#pride oakleaves | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

thelastranger · 3 years ago

Text

Secret Santa Exchange

Since the exchange last year went so well and reduced the amount of tears shed, the kids and adults decide to do it again.

The kids:

Will: he gets Alyss as his person and is over the moon. He has a clear idea of what he's going to get her and gets it the very next day. It's the most comfortable chair for her desk he could find and Will proceeds to spend the next month lovingly carving it with vines and leaves.

Horace: Jenny receives wooden signs for her kitchen that says "My kitchen, my rules" and "Don't flip out" with a spatula underneath. The latter one gets referenced more often than Jenny would like, but she appreciates nonetheless.

Alyss: Horace receives a bronze paper weight shaped like a bear and a matching one for Cassie's desk.

Cassie: after hearing how George would like an animal to keep him company in the library and archives and after subtly getting someone to confirm that this is actually something George wants (it was Horace and he was not subtle about it), she gets him a small kitten.

Jenny: poor Jenny tried to commission a portrait of Cassie but the painter couldn't find Evalyn as she was out of town for her job so all the painter has to go off of is a drawing of Cassie by Jenny, who overestimated her drawing skills. The resulting portrait looks nothing like Cassie but it's still hung up with pride in her office.

George: he gives Will a mandola upkeep kit and a lute upkeep kit as a joke as well as a signed CD of Berrigan's greatest hits so that Will can practice. Between George and Gilan, Berrigan is raking in the royalties.

The adults:

Again, the proper adults have a gift exchange and Gilan is again roped into the adult section, albeit a bit less reluctantly this time as he remembers getting a large amount of cash from Duncan last year.

Halt: Gilan receives a small bound book of journal entries and letters Halt had written about Gilan early on in his apprenticeship. Gilan had no idea Halt had done this. He always assumed Halt was writing coded letters about crimes when he saw Halt scribbling at the table at night.

Crowley: he gets everyone in Arald's life to make a cheesy handprint sweatshirt. Arald literally never takes it off at home and it's become somewhat of a problem.

Pauline: she gets Halt a ceramic statue of Abelard as well as a rough carved necklace of a rider on a horse. The tail pulls out to include a dagger. Halt tears up when he receives this. It's so practical!

Arald: gets Pauline a lovely stationary set and some rare ingredients to make ink with.

Duncan: from Duncan, Crowley receives a luxurious set of robes, lounging and otherwise, embroidered with gold and silver oakleaves. This quickly becomes a problem as Crowley will now show up to official meeting in his designer lounge robe and not the designated meeting robe.

Gilan: Gilan understands that panic buying a calendar will not fly for Duncan but cannot find anything suited for the king that is within his modest price range and will be suited for the king. An hour before the exchange, just as he's leaving the tenth store, Gilan sees a CD signed by Berrigan. Unfortunately, this CD is from the "Old King Artur the Terrible Farter" era and contains many non subtle insults to the kings and a diss track about Duncan that Berrigan made when he was feeling very spiteful about Tiller.

#Ranger's Apprentice #Will Treaty #Halt O'Carrick #Gilan #Horace Altman

46 notes · View notes

araluen-arrows · 5 years ago

Text

morgarath wins au

credit to @silver-oakleaves for starting all this in the first place :)

- in a way, Duncan thinks, he should’ve seen this coming.

- there were too many Wargals in the countryside, too many scared barons sitting on the fence and waiting for the axe to fall.

- it starts, really, at his coronation, when he can read the atmosphere instantly knows that his reign will he difficult; try as pauline might, she was never able to sway as many barons as she wished she could have. not enough men came to reinforce the army, and worse, it was the harvesttime when they fought.

- morgarath didn’t have a harvest to reap. duncan did, and he had to choose between having an army or having a nation in famine.

- he and northolt tried to rotate the army, keeping some men and letting some go home to their farms. it worked up until the days after hackham heath, when there was still sporadic fighting as morgarath was driven backwards.

- when the right flank of his army broke formation, Duncan sent halt to mold them back together, like before.

- but unlike before, where was daniel? back on a farm in aspienne, threshing wheat and drying the rest of his harvest in the late autumn sun, rocking his son Will to sleep at night and holding hands with his wife.

- this time, when Halt falls, there is no one to take his place, no one to strike fear into the hearts of wargals, and the right flank of Duncan’s army collapses completely.

- duncan suddenly finds his forces in retreat instead of advancing. the wargals keep coming, sensing fear in the hearts of his men. sir David, commander of the king’s cavalry, falls under the onslaught.

