as per request
Though I'm not entirely happy with it.
They met in the library--not the great open space in the middle, which might have been necessary ten years ago, when the family numbered in the eighties and not a paltry twenty four, but in one of the upstairs rooms, populated by couches and overstuffed armchairs, the walls decorated with shark and lion skin maps in the few places unoccupied by barely organised bookshelves.
The king sat, not on a throne or even one of the armchairs, but on one of the tables, flanked by his uncle on one side and his eldest half-brother on the other (though flanking may have been the wrong word for a redheaded man pacing along the back wall of books and staring balefully at the lion skin maps to the sides while he listened to the family talk).
His redheaded cousins but one were all piled onto one of the couches, Jonathan pinned against an arm by Sascha leaning on his side and Hazel sprawled over both her elder cousins in sublime disregard for aunt Giselle's frown. Not that there was particularly much their youngest aunt could do, perched on a settee halfway across the room and tied down by her own sense of propriety.
Aunt Arianhrod, on the other hand, sat neatly poised in an armchair of her own, her fiery braid coiled neatly across her throat and the hood that had hidden her hair when she arrived pulled back to expose a few new freckles sprinkled across alabaster skin and a set of emerald earrings that flashed small gold fragments of patterns when she tilted her head. The young man perched at her feet hid the fact that she had worn slacks to a family meeting, and he wondered if Arianhrod's son had done that on purpose to keep what little peace his mother and his last remaining aunt maintained.
One of Arianhrod's hands was idly stroking her son's bleached-white hair; the two looked more sorceress and familiar than mother and son, the latter taking hints of the former's appearance and giving them a feral, slightly mad cast.
Knowing, too, when Aodh's eyes flicked to meet Isael's and the not-familiar blended with a secrets-shared smile that Isael would have missed if he’d blinked.
He reached down, scratching his fingers through Conall's thick hair and got a thrum of a pleased growl through the leg the werewolf had pinned down when he'd sat at Isael's feet instead of taking a piece of the couch or finding a chair of his own.
It probably made for an odd juxtaposition, the bard's son with the hunter's only mostly human son flopped at his feet, nearly opposite the sorceress and her not quite familiar.
But then, for this family it was probably as normal as they got.
They met in the library--not the great open space in the middle, which might have been necessary ten years ago, when the family numbered in the eighties and not a paltry twenty four, but in one of the upstairs rooms, populated by couches and overstuffed armchairs, the walls decorated with shark and lion skin maps in the few places unoccupied by barely organised bookshelves.
The king sat, not on a throne or even one of the armchairs, but on one of the tables, flanked by his uncle on one side and his eldest half-brother on the other (though flanking may have been the wrong word for a redheaded man pacing along the back wall of books and staring balefully at the lion skin maps to the sides while he listened to the family talk).
His redheaded cousins but one were all piled onto one of the couches, Jonathan pinned against an arm by Sascha leaning on his side and Hazel sprawled over both her elder cousins in sublime disregard for aunt Giselle's frown. Not that there was particularly much their youngest aunt could do, perched on a settee halfway across the room and tied down by her own sense of propriety.
Aunt Arianhrod, on the other hand, sat neatly poised in an armchair of her own, her fiery braid coiled neatly across her throat and the hood that had hidden her hair when she arrived pulled back to expose a few new freckles sprinkled across alabaster skin and a set of emerald earrings that flashed small gold fragments of patterns when she tilted her head. The young man perched at her feet hid the fact that she had worn slacks to a family meeting, and he wondered if Arianhrod's son had done that on purpose to keep what little peace his mother and his last remaining aunt maintained.
One of Arianhrod's hands was idly stroking her son's bleached-white hair; the two looked more sorceress and familiar than mother and son, the latter taking hints of the former's appearance and giving them a feral, slightly mad cast.
Knowing, too, when Aodh's eyes flicked to meet Isael's and the not-familiar blended with a secrets-shared smile that Isael would have missed if he’d blinked.
He reached down, scratching his fingers through Conall's thick hair and got a thrum of a pleased growl through the leg the werewolf had pinned down when he'd sat at Isael's feet instead of taking a piece of the couch or finding a chair of his own.
It probably made for an odd juxtaposition, the bard's son with the hunter's only mostly human son flopped at his feet, nearly opposite the sorceress and her not quite familiar.
But then, for this family it was probably as normal as they got.