#and then draws the line when she's kinda mean to rayla

[goofnuggetkarlaa]

I keep seeing gifs of the new Dragon Prince season and it makes me want to watch it but god season 5 was so fucking bad that I haven't watched it since.... Did it get any better or is the pacing still ass

[aerequets]

Do you have any tips on how to draw different poses? Any kind of movement just fucks me up so bad 😭😭

hoo boy poses! an eternally difficult frustrating teeth clenching jaw aching part of drawing 🤩 JK but i def get where you are coming from. i was trying to think of the best way to reply to this and just ended up making a whole step by step of my process LOL

BEFORE WE BEGIN THOUGH i should mention that i am NOT a professional, nor have i learned these techniques anywhere other than the internet and so there's obviously room for improvement and this is not the end-all-be-all, just how i personally draw poses ATM.

now with that out of the way! keep reading for my tutorial on posing :D

i figured the best way to show this would be to take one of my old drawings and repurpose it. so:

rayla. january 11 2020 rayla. she looks a lil smug maybe? a lil confident? her arms are crossed and her head is kinda tilted and her expression seems that way, but all in all it's kinda grey. this is the first thing you should do when making a pose for your character:

what is your character feeling?

define it clearly. are they angry? close their pose up, cross their arms. happy? open it up, give them big gestures. lazy or tired? slouching, etc. posing is pretty much just body language so figure out what you want your character to say when they aren't speaking.

now i'll just show what the base sketch for this drawing looks like:

that's fine and all, the building blocks are there, but now i'm gonna redraw it and show what i would do differently now:

what's different about this sketch from the first one? three main things which i will break down!

The Lines

when i say "the lines", i mean the horizontal lines of the body if that makes sense? i'm sure there's an actual term or something, but basically, the parts of your body that can tilt. don't make these parallel! that can end up making the character look unbalanced and unnatural, or stiff if the lines are just flat. in the 2020 sketch, they aren't parallel, but they aren't exaggerated either. the more you exaggerate the differences in your posing, the more dynamic it will look. so in this sketch, i've exaggerated them more. gotta make rayla look real cocky yk

The Blobs

when i used to sketch bases for my characters, it would be a bunch of boxes and rectangles connected by sticks. i stopped doing that and it helped. human bodies are soft and squishy and curvy, we aren't robots with metal edges. drawing the base shapes as blobs personally helps me with getting rid of stiffness in the pose. lots of ppl make the boxy method work though, so if that's what you wanna do, by all means.

another thing i noted is "forget about the limbs". limbs are basically just branches, so if you get caught up in drawing them before their foundation (torso + lower half) is down, it could look wonky. get the basis down first, and then go on with the joints and limbs.

The Line (Singular)

AKA the line of action, which is a very popular term + method for posing. this is basically a line that runs down the spine, and the more bendy/curvy it is, the more dynamic your pose will look. tbh in the sketch i did right now it's not very action-y, but rayla is also just standing there, so if you want to do a fighting pose or something similar make sure the line of action is hella curved. even for stationary poses though, a little curve is helpful.

so! with these things in mind, i redid (extremely very roughly lol) the drawing. let's see the difference:

eyy hows that? she looks a helluva lot more arrogant! lol jk. but we can definitely get a better grasp of her character from the first image than the second. ofc there are other factors at play here like line weight and expression, but nevertheless, a few small tweaks go a long way.

anyways this got kinda long but i hope i could be of help!

[raayllum]

hey I have some thoughts and theories on season six that I want to post but I feel like they’re kind of in cohesive and all over the place and rambly and I’m not really sure the best way to get them across especially when I’m more of a brainstorm type of personof like 10 different ways something could go I’m not really sure how to organize it or make it comprehensible to the average Tumblr scroller do you have any tips for this? because I want them to get reach cause I do feel like I’m contributing something but sometimes I think what I’m saying makes no sense at all or no one’s going to read all that you know. or, TLDR: Do you have any tips on making meta in general since you seem to be the main producer of it in the fandom ha ha, your input would be invaluable

So I actually did start writing a post a while ago about well, a kind of how to guide for writing meta, but it felt very self-gratuitous so it got semi-banished to the drafts although I still might finish / clean it up and post it someday

That being said your ask does make me realize that your query is not something I had considered going over, approaching it from more of a "here's how to train your brain to notice things that can be fun to write meta about" > organizing said thoughts, so thank you for bringing it to my attention! I hope some of this advice will be useful, and it may even have some overlap with other thoughts I had planned

The most useful way I've found when it comes to meta is treating it like an essay, with an introduction, body paragraphs / sections (and sometimes headers), and a conclusion of some kind when warranted. This means looking for similarities or main ideas with possible consistent threads (i.e. avenues Aaravos' evil plans could go might be split off into branches, each one detailing a different avenue). So that would be my best advice when it comes to organization.

However, most concerns about "not making sense" comes down to thinking through what context you have to provide for your audience to understand what you're discussing, depending on the length and depth of the leap / analysis. Are there any symbols being drawn upon we will want to explain in more detail before theorizing how they relate to the show? Are there any smaller details or scene summaries to include when putting these things together?

For example, when I wrote a meta about Rayla being the metaphorical light to Callum's darkness (pre-S5), I first had to establish why I associated her with light, drawing from visual examples from S1, S2, and S4, as well as the "Dear Callum" letter. Callum's side of things was more straightforward with dialogue in the text. Then I could take it one step further and talk about why this light-dark duality indicates that she will likely save him from possession after possibly leading to the fall in the first place. But I had to go from a bottom-top approach in steadily building the layers rather than starting from the top and working my way down, as for more symbolic matters in particular, that can often be confusing.

Although sometimes more simplistic, consulting the 5 Ws (who, what, where, when, and why) can likewise be useful in meta in terms of 1) tracing where certain ideas are coming from in the text, 2) what is being posited/suggested, and 3) why these things might be conflated, and 4) who might be involved. Obviously meta tends to be more "what" heavy, particularly when its predictive, but it's kinda like explaining why one character might be more involved in one plot line than another, etc. There's going to be a Why to that Who, and those things both combine to form the What (otherwise known as theory or just plain analysis).

And don't be concerned about if people are gonna wanna read it. I find most people in TDP fandom are pretty down to theorize even if they may not necessarily write a lot of it down themselves (and often have cool ideas/contributions too!) and I am the king of making things overly long, yet people muscle through anyway!

That's about it for me without more specifics (a character study vs foil vs theme vs prediction are all kinda different in their own way) but I would love to hear more if you'd like to message me off anon or if you have more thoughts/questions you'd like to leave in my inbox once that's opened back up! Have fun theorizing, have fun writing, always feel free to break longer metas up into smaller bite sized ones as you go, and I look forward to seeing them int the tags!

[biqherosix]

hiiiiiiiiii do u write for the drgaon prince ??????????????????????? it’s totally not el spamming you again bc you deserve your ezran/callum x sister reader even if i’ll give it to you too

the secret life of katolis royalty - headcanons

prompt(s): the royal family uphold a proper, good reputation. but with you and your siblings, there are always bound to be a few secrets whether they're silly or not

pairing(s): familial! callum x fem! reader x ezran

fandom(s): the dragon prince

genre(s): fluff

warning(s): none (if there are, please feel free to point them out!)

other notes: hi el 🙄 anyway yes i write for dragon prince now because there is a lack of content in this fandom, especially for the royal siblings ! i want platonic goodness, and i'm getting it even if i have to make it myself. enjoy :) also reader may possibly be bi?? can be interpreted as whatever you'd like though !

- so you're three years older than callum, making you at least seven when ezran is born

- you're so protective, no doubt about it

- and callum doesn't mind because you're not overbearing (if anything callum is more protective of you and ezran than you are of your brothers)

- which is why callum never finds out about your little things with both soren and claudia (more like a kiss with claudia, dating soren, and then breaking up with soren to try shit out with claudia; spoiler alert you kinda miss soren as much as you love your magical perky girl)

- another reason is that cal has such a major crush on claudia before meeting rayla and you don't want him to feel bad upon finding out

- but let's be honest ezran finds out because he walked in on you making out with soren after exiting a secret tunnel

- ezran gossips with you more than you both like to admit because of this huge secret only the two of you now know

- but it brought you two closer and he's really happy about that because now he gets to cuddle into your side while he asks questions and spills the beans while you play with his hair lmao

- yk sometimes you even shit talk callum and his sword fighting and that definitely stays between the two of you (he always wonders why you two are giggling under the tree whenever he plays around with soren)

- but you love your brothers and they love you so !! freaking !! much !!

- y'all are attached to the hip, you can't be seen without one or the other

- most of the time it's your brothers doing your thing and brushing up your knowledge on royal etiquette because a part of you is anxious whenever your father talks about his royal wrongdoings

- he doesn't mean to worry you, he just wants you to be prepared (you were in fact, worried and unprepared when he died and you now had three mf children and a dragon egg to take care of)

- don't worry though because callum and ezran are here to save the day and will tell you how amazing you are for hours, it honestly passes the time very well

- okay but i gotta get this outta the way before i forget but callum is the epitome of the "you're doing amazing sweetie!" meme okay?? he is

- where he succeeds (magic, art, being awkward) you on the other hand lack and vice versa (you are badass okay? you can fight and spar properly thanks to your mother's extensive knowledge and even without a weapon you can pack a punch)

- rayla doesn't really understand how callum can be so happy and perky even when you suck at what you're doing

- but he's your baby brother and he loves hyping you up

- callum is your biggest hypeman and always has been it's a second nature to him, trust me if someone were to mention your name he'd never shut up !!

- like this one time you drew rayla and callum on a spare piece of paper callum gave you and it didn't really turn out the best but he still fake cried and attacked you in a hug

- he keeps it in his sketchbook and he's never letting that go, so rayla jokingly judges him for it and your boy ezran backs you up with callum

- "i don't see why you keep it, i mean it doesn't even look like us! we're like lil' stick figures" "art is contemporary, rayla. it can be anything you want it to be! isn't that right zym?" "ez is right, plus it doesn't look that bad! it's cute. look, she even drew me doing magic! her markings are so accurate" "callum, i don't even know what spell you're doing" "it's clearly aspiro! look at the wind" "they're lines!" "that's what art is all about!"

