DISCLAIMER: Last session was bit of tragig for the Children of Dôn...particullary for the Children. In 1083, the Scitsophrenic wife of my charcater Gwydion killed their two younger sons in one event. It was shocking setback in terms of creating this dynasty and I spat upon the devolpers of CK that the game mechanism doesen't allow justice to take place and murderers punished. Anyways, that fustrating feeling was good fuel for this bit odd writing. There would have been other things to write about, like Gwynedd's illfated reconquest of Lancaster, the subsequent pledging to France, the boyish rivaly between my heir and KoM's current heir fostered at my court...but this provoced my imagination more:
Ice age
Bronwen’s long brown hair touched nearly floor when she sat so dourly upon the apron, looking somewhere between the misty hillside and her own secret thoughts...perhaps she could almost see into the Otherside, to the evergreen lands of her grandmother.
Gwydion wouldn’t have been surprised if she did. Of all of his children, in Bronwen he saw most of his own childhood, the ageless days and magic. She could almost pass as a one of the fair folk to those who didn’t knew much of that breed and whit that Gwydion didn’t mean the oddness and secrecy, but the earthly beauty that the young lass had begun to grow upon her day by day as she approached womanhood.
Today she just remained Gwydion over how fragile and momentary childhood was. The joy of children to their parents was something that had passed way too seldom in his mind during these troubled years. Gwydion knew that in Bronwen he would have his last taste of it. The realisation of it had always been bittersweet teardrop, too salty to taste, yet too beautiful to wipe away. Few years, and she would be married to a someone important...most likely someone chosen by Mother Dôn herself, but today he was still his own little girl.
She noticed her Father standing in the shadows and gave him a faint of a smile. It was “I’m all right dad” sort of smile with faked courage and precocious that never suited well for Bronwen’s bit wanton whims but the look she gave to the heavy oaken doors perhaps justified it. Gwydion corrected his own stand accordingly. Her daughter needed all the protection and guardianship he could give when she was about to approach the evil that had slain her two brothers in one dreadful night.
“How are you doing mother?” She started with almost managing to keep her voice steady
There was no immediate answer. Bronwen looked up to her father like he would give reply in her mother’s behalf, but Gwydion’s face was like gargoyles of their distant liege’s palace. Bit too late he realised that Bronwen perhaps thought him demanding for her to go through all of this, but when he tried to bring comfort to his glaze, a shy voice behind the doors replied:
“I’m fine my love. How’s your day been?”
It was almost three years since Bronwen had last time heard the voice of her mother. She managed to only partially keep the tears in bay and her voice in control when she replied:
“Its...it has been beautiful day”
“That’s nice, really nice to hear.” The voice answered behind the doors.
“How is your brother Cynan behaving today?” Mother asked and way too soon broke the ice and let her daughter burst into child’s account of her daily life and telling her how Cynan had become a man and Count of his own little land and How she had so much wanted to go with her brother to his own castle away from his stupid cousin and his even stupider friend...
But in Gwydion’s mind, only the snide tone on his wife’s voice echoed with the subconscious fear of her wanting to kill their...his last living son too...
Listening there, his daughter’s brawling stories of the other children of the court while his wife made little, almost unnoticeable and hidden interrogations of the whereabouts of her cousin Idwall and his friend, Herman of the Greek breed with too curious notes on Browen’s shrift of the miffs and rubs of Cynan’s relationship to his cousin and that fiend son of Some Byzantine noble that parasitized Gwydion’s own patience to the edge.
But those were accounts of men and state as Both Cynan and Idwall were now on their own way out of each others close presence and both in important positions inside Gwydion’s own shaky realm. A little girl’s perspective shouldn’t raise that much of curiosity in grown ups...sane grownups at least.
Gwydion bite his teeth. He felt kinship to a three waiting the flames of the forest fire to reach its trunk. He kept remaining himself that occasional glimpse of their mother might help both Cynan and Bronwen to get on with their everyday life, but he certainly didn’t need those for himself. Less he thought about her, the better and if he could have at same time felt his little Bronwen to be old enough to face this all alone, he would have gladly found some other thing to do.
A mere glimpse at her made him thinking whether they would ever be, Strong enough to stand there alone. Cynan had made him understand that he wished not to encounter his mother trough this way or any other ways ever again. Gwydion didn’t blame him, neither he did blame his son for the courtesy he had to not to express these feelings with words. Only a short letter telling him that he was about to go throw some pebbles to the streamside.
That was something what he had loved to do as a younger lad with his little brothers, always fooling them to throw with round stones and cunningly amazed them by using hidden flat ones himself...
If there wouldn’t have been those other matters...and Bronwen’s stubborn need to do this, Gwydion would have loved to take a pebble himself too.
Bronwen was lighting the shady room with her ablaze of young girls adore over that obnoxious Greek lad that gave Gwydion an odd relief of their family tragedy with rather everyday’s father’s chore of keeping unsuitable bachelors away from his daughter. Herman Komnenuss was not going to get even a taste at the Children of Dôn and even a though of some olive skinned bastards running around in his court made small steam rose from Gwydion’s ears.
“Perhaps it’s enough for today darling.”
“But Pa...”
