ashenscipher | (no subject)

Who: Bitterblue and Doctor Alexander Price (scales_and_silence)
What: Bitterblue is out for a midnight walk away from her entourage – to get some peace and quiet – and stumbles across someone dressed rather strange
When: Night
Where: Eastern mountain range of the country of Monsea
Rating/Warnings: Probably low

The royal camp sat at the foot of the mountain, a mile back from the entrance to the under-mountain caves linking the country of Monsea with the country of Dell on the other side of the impassable range.

The receiving party was there to escort the Leinid Prince Skye back to Bitterblue City where his father (King Ror of Leinid) was waiting for him to report his experiences. The past few months Skye had been in the land of their (Monsea and Leinid’s) new allies, the Dellians, serving as the Leinid representative. He would have fantastic stories to tell everyone, Bitterblue was only slightly jealous.

She would travel under the mountains someday.

It was silly for Queen Bitterblue to be there with the receiving party, but with all her friends in the lands to the north or west or east these past months she was desperate to welcome one back into her country. She had insisted on going with And she missed Skye dearly and taking two days away from her tower office and the stacks of paper on her desk would not throw the kingdom into disarray now that her ministries were staffed with trustworthy men and women.

The moon was too new and shy to shine tonight, leaving that duty to the dusting of stars above, and though beautiful, they did not illuminate the way before Bitterblue on her midnight walk. The ground was shrouded in shadows and dark mystery, refrozen due to the early spring cold. But the young queen picked her way carefully, stepping cautiously.

Perhaps she should go back to the camp lights some distance off, but she had her Leinid Guard trailing her (the only reason she was allowed out in the first place), she felt safe in this remote corner of her country.

She paused, looking at the camp, feeling a swell of love for the people that she served and then turned back to her walk.

But as she turned, a large, man-shaped shadow rose up before her and out of shock she called out and stumbled back.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It had been a relatively normal Day Out With Grandma Alice. And by that... we mean he had been spelunking the underworld with his paternal grandmother, who didn't look that much older than he was, thanks to all the dimension hopping she'd done in search of her husband, who'd long ago been sucked into a portal to... some Other Place.

Alice Price (nee Healy) showed up every few years, asked for some more frag grenades, and when the stars aligned right, took a family member or two down with her into various underworlds for educational and explorational purposes. This time, it had been Alex's turn.

Except there'd been some sort of quake that sent him sprawling down the wrong cavern, separating him and his grandmother, and forcing him to move in search of an exit, lest there be some build up of gasses or hungry border imps on his trail.

He lifted himself up out of a tunnel into some fresh night air, which was a relief, since the stench of sulfur was soaked into his clothes already. "It's alright, it's alright, I'm- not going to hurt you if the feeling's mutual," he called out to the startled-sounding female voice.

Bitterblue scrambled back to her feet while keeping the odd form of the man in front of her.

He had spoken but his accent was so very strange, unlike anything in the seven kingdoms, unlike the Dellians and the Pikkians to the east across the mountains. That made Bitterblue nervous, despite the man's reassurances.

"Who are you?" she demanded. Her voice was clipped, but she'd had far too many attacks on her person this last autumn and winter to make her simply believe this man meant her no harm on his word alone. It wasn't personal, just safety.

"Why are you jumping out at me?" Her guards were coming up quickly to see what the commotion was - two, she only had two with her close by.

That was an accent Alex had never heard before. Add in the clothing, and the fact that he was running around caves with known space-time rifts with his dimension-hopping grandmother before this, and he was pretty sure he could at least cross the Covenant of St. George out of the Long List of Shit That's Probably About To Kill Me.

"My name is Alexander Price. I wasn't jumping out at you. I was crawling out of this cave here, where the air was getting... well, let's just say unpleasantly stale."

He kept his hands up, away from his (numerous) weapons, in what he was hoping would apply as a truly universal "I mean no harm" position and wouldn't translate into some horrible insult in this world. Grandma had only given him so much advice on stumbling into alternate worlds with sapient beings, and almost none with apparent human inhabitants.

The guards arrived by now and moved to detain the man. They waited for her command to do more. Bitterblue did not stop them from taking hold of him, but would not issue further instruction in favor of or against the man until she was sure of his intentions.

“Did he hurt you, Lady Queen?” one of the guards, Mev, asked.

“No,” Bitterblue answered. “He only startled me,” in that she was honest, but, of course, still skeptical, “and I stumbled.” But really, couldn't she have stayed steady on her feet- Katsa would have a lecture prepared for her if she ever heard.

She did test the fingers of her left arm, flexing them to see if any movement caused pangs there. She'd broken it almost a half a year ago and it would be a shame if she had to put it in a cast again. For tripping.

She focused back on the man who had come from inside the mountain.

“Why were you in the caves? Are you Dellian or Pikkian?” Perhaps there were different dialects of speech in the Dells or Pikkia, like the Monseans living down south in Monport who sounded slightly different from those who lived up in Bitterblue City.

Alex surrendered, though he wasn't going to let himself be entirely disarmed anytime soon. He was mostly counting on the guards not recognizing firearms as weapons, for the most part, and taking the fact that he wasn't fighting them as cause not to search him too thoroughly. Because of course he would have to run in to the damn Queen of whatever land he'd just stumbled into!

He was also getting a little lost in her line of questioning. Unfamiliar names, places. "Uhm. I'm from Portland," he let slip out, and immediately regretted it. Yeah. Definitely dealing with inter-dimensional travel here, that wasn't going to help.

He sighed. And his pack gave out a high pitched cheer.

"...Yeah, that's another thing I'm going to have to explain."

So far the man seemed cooperative, which eased some of Bitterblue’s fears, though not all. It would be foolish to drop all caution just yet.

Oh, she thought, it would be so much easier if Po – her cousin, Skye’s younger brother – were here. Po, who could tell if people were lying or not. Not for the first time Bitterblue thought she would dearly love to have a Grace.

However, she was Graceless, and it was probably for the best for her country to have a Graceless ruler after what her father – the man Graced with being able to make people believe his lies and to do whatever he told them to – did to it.

What country was Portland? Bitterblue had been about to ask when the noise from the man’s travel pack startled her back to wariness.

“What, sir, is the matter with your pack?” Her guards tensed at the man’s sides, preparing for an attack.