- baby gets so nervous when he and rayla kiss bc he obviously has to tell you and your opinion matters most to him; he's just scared bc rayla always teases you and you may not approve

- so he kept it a secret for a fat minute after telling ezran, ez is so annoyed bc he has to keep your soren secret and callum's??? at least bait and zym are there to listen (man relationships are hard)

- you just laugh because you saw it coming and the moment is just so wholesome !! you tackle rayla into a hug, welcoming her into the family with "bad drawings and all" bc she never lets you live it down fr fr

- but later that night callum can't sleep and he lets out everything because he never really told you about his crush in the first place like he feels really guilty because you're always so open with him and sometimes he has some walls up, like how he was with king harrow even if you're his biological sibling

- also you bet on your life that you would do anything to make sure callum was content with his life and so after his lil rant and your assurance he asks if you've ever felt that way before

- and you had to do it to em, so you tell him about soren and claudia

- "why didn't you tell me anything before?" "you liked claudia! i didn't want to be the reason for your heartache" "but you're my sister, you deserve to be happy. maybe you and soren can work out" "eh, we'll see. not gonna lie i was ready to go back for him after he almost killed that dragon. he looked pretty hurt but you looked way worse honestly" "hey! you're making my heart hurt here y/n." "that doesn't count because it was playful!"

- you end up going to sleep that night leaning on each other because that's what you've been doing all your life — leaning on each other and you don't want him to forget that !!!

- you also wake up the next morning with ezran in between you sleeping soundly, and rayla comes back to the three of you making funny faces and laughing like there was no tomorrow

- she didn't get it but the three of you did, it was a simple moment that you would all cherish even after ezran becomes king — perhaps it even makes you better as royals

- and from then on, there were no secrets, just a family trying to piece themselves together again after so much tragedy

[numptypylon]

Drawn Out, 4th: Spray Paint

It was Rayla’s 10th birthday tomorrow, and she broke her skateboard… somehow, last week. She was lucky that was all she broke, really.

It hadn’t been a very good skateboard, to be fair. Rayla had bought it from some kid at school for 3 dollars and a juicebox, because Runaan and Ethari did not have enough trust in her self-preservation skills to get her one, a sentiment Callum did understand, but Rayla would just buy another poopy secondhand one if no one else did.

And he had a better one, his great-uncle had given him for his birthday two weeks ago, because he had offhandedly mentioned meeting Rayla at the skate park, one time.

He had never used it, nor would he, because he fell over his own feet just walking, never mind trying to balance on some wobbly thing moving on its own beneath you. And it was technically an expensive gift, except it didn’t feel right, giving her something he hadn’t gotten for her but just had lying around. It wasn’t for her, it was meant for him or… not really that either, it was some ‘that’s what kids like, right?’ kinda present from someone who didn’t know him very well.

It had some kinda generic orange graffiti on it Rayla wouldn’t like. Rayla would want her dream skateboard to look like it belonged to a badass assassin, he knew, because she had told him exactly that. This skateboard looked like it belonged to a guy named Bob or Peter, who was definitely not an assassin, but possibly an accountant riding his skateboard on the way to the store to buy milk, because according to the school books, that’s how guys named Peter spent their time.

Maybe he could change that, though? He obviously couldn’t make her a skateboard, but maybe he could make this one hers.

First, the clothes’ wire he had used to drag Ez and Bait around the living room had to go.

Ez would understand. He had claimed Rayla as his much-cooler-than-Callum big sister ages ago, had started greeting her with toddler-tackle-hugs from around the third time she had come over after school, and had never stopped.

The skate park was just around the corner, and he was allowed to go there on his own, so he did. His step-dad was working, anyway, and Ez was busy pretending Bait was a magical color-changing toad with berry-scented burps. That last part was a real feat of imagination. Nothing that grumpy little pug expelled was berry-scented or anything close.

Callum was in luck, because Crowmaster was at the skate park, and he was the nicest of all the 9th graders. He had let him and Rayla pet his little grey finch named ‘Crow’ for some reason, and shown Callum all his paint cans and told him the names of all the colors he hadn’t known.

“Crowmaster?” Callum asked, walking up to him.

Crowmaster painted skateboards with skulls and creepy dead roses and things, he knew. Really more Claudia’s thing than Rayla’s, but maybe he would let him use his paints? He didn’t think his watercolors would stick.

“You called me Crowmaster!” Crowmaster looked like he might cry.

“Uh, yeah? You said that was your name?”

“It is!” Crowmaster said eagerly. “It is.”

“You’re lucky. It’s a really cool name. I like birds and flying. My name is just Callum though. I don’t think it means anything except… Soren says it means ‘dork alert’.”

“Your name means ‘sky’, or almost, anyway. That’s pretty cool. I write poetry in Latin, that’s how I know.”

Wow, Crowmaster was so cool.

And he helped him unscrew the wheels from Rayla’s skateboard-to-be, which Callum hadn’t known you were supposed to do, and he let him use his tape and spray-paint without even taking the 2 dollars he had brought.

It was a pretty cool assassin skateboard, at the end, Callum thought. Even Crowmaster thought so, even though he thought skulls would have fit better than the lines and gradients Callum made. Assassins couldn’t just advertise that they were assassins though, that wouldn’t make any sense. It had to be subtler than skulls, for sure.

Yeah, it was nice. The more he looked at it, the more he liked it, which was good, because Rayla always looked at his drawings for a really long time.

“Is Crow named after the movie?” Oh, that was Rayla. Callum quickly jumped in front of the disassembled skateboard, the varnish still drying.

But she was petting Crow, and not paying too much attention.

“No,” Crowmaster said nervously. Rayla was a bit straightforward for his temperament, Callum thought. “After the bird. It’s a good movie though, I have the VHS. You seen it?” He looked a bit dubious, at that. Rayla was wearing one of her sparklier Sailor Moon t-shirts today, you could be forgiven for thinking she wasn’t an aspiring assassin.

She was though, just a very nice and flamboyant assassin who wouldn’t kill anyone, just be really good at it if she was so inclined. Which she was not. So no skulls, Callum was sure. Crowmaster didn’t have any sparkly paint because it didn’t really go with his aesthetic, or Callum would have used it.

“I’m not allowed to see it,” Rayla grumbled. Wow, it had to be really violent then, because as strict as Runaan was in many ways, he did not do much in the way of restricting the movies Rayla was allowed to watch. She knew more about garroting than any almost-10-year-old should, according to his step-dad. His aunt approved of her garroting knowledge, at least. “It ended Bruce Lee’s legacy,” Rayla continued. “…and I’m not even allowed to watch it, just unfair-”

She cut off, looking over at Callum, smiling very sweetly for an assassin, but normally, for a Rayla.

“You look happy,” she grinned. “Enjoying the last day we’re both 9? You know, tomorrow, I’ll leave you behind, alone in the sad, sad single digits for almost a whole year.”

…she would.

He hadn’t thought of her birthday like that.

She was already way taller than him, and wasn’t afraid to go down the halfpipe or do presentations in class and… And… people would notice how cool she was and invite her to parties and on dates and whatever 10-year-olds did and-

“Pffft, not like that, dummy!” she laughed. “Ages are dumb, like the dumb ‘17’ on the back of the cover of ‘The Crow’ and-” She cocked her head at him, smiling very sweetly for an assassin, but normally, for a Rayla. “And you’re here… right? And I’m not going anywhere, I can be really immature, Runaan says so himself.”

Yeah… yeah.

When Rayla would inevitably borrow Crowmaster’s VHS and traumatize herself and need two hours of Pingu before she could sleep… yeah, he’d be there. With her.

———

Third installment of the tumblr illustrated drabble series, Drawn Out, following Callum’s drawings for Rayla in various mediums through grades 2nd through 7th. It’s set in the rayllum 90s grade school AU verse In the Middle which you can read more of on Ao3

[foxie-roxie]

an essay on why rayllum is a masterpiece part 1

 my friends will fucking strangle me if i bore them with another ted talk abt why rayllum is a fucking masterpiece

SO NOW TUMBLR HAS TO DEAL WITH MY SHIT!

note after writing this: also i didn’t mean to fucking make this abt s1 only.

1. their dynamic at the start is FUCKING BEAUTIFUL. i’m talking about the arguing, the NOT-SUBTLE SCENES *coughboatscenecough*, and their friend dynamic before s3 as a whole.

first off, they very clearly start as enemies. callum is a human prince, rayla is an elven assassin. rayla is supposed to help kill the king and ezran, while callum tries to stop her (and succeeds through an ethical debate).

im p sure my second favorite scene in s1is when they meet, because the interaction very quickly establishes how their dynamic is at first. callum expects to see ezran when he looks behind him (with the “you know you can’t sneak up on me” quip), and instead sees rayla. they then have a simple conversation before callum tugs down the curtain and runs away. seems simple right?

well my ADHD ass focuses on the DETAILS. note how rayla seems to be intimidating as she seems to edge closer but doesn’t even run up to callum, just threatens him from afar (which could be her empathy or not wanting to hurt an innocent), and callum is very clearly stalling. 

next scene we see with them is when callum, bless his heart, decides to start an ethics debate with the assassin who has a blade at his neck. god fucking damnit, it ultimately saved your life callum but THAT DOESN’T ALWAYS WORK.

rayla is stuck on the idea that her killing prince ezran and the king is vengeance while callum insists that it’s wrong (”why would you hurt someone whose done nothing wrong?” “then it’s a cycle. you hurt me, someone else will get revenge on the elves. it’ll never end” (or something along those lines I NEED TO REWATCH S1 DAMN)) and then he pretends that he is ezran.

HERE’S THE THING. even without callum’s stalling, rayla even stalls for HERSELF. she’s no murderer! and then ezran shows up and then it’s Chase Scene pt 2, they find the egg, let’s move on

let’s skip to after they have the egg, and they set up camp in a little clearing. callum is drawing the primal stone, and we already get some cute-ass banter. “caallum! hey, callum! that’s your name right? callum? clem? or was it camel?” “prima-ball” “primal stone.” and then we have my third-favorite scene, where callum does his first heartfelt speech and rayla calls him “sad prince” and DAMN I WANT THAT NICKNAME TO COME BACK

they then go to the banther lodge, run into amaya, callum makes a dumb mistake of calling rayla bloodthirsty, and they get on the boat.

DAMN THAT BOAT FOR MAKING MY HEART SOFT AS HECK.

yes, the boat scene is indeed my favorite scene of s1. it starts with rayla being seasick and callum says “i’m gonna ask you five questions.”

the softness. the way rayla relaxes after a bit and lets her guard down,,, and this is where i feel that rayla got a littol droplet of feelings for callum because HOW CAN YOU NOT LOVE THAT IDIOT. she of course lets her guard back up after his second question about her parents. but as the season continues, they slowly learn to become friends... KEYWORD. SLOWLY.

*whacks them on the head* STOP ARGUING FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES

but at the end of the season, they are clearly slowly becoming friends.