“Yeas. Mother is weary and ill. She cannot take these things too heavily. We will come back someday, I promise.”
And for once Bronwen didn’t challenge him to their more casual will-wrestling that Gwydion usually lost. Delighted she might have been to hear her mother’s voice; she was not too light-hearted or indifferent of what had happened. If these things were difficult, heavy and unbearable for grown men, what could they be for little girls?
She gave her father a kiss on a cheek and went by with longing look at the heavy door...either for even a glimpse at her mother or deeper child’s need for her loving parent’s revival.
Gwydion made damn sure that she would not get either one of those. Cruel that might be, but still the best. When he was certain that her daughter had disappeared into proper distance, Gwydion took deep breath and opened the door into the dark room.
There were few candles. Not as in the wildest rumours, of satanic altar arrangement, not ones made out of grease of human flesh. The air was tuff and Gwydion had to made loud couch that served also as a point to his wife to express her whereabouts in this god forsaken room that had become living legend in all of Cymrian lands.
“Im here...” She replied with hostile haste that demanded Gwydion to accept her authority inside her little realm. Gwydion allowed her to take the control. He did not want it inside here.
“Could you...” But Gwydion’s voice betrayed his confidence. He couched more and made the remark to approach the light with his hand whether not caring did she see it or not.
And when she came, one rumour was proven standing: She was dressed into a carnival costume that of big ugly toad. Gwydion didn’t want to decide whether to laugh at this or cry when he saw her once caring and tender face painted all white with irksome green tear streams running down from her eyes...
Those eyes burned Gwydion’s soul and feed his hatred. He had thought something to say when he had pictured this encounter in his mind but nothing quite matched the reality of this so unreal situation. For long the rumours of the Witch of Gwynedd, turning into a toad and killing young children at their sleep had cherished inside the realm and while they all knew the root for the killing part, Gwydion had become obsessed to see himself what he feared was true from some more accurate accounts of his court.
“Just...” Gwydion tried to continue, but he shook his head and murmured the words to himself: “...crawl back in the darkness.”
And naturally, Ellyw ap Gwasedi followed the silent wish and let Gwydion’s eyes to witness only ponder the dim details of the old nursery, which bloody sheets had not been even taken away by anybody, despite three years had passed since Ellyw had murdered his two young sons in this very room.
Gwydion had created ways to turn these feelings aside. Cold punctuality in facts kept him sane when he had to live trough those years... Time did not heel these sorts of wounds.
He rested his mind and said to himself: All right that part is now inspected, now the last one.
“Do you...do you have a painting? Here in the nur...room?”
He didn’t care if he sounded hesitant or unconfident. He just needed to be sure about the other rumour as well.
“Do you want to see it?” There was a colourful palette of scorn, mockery and insult in Ellyws suggestion that made even the filthiest harlots sound like nuns.
“No. But I guess I just have to see it.”
“Come...come here.”
Gwydion didn’t want to. But he had to. There were things that he couldn’t do but there were still a little, a vanishingly little backdoor that allowed Gwydion to kick this witch back into the hell she had came from and that backdoor depended whether the other of the two persisting rumours had even slight detail of truth into it. And that was whether Ellyw held a living and speaking picture of the Satan himself here, inside the Gwynedd castle or not. Gwydion did not want to ponder which alternative he wanted to be true.
He approached his wife’s location slowly, first with shaky unsure steps but gradually managed to regain the stout posture of a Welsh duke dealing with scum of his lands.
And before he could ask or she would continue her poisonous innuendoes, she just took a candle in her arms and made a slow wave in front of the wall that revealed it: The painting.
It was a posture of a man, painted in front of autumn landscape and emblazoned with human hair and real sewn clothes, having hair of the dogs and beast embroiled all over. The figure was of an ordinary man but his shadow; closely put behind him had horns and one single eye that were red, made out of some real jewel.
It made Gwydion shiver. It had cold affect like of a winter blizzard. Yet it was not quite the satan of Gwydion’s own haunted dreams.
“Who are you?” Gwydion heard himself asking from the painting itself...and by all the looks of it, it didn’t sound silly way to do at all...
“Lo! The King of Today; The King of tomorrow and the king of yesterday!”
“It’s...” Gwydion tried to reply...
“I know.” Ellyw said and the haunted eyes showed a faint of something long gone...A split of a moment full of sorrow, contrition and self-hatred.
“It's the king of the Coldness we must resist...” Ellyw’s words were lost in her own troubled mind and Gwydion’s lack of understanding. We? As a Christian humans, or we as a husband and wife? If the previous appealing gaze had made Gwydion to feel at least something for his wife, the rapidly growing anger made sure about killing it before it could root into something of forgiveness.
The anger made Gwydion’s eyes moist. The temper rose in burst that were only vaguely controllable and his hand sought the hilt of his sword for comforting grip but instead of provocating Gwydion’s evident fury, Ellyw sung a rhyme:
Given and able,
we stand in guard in front of the ice,
Standing high as a mountain.
Everything evil
Born when winter arrives into the heart of the people
"if so, then your heart is allready at the ice age..."
Gwydion didn’t bear more attention to his wife singing. He just kept gazing at the picture...it reminded very much of that of Wilhelm Conquer.
For reward: Piety