carvings, too, carvings many centuries old, and picks them out more clearly, and all the walls seem alive with them.

[Yenh closes her eyes as she tries to imagine them, glad that the gift from her deity isn't forcing her to look at those memories. Without much reference, her mind fills in the gaps with the places she's seen—a little bit of Aymeric's and Estinien's home for the carvings, a little bit of the still-living thatch on Gridanian forest homes.]

That sounds truly lovely... what manner of scenes are carved there? [Surely not images of dragon fights.]

[Éowyn smiles, her own eyes half-closed.]

The tales of our ancestors. Of Léod King's death in taming wild Felarof, of the Battle of the Field of Celebrant, and the Oath of Eorl...

And other carvings more abstract: of horses running, and birds in flight, and many other things. Trees and flowers wind along the lintel of some doors.

[She laughs.]

And beneath the rim of the sill on the kitchen window, my cousin Théodred carved his name, but I think few have seen that addition.

[She can't help but join Éowyn in laughing. It was good that some things were true of cousins, no matter where you went.]

That sounds lovely! I should have liked to see them, were such a thing possible. [Without involuntarily invading Éowyn's privacy, anyway.] I've seen many a mural in my travels, so I've grown a fondness for them. 'Tis wonderful campfire talk, if naught else, to gaze at them and chatter at length about the scenes depicted.

And such were many conversations at our feasts, when lords and merchants of other lands should come, and wonder at histories, and be told tales and tell their own in return.

In which spirit I should ask thee: what of your home? How was it there?

[A sheepish look spreads across her face.]

When I think of home, I confess my thoughts no longer go first to my mother's hearth and the chatter of my sisters and aunts... terrible of me, but I've always been restless.

Home, for me, has become less a place and more a feeling. I'm welcomed into the homes of friends and allies, I'm welcomed to companies on the march, I'm welcomed into their camps...

[An ambassador who happens to be walking past interjects "I bet you were." and continues walking. Yenh is mildly startled from her reverie.]

Edited 2017-10-12 06:27 (UTC)

[Eowyn mutters something at the ambassador's retreating back, which doesn't sound very complimentary but also isn't in a recognisable language, and turns back to Yenh with pursed lips.]

Ill manners, from a man of standing.

But I think I know it, that sense of... restlessness, as you say. I love Edoras, as myself, yet it felt so oft a prison. I have felt more at home among my brother's men than ever in its walls, would feel more at home in the thunder of hooves and the song of steel than in the gentler pleasure of the hearth.

I can scarce call such thoughts terrible, without denying myself.

[With timing being impeccable as it is, the very gift Yenh won back also lets her understand the spoken word no matter what the tongue. She tries not to betray that she understands, but her lips twitch briefly.]

Ah, my friend... a warrior at heart. You're too right, I suppose. Perhaps there is no shame in leaving those things in the past.

There is shame only in forgetting them, or so I believe. But that, too, I fear.

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