WHOOPS KINDA MADE THIS WHOLE THING ABT S1. LOOK THEY’RE GOOD

ill post my essay abt s2 later

[beautifulterriblequeen]

Is it just me, or did the creators kinda botch Rayla's "Last Dragon Guard" arc? The so-called elite fighting force was reduced to a one-person volunteer position, Rayla spends much of that time doing nothing (kinda like Callum and Ez did with Zym in prior seasons) while everyone else did the fighting, then proceeds to get disarmed and forced to push a distracted middle-aged mage along with herself off a cliff. This arc of hers was in motion for so long--couldn't they have done a better landing?

I’m not seeing what you’re seeing there, anon. The Dragonguard fled/was coined at Winter’s Turn, and everyone believed the egg had been destroyed, so there was no reason to re-form it in the interim. Zubeia was in deep mourning and literally dying, and no one came to be with her except Ibis (now there’s an issue, but it’s not this issue). For all intents and purposes, the Dragonguard was dead, gone, lost, and unlamented.

As for Rayla’s actual tasks, she did just fine, I think. Yes, she stayed out of the fighting for the most part. But Janai called her the Last Dragonguard, not the Last Dragon Warrior. Her job, and that of her parents, wasn’t to attack. It was to defend. This was purposely contrasted with her assassin mission with Runaan, where her job was to attack. She was supposed to strike first. Literally first--when Runaan pointed her after Marcos, her blades would have drawn the first blood of the entire mission in Katolis. But she couldn’t do that, and she hasn’t ever done that since. Rayla never draws first blood. She doesn’t attack first. She waits, and she defends. Runaan may have a killer instinct, but he couldn’t instill that in Rayla. She’s her parents’ daughter, and more like Ethari. She’s a guardian--of her friends, of the innocent, and even of dragons. A Dragonguard. 

On top of that, she’s a Moonshadow elf, and their style hasn’t yet been shown to include overt battle. Sure, we’ve seen exactly two kinds of Moonshadow combat--assassins in the dark and Dragonguard in a secluded royal chamber--but that’s what they’re good at. Moonshadows are not Sunfires. I can see them attacking like the Celts of old, stealthing through the mist and the shadowy forests to attack, but they’ll never line up like Janai’s warriors and stand in the full light of day in rank and file. Rayla was never meant to join that fight down below. It’s not a good fit for any part of her character.

The fact that Rayla had nothing to do but sit quietly with Zym and Bait means that her friends and allies are doing a great job down below. I know it’s not super interesting to have nothing happen during such an intense battle sequence. But this is where Rayla’s character is developing into who she’s going to be. In a way, it’s like she’s also being reborn in the eye of a storm--in the heart of the Storm Spire. In the silent center, there with Zym, she finds her true calling, her heart’s purpose.

And I believe that Rayla needed to get disarmed when she fought Viren and Aaravos. All she thought she had to attack with was Ethari’s swords, made for her assassin mission. Aaravos blew those out of her hands, and she was forced to reevaluate her options. I have a headcanon that Aaravos can only give people what they deserve, that he’s a karma god, and so he couldn’t actually have hurt Rayla because she’s a good person, but he did let Viren fall to his death. So Rayla survived his attack and had to decide if her mission was worth dying for. Perhaps Aaravos was testing her soul. He might have assumed she’d fail. But she didn’t. Being a Moonshadow elf raised by an assassin who tried to teach her to be hard enough to do whatever it takes, Rayla decided it was worth dying for. She finally found something to be hard enough for: saving Xadia, her way. Not Runaan’s. 

It’s interesting that Rayla and her three stabby parents all chose to die for Xadia. (Moonshadows, amirite?) Rayla is made of exactly the same stuff they are, but she’s still got some more growth to do, and I think that’s where your “landing” reference comes in.

Because maybe Rayla hasn’t landed. Rayla might not land for a long time still. (It’s all Callum’s fault, sweeping her away like that, her feet may never touch down again, lol) It’ll be very interesting to see which direction she takes, now that she’s followed Runaan and also her parents for a while. 

She’s building a very interesting resume. Will she stay as a Dragonguard? Will she move on now that Zym is born and learning to defend himself with his own lightning? What will she do next? Will she start making cool Moonshadow tech like Ethari? Heck yes, that would be the bomb. But maybe there’s still something new over the horizon for her. Something she can’t follow anyone toward. Something she has to break the Moonshadow cycle to reach.

Guardian of the Moon Nexus? Moonshadow Princess? Moonshadow Ambassador to Katolis? 

Moon Queen Rayla of New Elarion, First of Her Name?

Whoever Rayla becomes, she’s gonna go big. All of her parents will be so proud of her, because they’ve all had a hand in making her who she is.

[theredhairedmonkey]

How long do you suppose Moonshadow elves live? Doesn't Rayla make fun of humans having shorter lifespans?

Hmm, does she, anon? Are you sure about that?

I’ll admit, until recently I thought that this scene:

Seemed to imply that Rayla and other Moonshadow elves can live longer than a century, perhaps significantly longer.

However, now I’m not so sure. I don’t think that was the joke she was making. All her other quips about humans: 

“talking about things like money and starting wars”

 “I'm just a simple human girl, who likes the human things, like bread, and complaining all the time”

“Let's go judge and criticize things other humans do, and then do the exact same thing ourselves!”

All seem to be about the silly things humans do, not about what humans are.

So, making fun of humans for having shorter lifespans, something they can’t control seems a wee bit out of place. Besides, making fun of humans, including her two new human friends, for simply dying younger than her...kinda seems pointlessly mean. While she finds plenty of faults in us, I don’t think even pre-character development Rayla would ever poke fun at humans for living shorter lives.

Plus, here’s the full context of what she says:

Just walking into town, without a care in the world, despite my sub-century life expectancy. 

So, I think Rayla isn’t making fun of humans for living shorter lives, but for living so frivolously and carefree in spite of that. 

Think about it: according to Callum, princes are “supposed to be good at things,” and he has been given lessons and instructions on a wide range of topics. Yet, when we see him in Katolis, apart from his one training session with Soren, he seems to have a pretty open and free day to himself. And he’s royalty. There’s even less expectations imposed on commoner people.

Humans in general spend many years just to figure out what we want to do with ourselves, or just spend years having pointless fun. We don't seem to be in any rush to get anywhere, or reach the peak of our development as soon as possible. Kinda odd, considering we don’t live centuries like Sunfire elves, or a thousand years like Startouch elves.

Kinda strange, don’t you think?

Rayla seems to think so. In fact, what’s interesting is that Moonshadow elves are very serious about how they spend their lives, focusing on reaching the peak of their abilities relatively early in their lives and, in the case of Runaan and Rayla, always on the lookout for a noble cause to die for.

Huh, it’s as though Moonshadow elves don’t have that long to live either!

And to me, at least, that explains a lot of what we see. Rayla, for example, is a prodigy fighter, the fastest and strongest among her comrades...at fifteen. And as we can see here:

Runaan started training her at a really young age.

Now ok, you might say. Rayla is an exception. She’s an unusual case and is this well-trained simply because of her prodigious talents. And I’d say that, by itself, that’s fair.

However, then we have this:

Here, she’s talking about Runaan. So, the leader of the assassins, the one tasked by Zubeia, to carry out a mission to kill the king of the most powerful human kingdom...only has twenty years more training than a girl in her mid-teens? If Moonshadow elves were long-lived, wouldn’t it make more sense if Runaan was a badass centenarian, well-seasoned and with a half-century or more experience than Rayla? Instead of someone presumably in his mid-thirties or forties, hitting his peak at around the same time as most humans would?

Similarly, Rayla’s parents are members of the elite Dragonguard, and they are presumably peers in terms of age to Runaan and Ethari. Again, you’d expect that if Moonshadow elves were long-lived, their most seasoned fighters ought to be older than what we see.

This is all pure speculation, but all of this does lend support to the idea that Moonshadow elves have lives about as long as humans do (and Rayla’s quip about humans not being as serious with their limited time as Moonshadows are suddenly makes a lot more sense). And it also lines up based on what we know about each Primal Source.

Startouch elves can live for a thousand years, as stars are vast and seemingly eternal.

Sunfire elves live a few centuries, because they draw their power from the Sun, and therefore only a single star.

Moonshadow elves perhaps don’t live as long as these other groups. Perhaps its because they draw their power from merely a reflection of light from a single star. That this reflection is fleeting, as the moon reaches its fullness rather quickly before fading to nothing just as swiftly. (This is perhaps the most “we are as mayflies”-esque interpretation of the Moon Primal).

Or perhaps it’s a little too much in bad faith to “hope” that Rayla doesn’t outlive her human friends and boyfriend by that much (and that might have been the question behind your question, right?). Maybe a better interpretation is that, once humans learn to create their own connection to a Primal Source, they’d be just as long-lived as her. Or, as @beautifulterriblequeen put it here, maybe single-payer Xadia Medicare-for-All bridges the gap!

In any case, I really, really doubt the saga will end on a depressing note like “and then Ezran and Callum died, while Rayla was miserable, lonely, and depressed for her remaining century and a half in the world.” I’d guess things will find their way of working out on their own :)

[tydy-the-megnet]

That’s Elf-Confidence

Or, The Importance of Understanding Cultural Differences (Or the Lack Thereof)

...

Rayla knew a lot of things. One thing she did not know, however, was how not to flirt.

Rayla may have had some anecdotal ideas from Runaan and the others. But for the most part, the raging hormones and unscrupulous ideas she had had taken a back seat to the whole war effort thing they had gotten wrapped up in.

Thus, when Rayla had found the time to start pursuing Callum, it had been a spectacular failure.

Emphasis on spectacular.

Rayla had done her due diligence. She had researched on various ways that humans courted each other.

It wasn’t really her fault that a lot of media talked mostly about the failed attempts at courting. It also wasn’t her fault that media didn’t really specify whether they were failures, since that really should have been mentioned, even if it seemed like common sense to every human that thought about it.

Because everyone knows that humans and elves don’t really get each other. Hence the aforementioned war.

So, needless to say, when Rayla did some research on “how to flirt with a human,” she might have gotten some heavily skewed information.

“Uh, Rayla? What’s with the rooster?” Callum asked hesitantly, eyeing the cock that Rayla had brought into their encampment.

Rayla beamed at him, as if he was to be awarded for noticing such an obviously out of place thing. Callum raised an eyebrow at the girl.

“Ah was wonderin’ if you’d suck it?” She answered.

Callum took a beat to stare at his companion. When it was clear he’d receive no elaboration -- like Rayla thought that was answer enough -- he answered.