- (days later, when his son finds out, he bitterly picks a fight with a platoon of wargals, but one twelve year old boy, even one trained by macneil, does not stand a chance against morgarath’s killing machines. gilan falls, the bodies of five wargals around him, defeated in the end by a spear to the chest.)

- the main army is forced northwards again, and at twin river forks in araluen, Duncan makes his last stand. he is tired of running, tired of hiding and living on half rations. if he’s going to die, he might as well do it beside the castle he swore to protect when he was coronated.

- morgarath gives no quarter. he does not know the meaning of the word surrender. eventually, duncan decides that enough is enough.

- he gives himself up to morgarath, instructing arald to keep his men alive. but before he goes, there is still one more thing he has to do.

- "crowley", he says, "do you remember when I told you to guard the queen with your life?" crowley doesn't trust himself to speak and nods wordlessly. duncan produces a letter from his pocket and then unbuckles his sword. "i'm going to need you to do the same for my daughter. and when she's old enough, give her these."

- the execution is quick.

- none of duncan’s supporters stick around to watch the king beheaded. crowley infiltrates castle araluen, telling everyone to get out, now, and carefully takes the baby cassandra from her nurses.

- he wanted to go after morgarath himself after that last battle. avenge duncan, who was never given a proper burial after his execution. avenge halt, who still lay on a battlefield in southern araluen, far from the man and mentor he could have become.

- but he cannot.

- arald and crowley move to picta, establishing a renegade organization that is constantly on the move. crowley and pauline raise the royal princess as their own in the gorse and wild heather of the pictish moors, running free but running scared, far away from her homeland and her father's legacy.

- morgarath moves into castle araluen, issuing several edicts: barons loyal to duncan are immediately executed or driven out of the country. the rangers, who had just begun to reestablish a foothold, are hunted even more so. hunted out of necessity, and then out of sport.

- "they were the best human trackers and spies," morgarath mocks, "so I will send after them the best of the inhuman."

- only a bare handful of the corps survive the plague of the kalkara that he sends after them. it is a terrifying way to die, paralyzed by those blinking yellow eyes, but the rangers that do manage to evade the kalkara find their way to picta.

- arald and crowley have only two hundred men, half a dozen rangers, and one overthrown royal princess. morgarath knows where they are, knows they are among the scotti, and it is only a matter of time before he sends troops after him. the clock is running out.

- on her fifteenth birthday, crowley hands cassandra her father's sword, signet ring, and letter. "he wanted you to have these," he says quietly.

- cassie is far from the pampered royal princess she would have been. she studies languages and politics with lady pauline, learns how to shoot and track with leander, and with her tangled red hair and scotti accent, she might as well have not been araluenian.

- the contents of the letter:

dear cassandra, rightful heir to the throne of araluen:

i had once hoped to raise you myself, but certain circumstances, of which I am sure you are aware, have prevented this from occurring. I only regret that you were orphaned so young, but if I know crowley, he would have done his job properly.

I have asked him to present my sword, and my seal to you on your fifteenth birthday, along with this letter. they are to be yours henceforth; bear them with pride and as proof of your birthright, until you can be properly coronated as queen.

queen. that is the second thing I wanted to write you about. once there was a lovely queen who sat on the throne next to mine, bright and smart and fierce. you would have loved her, and I think you will grow to be like her. your mother's name was rosalind, cassie, and she died in childbirth after giving you a name.

one day, if things should come to pass as I hope they will, you will be queen yourself. I have known you for only two months, but I think you have the makings of a great ruler. take my sword, cassandra, and cut morgarath from the throne of araluen. it is your birthright and your duty to our people.

my daughter, I am proud of you.

- she slides the sword from its scabbard, marvelling at how it feels in her hand. the ring, she slips into her pocket, and the letter? in the years to come, cassandra will read the letter countless times until the paper is worn and delicate and her father’s words have seared themselves into her brain.

- there is only one problem left, of course, and that is how the fuck she is supposed to go about driving an entrenched warlord out of her kingdom. "obviously," she says to crowley, "our greatest problem is a lack of men. so, where do we find troops?"

- he raises an eyebrow at her, very proud of his royal princess/ranger/wild kid who previously spent her days running around barefoot in the gorse. "oh, there are plenty of fighting men in this country," he says, "and they've been very keen to invade araluen in the past. i think the time is ripe to try again." - with arald’s help, she goes to the leaders of the local scotti tribes and appeals to them for aid. favorable trade terms with picta once i am queen, she promises. no longer will vengeful araluen farmers raid across the border. no longer will you be attacked by morgarath and his wargals. just help me get my throne back.

