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before the flora.

knight!ellie x princess!reader teaser. beginning is essentially just lore. bonus excerpt with ellie and princess interaction below the sketch. wrote the intro in january. no warnings tbh. illustration by @trackinglessons :P READ THIS . PALESTINE MASTERPOST

When the universe was born, there was only fire; a slowly waning blaze. And so hence when death begins to unfurl its low, groaning bloom— there will only be ice.

Yet the heavens and earth are nay alike, as death— and life, are interwoven by the timeless nuptial that is humans, and Mother Nature. Cordial and tepid heartbeats meet with her frigid and frightening marrow this season. Flakes are falling, a howl swells in the wind, and hearths stay an undying tongue of flame in the province of Istenad. Isle of riches and hedonism gone rampant amongst those who proved meritful of a conversation spat over gilded chalices. Or those who wiped a famished tongue stroke over the sole of His Majesty— The King's tan leather boots in entreat, declaring the hide a tenfold more gullet–watering than their stale, daily spare of bread. Where high life reins, low life is there to scrub their steeds.

The wintry pearlescent tundra fringing around uncharted woodlands hums your name— it carries by gale, an airy reed of vowels pulled through your ears.

Tut, tut, tut, the pecking of bark.

Everything seems to resound much heavier over the windows thick limestone sill. Woodwinds, the sough of pine boughs— a chorus wafted. Woodpeckers, they beat rigid timber with their sonnets of calling. The echoed tut starts to sound awfully kindred to a beckoning call of your name. And at daybreak, when the tangerine sun dips its head under the coast, you feel a magnetic lull to traverse your truest passions and slip away into the night, arctic chilled steel in hand. The quantity of hay sticking beneath your shoes collected by skittering across the night–doused thoroughfare was well enough to concern your maids on duty to dress you, brows fuddled at the streaming of straw near your door come morning.

Loop of your knuckles, bend of your wrist, a hand flexed on the hilt of a meticulously poached sword. A swing 'round your waist, a cold hale grip the air could taste, fighting off many mythic brutes of moonlight, however only conceived where dreams are airtight. The mind, it plays. The play it perceives, a viewing spread like tawny butter. Ghouls and ghastlies encircle a quaint pond, chanting away in cryptic grumbles and beastly bumbles, enraged with their slobber frothing at the fangs you tore from their sockets— deeper than artless, juxtaposed to the blinding ruby reds and dyed paper sunflowers of the theater. Your mind’s play felt real.

Unfortunate to your heart, dreams will stay dreams.

Nary a princess was meant to tune into melee, especially at your courting age. Nevertheless, your psyche has spurned from what a maiden is expected of and is completely in a haven of your own structure, your signature sanctuary.

In the farmsteads, a forthcoming soldier harvests not just crop— but dexterity. Derived and nurtured in the faraway prairie village of Dunwich, where the fertile seasons prove flaxen of corn and the trickling sweat of every farmhand turns to gold. Any newborn granted to this quaint village is fated to form calloused hands with labor written in their palm lines as time unfolds. In their— well, her— adolescent years, the yearning for practices of gallantry in knighthood swiveled her sights to the colossal stone castle way.. way far away. Sprouting beyond the earth line, far as the eye can see.

So, she learned, she trained, she slept, partaking in a ranged cycle taught by her ruthlessly departed father: Sir Joel. Reprisal became her nemesis; never able to rend the barrier of hesitation and cleanse her shut eyes of revolting imagery. The horseman of death was not omitting the trauma of this hazel-haired soldier. A weight so burdensome, her speckled skin remembers the tales of every scar clawed into it. Like how the lips of a bard cling to an everlasting ballad.

Every knight knew well to exile any lingering ties to the past. It's been years since he passed, she understands that. Though, the heart never lies, and certainly never covets forgetting.

Ambitions stemming from legions of knights in waiting have fallen short, submerging within the moat of the castle and sinking deep into the catacombs with no elegy sung. An allegory for dreams long since vanished. A domain so valued longs for those biding life with rigid bones, such as she. Tempered by the hardships, endured like metal meeting the blacksmith's chisel.

A vividness to her movements, flowing like a river. For it is water that soothes the most cosmic fires, carves veins into the earth's soil, descends from the heavens above and proves iron soluble. A knight so pinpoint and poised like a painter, yet so daring and baneful like a warrior of evenfall. An artisan of her craft, this knight-to-be is. Born to thrive in matters regarding protection of their kingdom and its nobility. By the sheer tenacity of her skill, she will excel. From the self–instructed lessons in a verdant pasture, basked by undying light in her hometown— to the ordained priming within the royal court.

They were forged to be dutiful.