“Um, no thanks?”

Her face fell, however. Her beaming smile dripping as her arms slackened, allowing the fowl creature to slip out of her grasp and be on his merry way. Callum wasn’t even slightly blushing, she noticed. She’d have to try harder.

Rayla left at that, leaving Callum to wonder if he’d just infringed on some elf tradition.

The next day, Rayla decided she’d not give up. Just because one effort failed, didn’t mean every effort would fail. With elves, if the flirtee didn’t like a flower or something, then the flirter would try chocolate. Or maybe a serenade under the moonlight.

If Callum didn’t want to “suck cock” as human media suggested, then she’d try something else.

So began her second attempt at romance with Callum. A cat wasn’t livestock, so it had been more difficult to procure one, but Rayla wasn’t about to give up. Not on this.

Her research had told her that some humans like to “lick pussy.” Now, she thought it was disgusting, and a bit to close to eating cats. Which didn’t make much sense when she remembered how Callum had been off-put when he thought elves ate humans. But, she supposed cats and humans were hardly the same thing. Maybe cats were delicious? She’d never tried them.

Or maybe the act of licking them was pleasurable? Rayla watched as the cat licked itself. It certainly seemed content with its life right now. Maybe that article had been on to something after all.

So, with growing excitement, and a tinge of nervousness, Rayla approached Callum with her pussy cat in hand, waiting impatiently as he put down his book.

“Ya wanna lick it?” She asked, quirking her lips upward and trying to conceal her nerves.

Callum was looking at her like that again. Not the good that that he had when drawing her. The bad that, like he didn’t understand and was afraid to ask.

“I, ah,” he hesitated, glancing between her and the cat. Maybe it had been working better than the rooster, maybe not, but it wasn’t working well enough, Rayla decided. “No, I’m- I’m good, Rayla. Thanks for asking, though.”

As Callum stood to walk off, Rayla huffed and stared at her cat. She gave it a tentative lick, grimacing at the hairs that stuck to her tongue.

Humans were weird.

But then, Rayla mused on all the elves thought of as odd, who would go with sheep or other animals. Rayla stopped herself from thinking about what the shop-keeps might’ve thought when she had gotten the cockerel and pussy cat.

When Rayla read her next article, she decided she had been had. Nothing before had worked, and now she read that “giving head" was yet another way of showing her intentions.

Needless to say, it was revolting.

In horrified outrage, Rayla stormed up to the boy, showing him the periodical she had found.

“You humans are sick! Ya know tha’?! Wha’ kinda-- where would--” She threw the periodical at him, leaving him floundering to catch it and look at the cause of her horror. “Suckin’ on fowl an’ lickin’ cats an’-- an’--” Rayla dropped down to her knees, hugging herself as she stared blankly into the distance. “Why is decapitation a turn-on for you?!”

“What?” Callum, to his credit, looked just as off-put. He forced his eyes away from Rayla’s pallor, making himself read what he assumed to be some elven tabloid about human indecency.

Instead he found the title, “The Odds and Ends of Human Flirting: How to Court that Special Someone.” Callum’s face twitched, his mouth curling into a smile.

“Were you trying to flirt with me?”

“Ah was, before ah foun’ out how disgusting humans are!”

“Not only,” Callum, started, stifling laughter, “Not only did you completely misinterpret the entire article.” He tossed the object in question back to her, “You also picked the worst article on the subject. None of these lines would work even if you did them right.”

“W-what?” Rayla hardly breathed.

“Yeah. We don’t--” Callum choked on his laughter, a grin pulling onto his face as Rayla’s face slowly ignited. “We don’t suck roosters or lick cats.”

“But tha’ article says--”

“It says ‘cock’ and ‘pussy.’” Callum palmed his face, looking as embarrassed as Rayla was starting to feel. “Slang words for genitalia.”

Rayla gasped, “So, ah was askin’ you fer sex?”

“No. You were asking me to put animals in my mouth.”

“Well, uh,”

“And no, we don’t decapitate anyone for love any more than you drink blood.”

Ralya paused, considering Callum with an intense gaze accentuated by her flustered cheeks. “Good.”

Callum took a deep breath, calming his mirth as he regarding the girl before him.

“So, you wanna know how to properly flirt with a human?”

“Y-yeah.”

“Well then,” Callum said, smirking as he took her hand in his, “Why don’t you let me show you on our date tonight?”

I may have made Callum a little bit too smooth, but I’m a sucker for the “take her by the hand” thing.

[tenspontaneite]

Peace Is A Journey (Chapter 3/?)

In which there is much ado about camping.

(Chapter length: 9k. Link to ao3 version)

“Ugh. How long does this river go on for?” Rayla groaned, in the tones of a rhetorical question, as she slumped somewhat dramatically all over their bags, her flower-crown lopsided, but held conveniently in place by her horns. And, whether or not she expected a response, Callum found himself thinking of an answer. Pensive, he sat down and brought out his sketchbook, holding it with particular care to avoid the risk of losing it overboard. He flipped through to the map he’d drawn, and inspected the line he’d sketched for the Lune, raising charcoal to trace along the edge of it.

He had a good memory for anything he saw. When his instructors had figured that out, his cartography talents had soared, and it served him pretty well now. Callum drew along the river in a little more detail, mapping out a little circle, and then shuffled over to show it to Rayla. She eyed him, looking vaguely taken-aback by his sudden manifestation at her side with a sketchbook.

“Look, see?” He pointed out the line. “This is the Lune. And the Lodge is there. If we keep going along this river, we’ll get to a small lake - it’s called Kalsa. And if you follow the river out of there, you get to the town of Kalsanis.”

Rayla glanced at the map, and pushed herself up a little, somewhat more alert. “So, your point is…?”

“The river goes through Kalsanis. So, we should ditch the boat a while before that, since we don’t want to be seen in the town, right?”

Understanding dawned in her eyes with an accompanying spark of relief. “You’re saying that once we get to this lake, we won’t have much longer on this thing.”

Callum nodded, lips quirking upwards, and drew in a little dot on the map for Kalsanis. “Pretty much, yeah.” Ezran, who had been sitting with one hand in his bag on the egg for a while now, opened his eyes and looked up at them, curious. He was the only one of them without a flower crown now, since Bait had eaten his about half an hour ago.

“Thank goodness.” Rayla sighed, head falling back onto the boat seat behind her. “So, how far away is the lake?”

“Er.” He frowned down at his map, and then shrugged sheepishly. “Don’t know, sorry. It’s hard to judge how far along the river we are, without any landmarks or anything.” She groaned, so he hastened to add “I’m pretty sure there’s a tributary that flows into the Lune around, er, here?” He traced it onto the map, around three-quarters of the way between the lodge and Kalsa. “So once we pass by that, it’ll be easier to tell.”

She raised her head to inspect the new mark, and then looked up at the sky again. “…It’s getting late-ish in the afternoon now. If we don’t pass this ‘landmark’ in an hour or two, we stop for the night.” She seemed decidedly relieved at the thought.

Ezran perked right up at that, foot tapping excitedly. “Ooh, does that mean we’re gonna put up the tent?” He asked, eager, and leaned forwards to await her answer.

“Uh…” Rayla looked a little bemused at his enthusiasm. “Well, maybe. It depends. The humans I took the boat from will probably have sent out messages about it. If there’s any towns or roads nearby, not sure it would be safe to put the tent up.” She glanced questioningly at Callum.

“Kalsanis is the closest town, and that does have a direct connection to the road to the capital.” He said, pointing out the large line he’d already drawn for the capital’s road. “But this part of the river sorta – bends around quite a long way? So if we do stop at, or before, the tributary – we’ll be pretty far from any roads, and still a long way from Kalsanis too.”

Rayla narrowed her eyes, glancing indecisively between Ezran’s pleading eyes and the map, and sighed. “Alright, we’ll put up the tent.”

Ezran punched the air triumphantly. “Yes!” She watched his enthusiasm and smiled, in a reluctant sort of way, as if she’d been trying to keep the smile contained.

“Why are you so excited about a tent?” She asked, half-exasperated, half-amused.

“It’s like camping!” He tried to explain, waving at Callum as if to get a supporting statement that it was, indeed, like camping. “Before we were just kinda, sleeping on the ground outside? And that’s not really fun, that’s just uncomfortable. And the grass is always wet in the morning. But if you have a tent it’s like you’re camping!”

“So if you add a tent, it’s suddenly fun.” Rayla said questioningly, raising an eyebrow. She glanced at Callum as well, as if waiting for an explanation.

“Probably my fault.” Callum admitted with a laugh. “I used to read him stories, and there was one with this family that went on a camping trip, and they met some wolves – anyway, Ez went through a bit of a camping obsession. Made blanket tents in our bedroom. Kept trying to sneak into the forest to camp.”

Ezran fixed him with a grumpier expression at that, but didn’t try to deny any of it. Rayla laughed, a somewhat surprising sound after how long she’d spent as an unhappy and nauseated ragdoll at the bottom of the boat. “Well, I’m glad you’re excited.” She said, plainly amused, and pushed herself up to sit cross-legged. “I’m sure the novelty will wear off after the first few times, so enjoy it while it lasts – I’ve still got to figure out how these human tents work, anyway.”

That roused his curiosity, and he settled into the bottom of the boat next to her. “So what, are elf tents different?”

She reached out and patted the tent pack, as if to demonstrate. “The material certainly is. Haven’t had a chance to get it all out and look properly, but seems like leather. My tent used a different kind of fabric. And this one’ll be bigger, too.”

“You had your own tent?” Ezran asked, eyes practically sparkling, and he pulled Bait into his lap to listen.

Rayla smiled, just a little awkwardly. “Well, yeah. All of – all of us in the team had our own. They weren’t big, but we had them to ourselves, at least.” She shook her head and quickly changed the subject. “Ours is made for soldiers to share, so it’ll be bigger than mine was. Not sure how much. I think it’ll probably be a two-person tent.” She made a face. “Might be a bit of a squeeze.”

Callum shared a look with Ez and shrugged. “Eh, it’ll probably be fine. Ez is only ten, and it’s not like either of us are full-grown soldier-size either.”

“Suppose.” She sighed, and looked at the tent pack again. “We’ll find out later, I’m sure.”

“Guess so.” Callum said, and after a second, flipped the page of his sketchbook back to the in-progress dragon egg and resumed drawing. He had to pass the time somehow, after all, and he already had his book open.

