#tfw thenvunin is the most adjusted person in a situation

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Arranged marriage au tanzanite BC it sounds like the best kind of freakout lol

welp so this is an absolute fucking garbage fire. The concept shit isn’t so bad but i’m not happy with the writing (the prologue/set up bit is a fucking trash heap like holy shit), i’ve been pulled away, distracted and tired all day so i didn’t get to focus on this like i’d wanted to but i’m also really not interested in holding onto it to work on it when things are less hectic bc i’ll just forget and it’ll rot here sooooo. 

the first bit is like, nondescript omnipresent narration then it goes into povs.

Mythal (kinda), Uthivr and Thenvunin are @feynites‘s Alhanin, Fewena and Inanallas are mine

Why shouldn’t they help themselves, after the way they’d been treated?

It was always the people who thought they’d won who seemed to forget that things change and it’s impossible to completely destroy an enemy which meant there were still free elves wandering the earth, unchained by the Pretenders or the Vultures, and they had just as long a memory as the people who’d sought to own them.

Slowly they recovered and the scattered people came together, formed clans, traded and parted, shared gossip. They stayed small and in the places the others did not want to live, hidden from both sides.

Eventually a thought began to ripple through the clans and homesteads.

Why do they cower while Tyrants grow strong from the blood of their brothers? Why are they standing by while the world is ravaged by the short sighted and selfish?

Eventually they’re purpose turned to patience, as they planned and prepared. This time things would go much differently, and it would be the others who would be broken.

The day came with the call of Alhanin True-Aimed, Lead Hunter and Arbiter of a desert clan, who spoke to all the elders who would hear her and so solidified the alliance of the clans, and when the Empire of Corruption was distracted by their plays at outrage and rebuilding after a brief slap from the Others the Free People struck.

They hit all territories, simultaneously— freeing their prisoners, creeping into their palaces like shadows, shattering their walls like trees in a maelstrom, leaving no chance for aid. Skirmishes breaking out in all the places they’d considered so safe from the blades of enemies.

They finally took them seriously when Féwena the Iron rode with False Death’s head on a spike.

They called for a truce when Arlathan was breached and it was made clear how very different things were this time.

Alhanin True-Aimed agreed to talk with them and after a long time and much thinking and talking something of a truce was made. The Evanuris could not have their fallen’s land back and those who lived there could stay as Free People if they so wished or go to serve some other master if that was what they wanted. The Evanuris could no longer hunt them and would have to lessen their stranglehold on their people. In return they were gifted with their lives.

It was called by the Pretenders a great triumph of the People, a peace brokered swiftly that would lead to a new era of unity against common enemies.

They did not say they had surrendered, nor that they had given up the most. Alhanin was kinder then most, and let them keep some of their pride.

They were still, however, clever as snakes and did gain some things. But Alhanin was just as clever and give while making useless, defeating them again.

It was not…. It was not.

Well, it wasn’t what they’d been expecting. Or anything they were remotely comfortable with.

Still they’d taken it with as much stride as anyone could. They understood why and the importance of all these various moves to stabilize the situation,  so they don’t say anything and just accept their lot. Though the prospect of it sends their blood running cold, marriage political or not was a terrifying concept.

They learn about the arrangement while still leading the search for, investigation and clearing of Dirthamen’s holds. Alhanin makes the trip herself to tell them, the first sign of the severity. She’d looked as solemn and apologetic as they’d ever seen her, mane still in it’s hunting braid, still walking around in her hunter’s leathers-cum-armor, bow and quiver still in place. She’d been frank and to the point, asked if Inanallas was okay with this (or at least that it would send them into a meltdown) and informed her of what was being discussed as the parameters of the marriage, that she would inform them of the exact details when it was finalized. Inan had thanked her spoke with her about their progress and saw her out when she’d left.

Inanallas had then returned to their work and not thought about it since.

Now as they drew closer to finishing their examination of Dirthamen’s holdings, the arrangement finalized and the wedding preparations are underway a cold clawing fear grew in them. Still, they ignored it as much as they could.

The news is bad, though they can’t decide how bad in the scope of things. There are a million horrors that they could have been subjected to during the short blood bath the wildings brought on them, a pawn in a political marriage is not so bad, depending on who they have to marry and the conditions of the marriage.