You are a daughter of the illustrious King, Sagard, and swan–grace queen, Sagard— maiden name Adela, and sister of your highly revered and cherished kin, Prudence. Subsequent to her fabled rise, was your fall. A pratfall you plainly turned a serene ear from, for you foresaw it's coming. Clandestine adventures and lollygagging in the marketplace earned you right in the clasp of consequences. You knew that, knowing it kept you on the balls of your toes before you'd be caught suiting into an act more repugnant— be it, no.. befogging yourself in a peasant boys' dire–in–muck rags, merely to play "boy" games as a young one?

Sacrilege!

Prudence was there, at every occasion, scolding with her youthful finger at the palace fore, sucking her fingertip wet of spit and dragging a stroke over your soot–strewn cheek, just before scuttling the halls in search of father, cawing, “Father, Father! My sisters become a boy again!” until it rang his fucking ears to a pulse. Hmph, father even countered his own remark of squawk, pouring through the walls, “Hah! The second son I wish I reared! Tell me, what peasants skin does she clad: butcher's boy, or of the farmer?”

Rebuking the role of royalty isn't your entire bastion of vengeance. You purely long for a world of your own color. Your self-brewn arcadia of art. In a concise phrase, desire for sovereignty. And your family chastised you curtly for every scant display of free will, short of the Queen, she is fair.

Daughter of the King, Princess of the thicket. You retain your fortunes. Modestly.

“Why don't you resemble your sister more?”

A ruby crested box designed by the best of goldsmiths is lodged at the margin of your beds footboard, safekeeping of your esteemed regalia. You possess a bedazzled amassing of circlets, veils, brocade and velvet tunics of long lengths within this box. But do any of them revel in the blessing of being worn on regal skin? Never. You opted for garbs of less gilding and jewels, so that you might taint it with whatever adventures mold under the ribbing of your foot. That shit offended your skin with its indelicacy of forgetting a human will don its fabric golds and woven jewels.

Even— court gatherings. You don the likeness of simplicity and temperate elegance. This morning's virginal aurora, a broach of light swoll from the windows arch, to the footing of bed, made the wake of your eyes begin upon a lighting behind sheer skin. Your box of regalia shone in that incandescence momentarily, it danced, fleeter than you, irkingly so. You had to squint whilst flipping the clasps and hauling the heavy lid slanted against your bed, else you may be heaven–blinded. “Every inch of Princess,” you intoned in quietude at the sight of glamored fabrics, “—whom I shant mirror.” and reached for the homelier fabrics, scratch of cobalt-blue linen delight brushing under your prints, you grasped your reserve tight.

“I was not made aware that there is a village wedding to be, dear sister— from what river does this dress of rags hail from?”

“It is not a brides dress, nor rags, leave me Prud—”

Prudence had blocked the shut of your chamber door with her hand flattened, pursuing, “You glum your gems. Rotting in that chest, tasting no light, no glory.”

You kept your lips thickly sown shut, casting dimly eyes to the ground.

“Shall I send for the steward so he may sell—”

“No need.”

“Hmm, most stubborn, are we? Then I—”

“I am least stubborn,” you wedged your fingers beneath her palm, prying the door loose, “—it is you, who strays your own counsel, unmoving as a mountain.” ending with the trudging shut of your door, ceasing in silence.

[++ bonus excerpt from act 2, scene 1]

“Uh–huh..” she draws out. Legato; a sarcastic reply, and wipes her tongue through the press of her lips together, “This far out? You must rebel quite often to have made a friend, I bet?” she tilts her head, a bit playful.

“You bet well— a lot, I assume?”

Cannily, she winks, “Indeed I do.” and aligns her face onward. Gesturing to her horse's rump a second— third? Eh, whatever time— she jerks her brow with a head cock back, “Hop on, I'll take you there.”

Both brows fall, and you flinch bemused, “Wh– uh,” as you hem and haw for words, grating a stutter, “But not a moment ago you spoke of the roads recent perils—”

“Surely it's not far?” she spoke presumptuously, “I mean, you've come this far, My Lady. Nobody would travel the woods past sunset, besides you it seems.” now a matter–of–fact vocal barricade that shoves itself into your ears and winds the cogs to think cleverly.

You shan't know my transgressions, sweet Knight. You may talk.

Trust is sparse as a puddle marched in.

“‘Tis but a mile out. Bravo on your convincing, Williams.” you wry and scoff.

“Can't fumble that name, huh?”

“I would not want to dishonor your knighthood.”

“You honor me with your coincidental presence, Princess.”

“Honor in your mind.”

"Hmph," her breathy chuckle, a sweetness you luckily caught with ears even numbed by the snowsquall. Do not blush. Do not smile. Fuck. Guess you'll be visiting Malina after all, the gale of a displeased sigh icing your lips over as you approach that dangling stirrup.

#FINALLY……#౨ৎ. born of flora and fauna #ellie williams #ellie williams x reader #ellie tlou #lesbian #sapphic #ellie x reader #knight!ellie #knight!ellie x princess!reader #tlou ellie

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