Rayla’s eyes went to the drawing and stayed there, but she didn’t comment. She didn’t look away either, though, and sort of…settled in, gaze laying idly on the page, watching him draw. It prompted a mild prickle of discomfort along his spine – Callum was by now completely unselfconscious about drawing in front of Ez, and didn’t mind other people watching him draw, but it still wasn’t completely comfortable either. He didn’t really feel the need to object, though, and he was the one who’d started drawing right next to her, so.

He ignored the minor flutter of self-consciousness and settled in for a good, long, careful study of his memory of the egg.

  As it happened, they didn’t reach the tributary in the approximately two hours specified. Rayla seemed a little less wrecked by the boating than earlier in the day, and pretty much just sat watching him draw the whole time – and while he wasn’t sure if those two things might be related, he wasn’t going to ask, either.

After a while, when Callum was putting the final touches on the egg drawing with shadows and a sense of a glow around it, Rayla looked up at the sky and said “We’d best be looking for a good spot to stop.”

“Really?” Ezran asked, looking up from the egg-bag he’d had his hands sitting in silently for like an entire hour. He was a funny kid like that. “Isn’t it still kind of early?”

“Sun will be starting to go down soon.” Rayla said, blinking at the horizon with a sort of narrow-eyed focus. “And while I don’t mind doing camp-things in the dark, I’ve been told you humans don’t see too well at night-time.”

Ez considered that, and nodded. “You were told correctly.” He informed her solemnly. “Are we going to make a campfire?”

“We most certainly are.” She confirmed, and scanned the river banks. After about ten minutes of looking while they drifted placidly downriver, she identified a shallow-looking silty bank next to a small grassy clearing at the forest’s edge, and directed them to get the boat over to it.

Callum and Ezran obediently stepped up to the oars and manoeuvred them over, with some effort. The river was quite wide and fast here, after all. Once they got into the shallows it was easier, and Rayla jumped overboard with the rope to lodge it in the ground with one of her weapons, as before. “Should probably find some sort of stick to hold it instead, really.” She commented, as they began the process of unloading all the bags (and the bunch of cattails) from the boat. She wandered over to the nearest tree and perused the various twigs underneath it until she found a piece of wood that seemed to satisfy her, and brought the fallen branch over to tie the boat down properly.

“So, what now?” Callum asked, settling the last of their bags in a pile a short distance from Rayla’s boat-tether, which she was even now beating into the ground with the sheathed form of one of her weapons.

She stood, hanging the weapon at her side. “Now, we figure out this tent.” She announced, and strode forwards to sweep the tent pack from the ground.

“Yessss.” Ezran cheered, quietly, and skipped up to watch her from close range. Callum stood nearby, watching, uncertain if she’d want any help or not.

The first stage of figuring out the tent, apparently, was to upend the contents of the tent pack onto the ground. There was a large folded leather-looking thing, dark brown in colour, and another large folded thing that seemed more like treated cotton, like Callum’s light travel cloak. A pouch about as long as his forearm also fell out, tied with a drawstring at the top, and then some weird looking metal rods. This last thing apparently caused Rayla great interest, because she picked one up at once, revealing that they were sort of….thin, hollow metal poles with a string running through the middle, which meant as she picked up the first part a load of other sections trailed after it.

“Now that’s different.” She said, intrigued, and backed off to pull the thing out to its full length. Experimentally, she reached out and took two of the sections, pressing them together at the ends, and managed to slot the second into the first with very little difficulty. “Huh.”

“…Different to what?” Callum ventured to ask, made curious by her own clear fascination, and Ezran peered forwards to look at the trailing metal segments, backing away a little when Rayla matter-of-factly started slotting each section into the whole.

“To what I’m used to. These? Are tent poles. They make the sort of…bones of the tent. Hold the shape up. Moonshadow elves have ways of making things that retract and extend, so our tent poles just sort of collapsed into themselves when we packed them up – but this is a pretty good solution too.” She explained, working her way along the tent pole until she had a large and fairly solid-looking metal rod, maybe a centimetre wide at any given part, and lightly curved along its length. She set it down and picked up the next one, setting about assembling that one too.

“That’s neat.” Ezran said, clearly thriving with all of this exciting tent-construction going on in front of him. “Can I try?”

Rayla smiled at him, expression open and easy, and gestured at the poles still on the ground. “Feel free.”

After a moment of watching Ezran work at his, Callum knelt down to have a go on the fourth pole, which seemed to be the last. It was easy to slot the pieces into each other – the metal seemed slightly rusty at the edges of each section, and a bit dented in places, but in relatively good condition. The sections seemed to each have a deliberate curve to them, characterised by a mild bend in two places along each. “This is the last one, I think,” he said as he finished, setting it on the ground next to the others.

Rayla hummed thoughtfully and lined them up next to each other. There seemed to be two different lengths, with two being a fair bit longer than the other two. She bent and investigated the drawstring pouch next, opening it with interest, and grinned at what she found inside. “Now that’s good to see.” She said, pulling one of the items inside out. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking at. It didn’t seem like another tent pole – it was too short, maybe only a hand and a half in length, and hooked at the end.

“What is it?” Ez asked, and took it from her when she held it out for him, looking over it with interest. Most of its length seemed sort of dull, and even had a light layer of dry dirt on it in some places.

“Tent peg.” She answered, dropping the pouch lightly back on the ground. “Keeps the tent grounded if there’s wind, or if you’re on a slope, or loose earth. The tent probably has lines at the edges to put them through.” She picked up the big leather folded bundle now, and stepped back gratuitously, clearing a good amount of space before she started unfolding it.

It became very clear, very quickly, why the tent pack had been so heavy. The full unfolded thing was big, and vaguely rectangular – a good couple metres long on the longer sides, at least. Rayla straightened it all out and walked around it, kneeling to inspect and pull at certain parts, of which there were a lot. All around the edges there were leather loops, and there were reinforced leather strips hanging off in places too, each with their own loops on the end. In one section, there seemed to be a large semi-circular flap secured in place by a number of wooden toggles. And, peculiarly, there seemed to be…tubes, sort of, sewn all along the tent material, two running cross-wise from nearly corner to corner, and one each straight across the width near either end.

Callum bent down to poke his finger into one of them, peering at it. He inspected it for a second, then looked at the tent poles on the ground, and guessed “Are these for the poles?”

“Seems that way.” Rayla agreed, looking satisfied with the state of affairs. “Pass me a pole, would you? One of the longer ones.” Ezran pushed one of them over and Callum conveyed it to Rayla, who took one end and started pushing it carefully into one of the diagonally-running tubes, pausing occasionally to reach over and un-crease the leather, or get the pole unstuck. Once that one was done, she repeated the process with the other cross-ways pole, and then the two on either end of the tent.

“Now what?” Ezran inquired, fascinated, and Callum had to admit to being curious too. While the poles had been lightly curved, and they did arch the tent and give it very slight shape while flat on the ground, it still looked more like a flat rectangle of leather than an actual tent.

Rayla surveyed the shape of it thoughtfully, and beckoned Callum over. “I’ll need your help for this, I think. Grab the other end of this one, would you? And brace it against the ground.”

“Er.” He pressed the end of the tent pole uncertainly against the soil. “Like that?”

She sighed at him. “It’ll do. Just hold it steady while I try to-“ She braced her own end against the ground, and – he wasn’t completely sure what she did then, maybe pushed up on the pole? – but the whole thing sort of arched outwards in a way that seemed like it should have bent the pole horribly, in an astonishingly sudden movement.

“Whoa!” Ez said, flinching back reflexively. Callum, who was much closer to the tent, recoiled similarly, finding half of a tent structure suddenly up in front of him.

Rayla jumped clean over the tent to land next to Callum, showing him a part near the end of the pole which he apparently needed to – click in, or something? It took a surprising amount of force to get it to go, he really needed to push at it, but she seemed satisfied enough once he’d done it.

“Now the next one.” Rayla directed, pointing him over to the other diagonal pole, and he did as he was told. It did the outwards-contorting thing as readily as the first one, but unfortunately, Callum did not manage to secure the clicky-bit at the end properly and it collapsed a second later.

“Sorry!” He called, and she rolled her eyes.

“Just try it again.”

In the end, it took a few missteps and a bit of practice, but he and Rayla (mostly Rayla, really) got all four of the poles arching properly, and all at once their tent actually looked like a tent. It was surprisingly satisfying to stand back and look at it – Rayla was giving it an appraising once-over while Ezran scurried around inspecting every corner delightedly, like she was marking all the various dangly bits and the loops all over the bottom.

“What are you thinking?” He asked, curiously, and she snapped out of her briefly-held reverie.

“How the inner-tent is going to work, mostly.” She said, and then stepped around to where the front seemed to be, unhooking the several toggles around the edge that held the ‘door’ in place. “These are going to be a pain to hook up from inside.” She commented, as she went, the front ‘door’ of the tent flapping out limply onto the ground as she dropped it.

“I’ll…take your word for it.” Callum said, shuffling forwards to look as Rayla crouched and went into the tent.

“Huh.” She expressed, a second later, with a sort of bemused surprise, and he peered in at her.

“Is something wrong with it?” Ez asked immediately, waiting with bated breath. She looked out, an odd look on her face, and shook her head.

She ducked out of the tent and went to get the other material part, picking it up to inspect the edges. “No, nothing’s wrong.”

“Then why do you seem all…surprised?” Callum prodded, raising an eyebrow.

“Probably because I am, in fact, surprised.” She said, with a dry edge of sarcasm, and pulled the remaining bit of tent inside the main bit. “Give me a minute, will you?”

Callum shrugged. “O-kay.” He stepped over to Ez and sat down, watching with his brother as Rayla ducked around here and there inside the tent, seeming to….hang the inner bit around the insides of the outer bit? It definitely seemed to be suspended in there, somehow, maybe from some sort of hook or toggle?

Eventually, she seemed done, and ducked back out of the tent again, straightening up. She surveyed the whole thing from outside again, still with that strange look on her face, and then ducked in to open what was, apparently, a second door-flap on the inner part. That complete, she backed up, and planted herself on the ground next to Callum, staring into the interior of the tent with an almost comical nonplussed expression.

Ez leant forwards to look in, foot bouncing with excitement. “Is it done now?” He asked, eager. “Can I go in?”

“….Yeah. Yeah, it’s done.” Rayla confirmed after a minute, and shook her head slowly. “Just – if you’re going in, take your shoes off, alright? We don’t want to get our inner-tent all muddy.”

Ezran immediately set to work pulling off his shoes faster than Callum had ever seen him accomplish before, staggering into the tent with a hilarious amount of enthusiasm to sit inside, lay down, and roll around the interior with delight. Callum huffed with amusement, and then glanced at Rayla, who…still looked like she’d swallowed a lemon, or something.