- slowly, the word gets around about this fierce girl, the daughter of the old king who wields her father’s sword and paints her face like a scotti warrior, a girl who was trained by Rangers since they day she could walk. more and more tribes join their cause every day.

- cassandra begins her crusade, making her way south towards castle araluen, almost like morgarath had nearly sixteen years ago. except this time, she goes to avenge her father and not depose him.

- few can stand in her way. she combines scotti brute force with ranger tactics, and that is enough to fell even the wargals. cassandra, on her sixteenth birthday, becomes the first person ever to besiege castle araluen and win.

- she marches into the throne room, her warriors streaming behind her, and points her father's sword at morgarath, the ring glinting on her left hand like a star. when she speaks, her voice is like ice:

- get off my throne, you bastard motherfucker.

#rangers apprentice #ranger's apprentice #ra au #crowley meratyn #cassandra/evanlyn #morgarath wins au

180 notes · View notes

book-pirate · 7 years ago

Text

I got tagged by @suerteencantada. I love stuff like this, thanks so much!

1) Diabetes - a very sweet book

This is a tough one for me. Generally I don’t read sweet books, because I usually find them tedious. However, something that made me melt and makes me melt every time I read it is These Happy Golden Days by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Like, yeah, is it a kid’s book? Sort of. But still! I love the story of her courtship with her eventual husband, and how she falls in love with him slowly, and how he’s willing to wait for her to feel the way he feels about her.

2) Chickenpox - a book that you read once and will not read again:

Ugh definitely Creation of the Patriarchy. What xenophobic/racist bullshit. It’s the issue a lot of white feminists fall into, where the oppression of being a woman overtakes all other struggles, and pushes other people’s oppression down in an effort to further their own cause. Don’t @ me, y’all know it's a thing.

3) Influenza - a contagious book that spreads like a virus:

The Brothers Karamazov was this book for me. It crawled underneath my skin and shaped the way I thought about humanity, basically. Dostoyevsky is really good at that. A bunch of my friends read it and then we convinced more of our friends to read it and now it’s like our Bible. If anyone is going to read anything from this list you should read the Brothers K.

4) The Cycle - a book that you read every month, every year, or very often:

This one is definitely Pride and Prejudice. I reread it at least once a year, and have ever since I first read it in the sixth grade. Other favorites that this applies to are Harry Potter and everything Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about Sherlock Holmes.

5) Insomnia - a book that kept you up all night:

I’ve lost so much sleep to reading that this one is really hard for me to answer. I guess the books I remember staying up late to read the most were the Harry Potter books when they came up. I used to keep a flashlight under my pillow and pretend to be asleep until I thought it was safe enough to hide under my blankets and read with the flashlight. Recently it’s been Eichmann in Jerusalem by Arendt. It’s haunting and scares the shit out of me, and sometimes I stay awake at night thinking about how easy it was for the Nazis to take over and decimate an entire race of people.

6) Amnesia - a book that’s been forgotten and failed to leave an impression on you

If I’ve forgotten it how can I write about it??? Honestly I’ve probably read a shit ton of books that I don’t remember. Maybe the later books in the Princess Diaries series? Or other books by Meg Cabot. I like her enough her books just always follow the same plot and it’s pretty boring after a while.

7) Asthma - a book that took your breath away:

Honestly God of the Oppressed touched me in a way I didn’t think was possible. “Only stories that invite an openness to other human stories are true”. Like damn, James H. Cone, why’d you have to go and do me like that. That and Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde. I literally felt like I couldn’t breathe.

Fuck, also Souls of Black Folk, how could I forget that and also Pedagogy of the Oppressed?

Christ Stopped at Eboli?!

8) Malnutrition - a book that lacked food for thoughts:

If anything made me feel stupider after reading it, it’s definitely City of God Against the Pagans. We fucking get it Augustine everyone who’s not a Christian is going to hell, fucking get a new shtick.

9) Motion sickness - a book that took you on a journey through time and space:

Mrs. Dalloway, for sure. Actually, basically anything by Virginia Woolf? She writes in such a way that I feel like I’m right next to all her characters as they go about their lives. But Mrs. Dalloway was special in that it takes place over the course of a day, but SO MUCH happens. It feels like real life.

I tag @oakleaves, @unknown--and--unknowable, @halfagony-halfhope, @the-bluebonnet-bee-keeper, and @betty-larceny,as well as anyone else who wants to do it!

#friends don't feel pressured to do this!#sofietalksaboutherself #I loveeee doing shit like this though #thanks suerteencantada!

1 note · View note