It rankles them though, to be sold like cattle to pay the costs of the Leaders’ loss and their Lady’s bad behavior in the aftermath. They don’t know anything about the wild elves and that complete lack of knowledge gnaws at them and Fear, here they know what they’re dealing with— this other faction was a near complete unknown. The only insight they have into them is their own experience with them in battle and now working under them in the aftermath. The problem is that it’s not the most helpful in gaining an understanding of their future living situation, there’s little that’s cohesive between all the many groups that form their former enemy and they don’t know which group their betrothed is in so they can’t attempt to focus on their people in particular.

They do wonder, why they were chosen out of the living candidates, eventually they sniff out that Mythal was the one who’d chosen from both her own and Andruil’s people, as part of her punishment, and chosen one of her most prized hunters. A mother taking away a naughty child’s dollies, another thing to make their skin scrawl.  

There are some consolations to the entire thing however, many of the other higher ranking hunters are dead and the rest are like them, all under the oversight of wild elves as they go through stripping and restructuring Andruil’s territories and people, so there is little to no mockery or antagonism to deal with over their lot from their peers and Andruil is trapped in Arlathan for the negotiations so they are not subjected to being her outlet. They suffer some minor cruelties from the invaders but they seem to have a strict policy against that and police their own heavily for those.

If Uthvir was one for Hope, they’d take it as sign, but they’re not so they note it but do not put stock in it.

Mythal had summoned him to the private gardens of her Arlathan estate to tell him. He’d been a trembling maelstrom of innumerable mixed emotions from the instant he is given the summons. His poor Lady, he knows she is, as one of their greatest leaders and it’s completely unseemly of him to pity her but—

She has been through so much.

To first have to fend off those monstrous Nameless and their poor attempts on the Empire and then have savages rain such devastation as the Empire celebrates and recovers. To have to extend a hand to such ruthless killers just to protect her people, the people who so brutally killed her son, while Falon’Din was certainly not the most—well, it was hard, regardless of what they were like, to lose a child so terribly.

He didn’t know what he could do for her but he hoped dearly there was something he could do to help alleviate the strain she was under keeping Elvhenan together in this tumultuous time.

The garden was dim in the dusk light, illuminated by various lanterns and luminescent flowers, pale and beautiful. She sat at a small ornate table meant for taking tea, shining in the fading light. His nerves had left him the moment the doorway had come into view, the natural reflex to cast aside his own troubles so he could better hear and serve her coming back again. It would never do for him to come in a mess and worsen her own state, his own woes were nothing in comparison to hers.

With careful, practiced grace—every move perfect, no jerk, no misstep, make every stride perfect— he glides to the side of the table opposite her and Mythal turns to him briefly, her expression many things he has never seen before.

“Sit Thenvunin.”

He does so, ever so carefully, hard fought grace actuating very single element of the motion, faces her just so.

“You called for me, My Lady.” He demures.

She smiles faintly for a instant before her expression becomes unreadable, her gaze stays unfocused on the flowers.

“Yes, I did.”

“And what is it you need from me, My Lady?”

Her gaze seems to begin to focus at the question, by the time she finishes turning to him they are almost as sharp as they usually are, but much more full.

“It is not what I need but what I have done. I have proposed many means of better stabilizing this new situation and aligning the clans to us. Unsurprisingly most have failed, but not all of them, there is only one of them that relates to you, an arranged marriage— our finest to theirs.”

His throat goes dry. “I-I see.”

A shade of something sad and soft comes into her.

“It is not what I would have wanted for you, but I must think of the People before everything else. It’s a difficult thing, to think of no longer having you in my service, but I knew I needed to chose someone who was competent, strong and faithful, so there was no other choice.”

The straightness in his back shifts from the tenseness of shock to that of a seasoned soldier. Mythal had chosen him for this because she had faith in his loyalty to her and to the People. Chosen him because she felt of all her people he was the one best suited to champion them from that position. It was not—It wasn’t how he’d— Well, it was not the context in which one generally thinks about marriage, but he would do it. He had gone through worse things for Mythal and the empire, he would not be felled by this.

“Are all the terms decided?”

“Yes. It’s all been finalized.”

“Then I suppose there’s a lot of preparation in order to get ready for the ceremony—assuming there even is a ceremony—“

“There will be a ceremony Thenvunin,” she smiles ever so slightly. “The finest ceremony Elvhenan has ever seen.”

His heart skips a beat.