He folded his arms. “Okay, what is with that look on your face? Does the tent smell bad or something?”

“Smells fine to me.” Ez reported happily from inside. Making a series of doubtful croaks, Bait hopped up to the tent and stared inside.

Rayla huffed, and shook her head again. “No. It’s just…a pretty decent tent. The poles work well, it’s got a full inner-tent instead of just a ground-sheet, it has storm-lines and a full set of pegs…it’s a good design.”

Callum blinked at her. “And…that’s surprising, why?”

She shrugged, looking vaguely sheepish; the first time he’d seen such an expression on her. “Suppose I just didn’t expect humans to make things as well as elves do.” She admitted, folding her own arms as if to defend herself from rebuttal.

Ezran poked his head out and offered her an unimpressed look. “Well, that’s not very nice.” He told her, though he sounded very mild about it.

“It’s…maybe true, though?” Rayla suggested, pulling one of her weapons from her side to demonstrate. It clicked out into blade-form with an easy motion. “See this? These are made magically. The blades are longer than should be able to fit in the handle, but they all fit together anyway. And you must have heard of Sunforged weaponry.”

Callum frowned. “I think so? Maybe?”

“Not me.” Ez reported, beckoning Bait towards him. After some very dubious looks, the glow toad obligingly hopped into the mouth of the tent, and then again into the internal section.

“Well, anyway…” Still looking somewhere on the verge of embarrassed, Rayla shrugged. “Humans definitely can’t use magic to make things, right? Unless it’s dark magic.” She scowled at that, as if newly reminded of how much she disliked the idea of it.

Callum narrowed his eyes at her, arms still firmly crossed. “Well, I bet you don’t make everything with magic, right? Are elf tents magical?”

“…Not that I know of.” She conceded, flipping her sword away.

“Then why shouldn’t humans be able to make non-magic things as well as elves?” He demanded, a little more insistently. He wasn’t…annoyed, exactly, but…it still felt important to point out. Defending the honour of his species, maybe.

She looked away. “…No reason, really.” She admitted, with a small sigh. “Guess humans aren’t the only ones who have wrong ideas about the other side.”

He eyed her, just a little suspiciously, but felt considerably mollified now that she’d admitted it. He let his arms drop, and offered a conciliatory smile. “Well, it’s a whole lot less insulting than thinking the other side drinks blood, so I can’t really hold it against you.”

She snorted with laughter, very abruptly, and the mild tension broke in a second. “Well, that’s certainly true.” She chuckled at that, and stood up, moving forwards to the tent. “So: I admit it. Humans can put a good tent together. This journey might not be so bad after all.” She looked in, and made a slight face. “…Though it is a tad small.”

Callum blinked, and shuffled over to poke his head in properly. With Ezran and Bait in there, it was easier to see that…yeah, actually, it was a bit cramped-looking. The tent seemed deceptively large on the outside, but that was just the outer-part. The inner section was quite a lot smaller. “…Eh, we’ll manage.” He predicted, semi-confidently. “Better than sleeping outside anyway. We get a lot of rain in Katolis in springtime. Storms, too.”

“A lot of storms.” Ezran emphasised, and he would know, given how thunder always woke him up.

“Believe me, I’ve noticed.” She stood to run a hand along the material of the outer tent. “This leather has been treated. Should be pretty good against rain. The inside…” She felt at that, now, looking uncertain.

Callum checked it himself. “Feels a bit like my travel cloak.” He said, after a moment. “It’s probably rain-resistant, at least.” He stepped back and inspected the whole of the tent critically. It looked….well, it looked like a tent. He wasn’t exactly an expert. But Rayla said it was a good tent, and she probably had a lot of experience with them at this point, so he was inclined to believe her. “What are those….long dangly strap things, all over it?” He asked, reaching out to flap one of them around. They were sewn, very firmly and securely, to near the roof of the tent, and seemed exceptionally long.

“Storm lines.” Rayla said, stepping over to point out the loop at the bottom end. “Extra place to put more tent pegs if it’s windy, basically ties the tent to the ground. Elves use ropes instead of these long straps. Makes it easier to repair if they break. But these are probably fine.” She then tutted, and went to gather the strap up, looping it in on itself and tying it quickly. “Whoever put this away last time was lazy. You’re meant to tie them up.”

Ezran poked his head out curiously. “Should we be using any of the pegs today? Or is it bad-weather only?”

“Usually a good idea to have a few in. Come on out and I’ll show you how you’re meant to do them.” She smiled at him, and he hurried to put on his shoes and come out for the demonstration. Callum watched with his own small smile as she walked Ez through the proper way to do it – at an angle, apparently, with the hook part of the peg kicked into the ground at the end. And all of this, done while still wearing her flower-crown.

She was good with Ez. Patient, happy to show him how to do things, seemed to like him. It went a long way towards warming him to her.

He watched as she tied up the storm-lines and Ez went around putting in every tent peg he could, full of eagerness for the novelty of it, and found himself feeling unusually optimistic about this whole trip. It was a long way, yeah, and would probably be stupidly hard at times, and maybe they’d all be grumpy whenever the weather was bad….and, yeah, Rayla was an elf, which would have been a deal-breaker a few days ago….but, all at once, he really felt like it could all work out. Like maybe they could take this long journey together and get the egg to Xadia without arguing every step of the way, or getting to hate each other, or getting completely sick of the whole thing.

Callum usually tended to overthink and worry too much about everything, so the sudden optimism was a nice change.

He reached up to absent-mindedly straighten his own flower crown, and went to go pull the rest of the bags over to the tent. He could be wrong, but he was fairly sure that the reasonably large space between the outer-tent and inner-tent would be a better place to keep them than by the river. Ez would probably take the egg inside the tent with him to sleep, anyway.

Though she’d been amused at Ezran’s enthusiasm for something as simple as assembling a tent, as the evening went on, Rayla couldn’t help but start to enjoy the process of camp-making herself. Maybe it was just because Ezran was so excited about all of it, or because it was obviously completely new to Callum too, but either way their simple enthusiasm was unexpectedly contagious. She couldn’t help but laugh as the two of them, plus Bait, crowded around the quickly-constructed campfire to watch her demonstrate the use of the spark-rocks.

Making a campfire wasn’t exactly difficult, when you were in a forest and it hadn’t rained for a couple of days. All she needed to do was gather up some twigs and dead leaves, and a few larger bits of rotten wood, and they were good to go. She built it closer to the river and a good distance from the tent through long experience – she’d been taught to never leave anything flammable that you didn’t mind catching fire within a few metres of a campfire, and intended to hold to that teaching.

The sun was dipping low now, with the sky bleeding the clouds into an attractive blend of pinks and pale yellows. And, as much as she hated water, she could appreciate the way the river reflected those colours as she bent over the firewood, spark-rocks in hand.

The first spray of sparks drew a chorus of appreciative ‘oooh’s from her human audience, and caught on one of the dry leaves. She struck them again, and once more for good measure, and then bent to gently breathe life into the fragile embers.

“And that’s all there is to it.” She announced, a little more grandly than was necessary, sitting back to gesture at the fire. “It’ll burn merrily once it takes off properly. We’ll keep adding wood, and that’s that.”

Ezran applauded politely, little hands clapping, and shuffled closer to the fire. “What happens if it rains?”

“Then you lose your fire. If there’s no shelter.” She smiled and went to go root about in the group’s bags while the princes watched the growing flames, picking out the bits she needed as she found them. Jar of greens, yes. Cooking pot, yes. Waterskin, also yes. She located the now-wilting cattails and brought those with her as well, balancing the lot on her arm as she walked back to rejoin the boys.

“Oh, the green stuff.” Ezran noted, blinking curiously up at her as she settled beside the fire, laying everything out, and uncapping the jar. “How are you going to cook it?”

“Just by boiling it, I’m afraid.” Rayla said, apologetically, and they both….didn’t seem to have that much reaction to that. Hm. Did they just….not have any experience with what was done to food to make it taste good? She had no idea how human princes grew up. “It’ll be a bit bland. No spices. But I found some rosemary at least, which’ll give a bit of flavour.”

“Well, at least it’s not more fruit.” Callum said pragmatically, shuffling over to inspect the various bits of greenery she extracted. It was a bit of an eclectic mix, admittedly. Burdock, chicory, cattails, sheep sorrel, and dandelion didn’t really share much of a taste profile other than ‘green’, or maybe ‘leafy’. Some of it was pretty bitter too, which didn’t help.

“I like fruit.” Ez said, frowning, and Callum shook his head at him.

“Fruit tastes good, but it doesn’t really fill you up that well. I’ve been feeling a bit weird after eating nothing but fruit for days.” He pointed out, reasonably, and Rayla glanced at him sharply.

“Weird?” She repeated, eyes narrowing, and stared at him expectantly. “Weird how?”

“Er.” He looked at her, taken-aback. “You know, sort of…jittery? Like when you’ve eaten nothing but sugar all day and you need to find a sandwich, or something.”

She filed away the word ‘sandwich’ to investigate later, and focused on the important thing, which was that she now had confirmation that humans probably weren’t meant to live on fruit alone. She’d guessed, based on how she knew humans ate meat and ‘bread’ and other non-fruit things, but it’s not like she had a lot of first-hand experience with humans. “…Right.” She frowned, and didn’t say anything more.

She considered whether she should say that, technically speaking, she had no idea if these plants she’d picked were edible for humans as well as elves.

…Probably the responsible thing to do. “I should probably mention.” Rayla said, indicating the plants. “These are all safe for elves to eat, but I don’t know if humans work the same. I think they should be fine, but…” She shrugged.

Callum and Ezran exchanged a vaguely alarmed look. “Uh.” Ez offered, a little nervously, and then didn’t seem to know what to say from there.

“…Maybe we should mainly just eat one of a thing each? So if something makes us sick we’ll know what it was.” Callum suggested after a moment, which was actually pretty sensible of him.

“Sounds good. You can start off eating a little bit and waiting a while to make sure, then have the rest of it?” She recalled her lessons on how to identify poisonous plants that she wasn’t familiar with. The basic principles probably still applied to humans.

“…Yeah, sure.” Ez said after a few moments, expression a little nonplussed, but relatively resolute. “What tastes best?”

“Probably the cattails?” Rayla said after a second’s pause, looking over the assemblage of plants. “They’re early growth, which means the heads taste a bit like corn.”

“Neat.” The little prince nodded. “I’ll have those then.”

“Er.” Callum glanced over the plants, then shrugged helplessly. “I’ll have the stuff with the little purple flowers, maybe?”

“Sheep sorrel.” She informed him, amused.

“Yeah, that.”

She inspected the state of the fire, and reached for the pot. “Alright then. Let’s do the cattails first. I think they take a bit longer.”

The daylight gradually ebbed away, leaving the campsite lit by nothing but the fire under the bubbling pot, and the light of the waning moon above. Ezran tried the cattail heads and pronounced them moderately tasty, and Callum made a face at his sorrel but ate it anyway. Half an hour later neither of them were vomiting or experiencing stomach aches, so she felt relatively safe giving them the rest of it.

It was…oddly nice. A friendly atmosphere. Less business-like and serious than she was used to from months of travel with fellow assassins. Though…maybe that wasn’t a good thing? Their mission was a serious one. They had to get the egg home, and stop an entire war. Maybe they should be as serious about everything as the assassins had been. She frowned, feeling oddly guilty for the levity of the camp, and not certain if the feeling was justified or not. Surely it didn’t do any harm to be cheerful – keep morale up?

She couldn’t help but wonder what Runaan would think, of all of this. Making camp with two human princes, testing out new plants on them and watching while they laughed and pelted each other with bits of grass whenever they got bored of waiting for the next batch of greens to boil. What would he think, to look at her here? Would he still call her a fool, for daring to trust them? For daring to think that maybe humans and elves could get along?

She couldn’t help but wonder what he’d think.

….She couldn’t help but wonder if he was alive to think anything at all.

You let him live, but you’ve killed us all, she remembered, and shivered, arms wrapping tightly around her sides.

“Rayla?”

Her head jerked upwards in the direction of her name, and she blinked at – Callum, right. “Oh, er, yeah?” She attempted, in some small hope of disguising that she’d been utterly lost in not-particularly-happy thoughts.

No such luck. “Are you okay?” He asked, his expression all occupied with that sort of…friendly concern again, like when she’d been having a distinctly unpleasant time on the river.

She offered a half-smile to placate him. “Yeah. Just thinking. Nothing important.” She said, and looked up at the dark sky full of stars. “…When is it humans usually go to bed, anyway?” She added after a moment, in a not very subtle effort to change the subject.

Callum looked up at the sky as well, and shrugged. “Ez usually goes to sleep about eight. Me, it depends, but later. I have no idea what time it is now though, but I could probably get to sleep.”

“I’m not tired.” Ezran said promptly, a statement somewhat undermined by the yawn he produced a mere second later. Callum huffed with laughter, and reached out to pat him on the shoulder.

“Sure you’re not, Ez. That must have been a yawn of awakeness and energyhood, right?”

Ezran opened his mouth to answer, but it turned into another yawn.

Rayla’s lips quirked, and she glanced up at the position of the moon, feeling its progression through the sky as keenly as she might the wind on her skin. “It’s somewhere between eight and nine now, if that helps.” She offered.

Callum ruffled his brother’s hair sympathetically. “Bedtime, bud. Come on, you’ll get to sleep in the tent, right?”

That did brighten the boy’s face, and he nodded contemplatively. “That is very tempting.” He admitted.

“Let’s go get set up, then.” Callum stood, helping his brother to his feet, and looked down at her a second later. “…Rayla? Will you be staying up, or…?”

She stared up at him for a few seconds, and slumped. “Actually, I’m exhausted. I didn’t exactly get a full night of sleep, if you remember.”

“I did wonder.” He smiled lopsidedly, and held out his hand to her. She stared at it for a second, then reached out and took it, allowing him to pull her upwards to standing.

“We can use the cloaks as bedrolls, now. It’ll make the ground a bit more comfortable.” She offered, leaving the fire smouldering lowly behind them as she walked in-step with the two princes, Bait hanging from Ezran’s arms.

“Sounds good to me.” Callum inspected the open front of the tent, squinting at the toggles. Was it too dark for him to see, this far from the fire. “So what, we close the outer door-thing first?”

“Once you’re inside the tent, yes.” Rayla agreed dryly, and turned to sit inside the inner-tent with her feet out, to take off her boots. Ezran flopped down beside her to do the same, and for the first time, she started to feel a bit weird about all of this. She’d got so used to having her own tent to sleep in, and have at least a hint of privacy in, and that…just was not going to be a thing, here.

Attempting not to show any sign of the mild discomfort that prickled at her neck, Rayla set her boots next to her bag, in the between-section of the tent, and then untied the cloak to set about assembling her sleeping space.

Then she paused. “Who’s sleeping where?” She questioned, and both boys stopped where they’d been divesting themselves of footwear.

“Er.” Callum said, intelligently.

“Depends on if you’d rather get kicked or talked at.” Ezran told her, cheerful, and laughed at whatever it was her face did in response. “I move about a lot in my sleep. Or Callum says so anyway.”

“Ezran has a talent for kicking me in the shins when he’s sleeping.” Callum nodded, solemnly. “Or sometimes slapping me in the face. That’s happened too.”

Rayla stared, increasingly discouraged. “Erm….”

“And Callum sleep-talks sometimes, but he doesn’t kick so much.” Ez added.

Slowly, she brought up a hand to rub at her forehead, unsure whether the incipient headache was from tiredness or the sudden discomfort of thinking about sleeping arrangements. “…Ugh, whatever, Callum in the middle then.” She sighed, and pulled out her appropriated fur cloak to the right side of the tent.

Ez pulled in his own makeshift bedroll, and Bait, and also the egg of the Dragon Prince. Its glow was more noticeable than usual, in the dark of the tent.

“Your shins will probably thank you for that decision.” Callum said, amused, and shuffled into the tent as well, rolled-up cloak behind him. “Er, do I shut the tent now?”

Rayla sighed again. “That would probably be a good idea, yes.”

All told, it took a good ten minutes of shuffling about and arranging things and closing tent-doors before Rayla could finally think about attempting to sleep, and even then…

Ezran flopped down facing his side of the tent without any apparent care in the world, an arm slung around the incredibly precious dragon egg as if it were a cuddly toy, and Bait settled near his head. Callum didn’t seem to have any compunctions about being squashed up against his brother in the middle either, but-

The tent was small for three. It was very small. They weren’t completely squished in, maybe, but when Rayla finally got herself to lay down – well, her shoulder was brushing Callum’s, and…it was weird. It was weird, and new, and uncomfortable, and she didn’t have her own space and she had no experience whatsoever with being up in other peoples’ space like this, and it was making her skin half-crawl with nerves.

“Night, guys.” Ezran announced, clearly with no compunctions about the close quarters at all, and sounding downright cheery.

Callum…well, he didn’t look as uncomfortable as Rayla felt, but he didn’t look completely relaxed either. His eyes flickered over to her a couple of times, and she was abruptly aware that her own eyes would be visible to him in the dark even if nothing else was, so she turned away on her side and tried not to feel so unreasonably bothered about the sudden proximity.

She lay there, tense, face pressed close to the fabric of the inner-tent, and exhaled slowly. She could feel the light pressure of Callum’s clothing brushing against the shoulders of her own. She could hear the breathing of other people, close to her. When they shuffled and shifted, the fabric of the tent shifted as well, and she felt – directly or indirectly – every small movement they made. She was so, so intensely not used to this. How did people ever share beds without waking up every time the other person moved? Didn’t they feel uncomfortable, sleeping that close to other people? Was it just a matter of getting used to it, like Callum and Ezran seemed to have done?

Moon and stars, but she hoped it was just a matter of getting used to it.

She stayed on her side, still and quiet, and tried to relax. She heard the shift in breathing when Ezran fell asleep, soonest of any of them. She heard the same shift, ten or so minutes later, when Callum relaxed into sleep.

It took her quite a bit longer to manage the same.

  Gren breathed, careful and slow, to keep his composure where it belonged. Even though he was horrified, too. Even though he was upset, and angry, and wished that there weren’t other people around that he had to keep a level face for. He had a job to do. And he would do it.

They hadn’t expected the contents of the letter. They’d been wary of the delay, having expected a missive from the detached forces reporting the arrival of the princes a half-day ago. But they hadn’t expected the message that had come instead. They would never have expected something like that. They couldn’t have.

General Amaya had barely finished sitting the vigil for King Harrow when it came. The loss of a King – a step-brother – was bad enough, but this? He could only imagine how she was feeling.

She’d taken the letter into the command tent, Gren at her side as always. He’d watched her break the seal, unroll it, watched her eyes run over the text. Watched her go pale, hands trembling, eyes widening, face emptying of blood at shocking speed. He’d been signing a question before she even finished the letter, but she hadn’t answered. Not then.

No, she hadn’t answered.

The contents of the command tent had been quite thoroughly wrecked in the outburst the letter had incited. She’d screamed, full of rage and grief and awful despair. He’d never heard her scream before. She hardly ever made any sound louder than a huff of breath – but under the circumstances, he understood the exception. She’d crumpled the letter in her hand enough that it had been hard to read, when she finally passed it over. Her fingernails had dug into her palms hard enough to draw blood, staining the paper with the blood its words carried.

King Harrow was dead. And now….now, it seemed like the princes were, too. Those sweet boys, always so happy to see their aunt, and so kind to Gren, too. They were so young. They didn’t deserve this.

When the letter first came, there might have been some shred of hope remaining. Some hope that the presence of the assassin didn’t necessarily equate to the deaths of the princes. But then the second report had come, solemnly confirming that the boys had still not arrived at the lodge, and were assumed killed.

They didn’t deserve this, he thought again, bitterly, harsh upset rising like acid in his throat at the thought. They were just kids. Lord and Lady, they were just kids.

Still, though, he breathed. He kept his composure. He relayed General Amaya’s orders with every edge of anger and vengefulness that the tense movements of her hands and the storm on her face belied.

They were just kids.

Where were they now? What had the assassin done with them? Had she thrown their bodies off the battlements, to be swallowed by the river? Had she done worse?

“Captain Fen and his unit are ordered to return to the Breach at once. A crow will be sent ordering a reinforcement of the border guard, with additional patrols to be held along the regions where elves are suspected to cross over from Xadia. It is absolutely imperative that the border hold.”

Fen knew enough sign that he probably didn’t need the benefit of Gren’s interpreting. It was a boon for his soldiers, though, who all snapped to attention with the order.

He glanced back at the General every second, well-accustomed to his work, but couldn’t help but hurt at the sight of her face. She often looked determined, yes, and sometimes frustrated, and frequently there was an indomitable sense of will to her that heralded nothing but misfortune for anything that stood in her way. The look on her face now…it was a little like that, but twisted, transformed from inspiring to a tragedy. Her lips turned sharply downwards, pain and fury living in every inch of her, burning out of every movement she made. It was awful to look at.

“Corvus,” Gren said, with the same abrupt and commanding clip to his voice that the General’s sign had. He straightened attentively at the sound and sight of his name, watching intently for orders. “You will ride out ahead of us and proceed as quickly as possible to the last known location of the assassin. If she went to such trouble to steal a boat, she’ll be taking the river, but she can’t hope to take it through Kalsanis without being seen. Find where she moors, and track her from there.”

Corvus bowed his head, face solemn and dark. “I hear and obey, General. I will find her.”

Amaya nodded, sharply, and resumed speaking.

“I know that you will. And when you do, you’ll secure her, and bring her to me.” Gren suppressed a shiver at the look on his General’s face, but didn’t miss a beat. “Ultimately, your priority is to bring her to justice. If you feel you’ll be unable to hold her for long enough, then do what you can to find out what she did to Prince Callum and Prince Ezran, and where she left their bodies, and execute her immediately thereafter. I’ll settle for her corpse if I can’t have her alive.”

“I understand.”

“You’ll send reports as often as you can. I want to know where she’s been and where she’s going. If you lose the trail, you’ll report that too.”

“Of course.”

Amaya exhaled, very slightly, and nodded again. Her next words were signed a little more slowly, with a bit less vicious energy. “I’m trusting you with this, Corvus. You’re the best tracker in the kingdom, and if you can’t find her, I expect you to tell me in time to arrange alternatives.” She waited for his acknowledgement, and finished. “Go. All of you. I’ll have written copies of your orders sent out by dawn.”

Corvus saluted, and so did Captain Fen, and all the lines of soldiers in his unit. General Amaya didn’t stay to see them leave, but whirled on her feet and swept back into the command tent like a hurricane. Gren followed hastily in her wake, sweeping the front aside.

Unlike the loosely wedge-shaped tents assigned to the infantry, the command tent was propped up on all sides, tall enough to stand in. It took a fair bit of assembly, but it was what was afforded the most renowned General in all the Pentarchy.

It was a space that afforded her the loss of her composure.

She collapsed to her knees on the ground and, with hissing, uneven gasps of breath, drove her fist into the earth with an awful, inconsolable force of grief. He hesitated, uncertain what to do, and stepped forward. It was his privilege and his responsibility to remain by her side.

Her face had changed, now. Still angry. Still at the mercy of unrelenting grief. But the expression had fallen open, vulnerable, teetering on the edge of despair.

When her hands moved, they were trembling. “Her boys,” She said, lips pressed tightly together as though to retain some vestige of composure, and he watched her speak in silence. “My nephews. They’re gone.”

He couldn’t help but react to the force of that grief. His shoulders shook as he signed back to her. “I’m so sorry. They were such good boys. They didn’t deserve this.”

Her teeth clenched along with her fists, that terrible fury running wild on her face. “They’d done nothing wrong. Nothing to deserve dying. Harrow, I could understand, but the boys – I can never forgive it. Never, never, never.” She signed this last word three times, increasingly agitated, increasingly vehement, rage bubbling up in every movement.

He bowed his head. There wasn’t a lot he could say that wouldn’t be meaningless.

When she resumed speaking, it was slower. Almost ponderous. He might have thought her calm if not for the black, vengeful hate that was growing on her face, second by second.

“If I have to die to see it done, I’ll catch that vile murderess. Even if I have to follow her to the heart of Xadia, you understand?”

Silent, he signed back: “yes.” He understood. He didn’t know that these were deaths she could survive, without revenge and justice to soothe the void they left. Her family was gone, her family on whose behalf she’d fought so fiercely all these years. Her defence of the kingdom had been unwavering, unfaltering, and her renown had grown with every year. But he knew where that strength had been anchored. He feared what would become of her, now that she was cast adrift.

He watched her as she scowled, eyes staring off somewhere far beyond and removed from the edge of the tent, as if searching for the elven murderer already.

Gren couldn’t even pity the monster, not really. Not given what she’d taken. But he could recognise, grimly, that there was no force in the world that he believed capable of holding General Amaya from her justice now….and that if it were him, fleeing an Amaya driven to this extremity of rage? He’d probably just kill himself and be done with it, rather than suffer finding out what she’d take as the blood-price for the princes’ deaths.

He couldn’t find it in him to pity the assassin for what was coming to her.

But he could regret, deeply and truly, how much this loss would hurt Amaya.

  End chapter.

Notes:

This chapter takes place on 14.05, day 4 since start of canon. Subtract two days to determine how long the kids have been travelling.

Key canon divergences: Amaya is now quite sure that her nephews are dead, and is on a mission of revenge.

On camping: Look, I recognise I dedicated a whole lot of words to tent-assembly this chapter, but like…while future tent-assembly will be considerably less gratuitously described, if you’re not a fan of reading about the kids going about camping/travelling adventures and misadventures, you may have the wrong fanfiction. I’ve been feeling super nostalgic about my own long-haul hiking experiences lately, and by god I’m going to express it.

I’m going to wipe my trekking experience all over this fanfiction, and none of you can stop me.

On the tent: I’m writing their tent as being functionally the same as the tents my trek group used, which were explicitly designed for harsh weather and temperature conditions and terrain, and in its general shape was reasonably similar to the Moonshadow elf tents. The materials are different and I made the tent poles work differently too (mine aren’t bent along the shape, they just….are weirdly flexible), but honestly there’s so much variance in how tent poles work that I don’t really care much about the details there. The main points are: this tent is going to be a fair bit heavier and somewhat less waterproof than a modern tent would be.

On sleeping arrangements: Rayla is not comfortable. She is not comfortable at all. I’m going to have a great time with the progression of her sleeping situation throughout this fanfiction. Callum and Ezran, who are heavy sleepers, will be mostly oblivious to her plight.

Afterword: Chapter 6 is about 30-50% done at this point! I’ve actually written a fair bit the last few days but it’s mainly been far-future scenes, so I am running out of chronologically-arranged prewritten content here.

If you’ve read and at least somewhat enjoyed this, please show it by boosting my story stats in some way. The anxiety when new chapters go up is intense, and good reception of the chapter can mean the difference between me writing 4k the next day or not managing to write anything at all.

[raayllum]

cube hostage exchange theory from a meta standpoint is exceedingly funny to me because one of the reasons i talk about it as often as i do is because there’s just... so much to talk about regarding it? like 

at this time, callum and viren are each other’s primary foils, with rayla and aaravos being each other’s primary foils. this was true even before S4, but especially afterward, with rayla and aaravos both hunting mages as prey (viren and callum respectively) and with the viren-callum parallels being ramped up, just as a quick example.

the cube glowing with the star primal, and indeed rayla having a pet monkey that’s connected to the star arcanum, just happens to show up in a big dramatic halo of moonlight moments after callum says “in darkness” but we know the cube also has negative associations so it can’t be wholly positive framing, and soren explicitly spells this out for us with rayla’s return: “now you’re back. that’s kinda good. and kinda bad.” 

for s1-s3 the cube was the primary carrier of the game motif, with only one (1) mention of a game directly to aaravos. now in s4, that motif has moved from the background to being more directly and overtly connected to aaravos. rayla is the first person to call it a toy and in an episode in which we see an elf toy that is explicitly supposed to look like her.

callum’s suffocation / drowning motif was because of dark magic in s2 and then brought back in s4. rayla has always been connected with water. they almost drowned together in TTM. the “you will discover the cube’s secrets” line pans over earth and ocean only, indicating the cube’s secrets will first start to be revealed in ocean. the moon literally affects the tides

if rayla flat out refuses to kill callum no matter the stakes (“you let him live but you killed us all”) even if she frees him it still meant she put him over the world / they can’t get off completely scot free. they’ve always been very mutual (rayla saving him from sol regem in 3x01 at risk to herself / callum saving her in 3x09 at risk to himself in an even more extreme way, arguably) so callum would have to ‘repay’ that in some capacity to keep that mutuality: “i hope it was worth it to you putting everyone’s lives in danger”

the fact that rayla’s drawing and her getting the cube for him in the first place is even the reason he actually has it in show deserves to be a point on its own because like. callum could’ve found it while looking for her in the lodge. ezran could’ve nabbed it. the cube never helps them plot wise until 3x08 it could’ve even just been presented with harrow’s letter and let 2x08 do the symbolic heavy lifting with the keys like. but no. they decided it had to be 1x04, the immediate ep after the very start of the story’s main arc, and it had to be rayla. 

one of callum’s core flaws is that he’s reckless in pursuit of what he wants (magic) but even more reckless when it comes to protecting the people he loves, cue: running into what he thinks is a trap in 4x01 to protect ezran, jumping off the mountain for rayla, when he thinks he has even the barest trace of saving either of them. his tales of xadia bio quote (which i originally took with a delighted grain of salt but since feels more valid given other things that have already come to pass as mentions/foreshadowing for the sow itself) is “i’m beholden to my inner circle, not some silly kingdom” and “i value those close to me more than anyone or anything” which is 👀 bc thus far the only time we’ve seen that really play out is when he bent his morals in doing dark magic and when he chose to leave with ez & rayla in 1x03 to protect the egg and his baby brother. but it hasn’t come back since and certainly not on as big a scale as the quotes indicate (more than anyone means more than any other person / people after all) 

rayla and callum still have unresolved conflict and 3/4 finales (with s1 being the sole exception) have always featured a very important moment and/or turning point in their relationship. while aaravos’ release could be pushed to s6 (either early s6 or late s6) for a more traditional plot structure it makes sense for him to be released in or by the end of 5x09 so that S6 can give everyone a chance to defeat him once he’s actually out (11th hour / darkest moment failure thing) and then successfully defeat him in S7. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

like oh you watch 1x04 and it’s their first bonding moment because “you called me a mage and that felt right.” you watch 1x05 and they have multiple instances of disagreeing whether something is worth something (the cube, rayla’s bravery, the boat) with callum always believing it is. you watch 1x09 and it’s foreshadowing callum’s connection to the moon arcanum. and so on and so forth 

and almost none of this is touching on theme, or the way rayla (and basically only her) is woven deftly into callum’s journey as a mage in ways that ezran or any other character firmly is not, which is an entire other can of multi layered worms. thematically, the theory has even more evidence if you start pulling on generational parallels, and patterns, etc etc. 

there’s a reason this has been a theory of mine for over two years now, precisely because what started out as a simple “huh what if” thought was something i kept founding new merit for, even - or especially when - i wasn’t looking for it in the first place

it truly is just me over turning every rock i can like “maybe i’ll find an alternative down here” and instead it’s just more