Lord Svetlikin and Princess Myrna

Late Spring, Year 761

Glenmore, Glenwood, Svetlikin’s Glade

Princess Myrna

Ciardair was a butt. Sure she’d given him heck about his betrothal but he didn’t have to be such a brat about hers. He was a stag and a proper royal; he was expected to comport himself as such. As a youngling and a doe she couldn’t really be expected to act like a real proper adult princess until she was officially declared betrothed.

Her cousin had said Lord Svetlikin wasn’t going to turn her down at the ceremony. Svetlikin had every reason to turn her down-- he didn’t want a princess and she was probably the worst princess any royal could get stuck with-- but the sliver of possibility that he might not decline was beginning to eat away at her. Surely she wouldn’t really be stuck with him? Surely he wouldn’t let himself get stuck with her?

There was only one way to find out, and that was to ask the pale old lord himself.

It had taken some ferreting to find a guard who not only knew the secluded glade where the stag lived but was willing to take her there. They all seemed to be afraid of either bringing an unbetrothed princess to meet with a Lord unsupervised, or of upsetting said Lord by bringing a princess to him.

In the end her force of will won out over a young guard who couldn’t have been any older than Myrna herself and he took her as far as the entrance of a secluded glade. Myrna hadn’t met Svetlikin face-to-face, but all the rumors said he hated royal visitors. Especially princesses.

It would be rude to step in uninvited, so she stood at the entrance and hollered instead.

“Lord Svetlikin, I’d like a word with you!”

Lord Svetlikin

The rumours had been swelling, and the little Lord knew it. Oh, the few fawnlings he would consider friends would usually pretend not to know the latest gossip, or they would refuse to tell him on the grounds that it was ‘slanderous’, but they knew. And they usually told him, even if it took a little prodding.

The rumours around the betrothal, though, had not taken any prodding for him to be told. The rumour was that this was a punishment both for him and the Princess in question. Which was probably true, but he knew nothing about said Princess because he had no desire to know anything about any Princesses, but apparently she’d done something worth punishing, and that probably meant the whole thing was going to be even more of a disaster than he’d already thought.

The only things he knew about the Princess in question were that she had a ‘dirty coat’ and had six years. Which meant he was nearly four times her age… getting old was terribly depressing, sometimes.

He was musing on the general miseries of aging when he caught the scent of an approaching stranger, and, due to ignoring their approach, he was still musing on the general miseries of aging when he heard her shout.

Lord Svetlikin was it? Well, this certainly wasn’t anyone who wanted to be friends. Irritated, he lifted his head and turned towards the intruder, his ears back and his eyes narrowed. Golden coat, slightly dirty, looked to be about a quarter of his age… oh Gods, it was her, wasn’t it?

“And who might you be, little girl?” he replied, his tail twitching back and forth in irritation. He had no desire at all to meet the fool creature and he was hoping their contact would be limited to the betrothal ceremony - although he supposed he’d have to visit her during rut occasionally.

“Nobody I want to know calls me by Lord, and nobody I want to meet calls me Svetlikin. So why does someone I don’t want to meet, and certainly don’t want to know, want to have a word with me?”

Princess Myrna

Oh, so he wasn’t just a hermit, he was a crabby hermit. Wonderful.

He lashed his tail in agitation and she lashed hers right back. Everything about his stance screamed ‘go away’, and she could only hope he would remain equally eager for her company once they were betrothed. Still, the adversarial nature of his greeting set her on edge.

“I’m the Princess you’re stuck with for the rest of forever, according to the King. What should I call you if not your name?”

She ran through a few alternative monikers in her mind, the most polite of which being ‘old man’, but decided that the conversation was already headed in a steep downhill direction and voicing them would not help the situation.

If the option of behaving like a proper princess while introducing herself to her intended had ever crossed her mind she had already forgotten it. A proper princess, she knew, would have found a more polite way to phrase the question. They also would have demurely averted their eyes rather than stare down an already unhappy Lord, and would never have bellowed for his attention in the first place.

He was old, but not as bony as he could have been. The royal lifestyle had not been unkind to him, even if he eschewed royal society. He was shorter than any of her brothers. In fact, he was as short as her mother. Myrna suspected that by the time she reached the prime of her life she may even surpass his height.

It did not escape her notice that his coat was lighter and his trailing mane longer than her own. He would win a comparison of weights, but not by much. He would, indeed, have made a very fine princess if fate had been less cruel. Of course, if he had been born a princess he would have instead been plagued by the fact that he did not seem to be a complete idiot.

Lord Svetlikin

Despite his irritation at being disturbed, and at being betrothed, and at being disturbed by his betrothed, there was something about this little doe that was.. well, it was entertaining. She didn’t respond as she ought to have - as the Princesses he had known would have. There was no meekness, no cowering away, no apologies. There was just an anger that reflected his own.

Snorting, with a combination of derision and amusement, he considered taking a step towards her before deciding against it. She might have some kind of personality, but she was still a Princess and she was still being forced on him.

“Kin,” he replied, curtly. “You may call me Kin. And what do I call you? You’ll take some kind of nickname I take it.. Buttercup or Honeypumpkin or something colic inducing,” he added, glowering at her. It was bait, testing her, an attempt to see if this aggressive front was just that: a front, until the real idiot Princess creature emerged.

Princess Myrna

Myrna sniffed and her face went blank in her best ‘I am a princess and you are not worthy of my attention’ expression, but she couldn’t stop her ear from flicking in her extreme annoyance at his tone.

“As my betrothed,” she said, mouthing the word carefully as if she might choke on it, “I suppose you are entitled to call me whatever you like. Of course most address me by my name, which is Myrna.”

One moment and another irritated flick of her ear was about the maximum amount of time she could hold on to the facade of even pretending to be polite to this royal twig. Her aloof look melted into a glare.

“On that subject,” she growled, inasmuch as the tiny doe could growl, “I heard a vicious rumour that you might actually go through with this farce. I feel obliged to inform you that I am a princess of low standing, excessive temper, nominal magic and all the mothering instinct of moldy squash. I cannot imagine any eventuality in which your life circumstance would by improved by your possession of me.”

Lord Svetlikin

Oh, so she did have a personality… well, this might be interesting.

The sneer of disdain on his face was gradually morphing into an amused smirk - his ears were still back but his eyes were becoming less narrow and there was the slightest upwards twitch at the corner of his mouth. Slowly, he stepped towards the young Princess thing and looked her up and down, very slowly, and very carefully.

“Well, Honeypumpkin,” he said, his mouth twitching in amusement and his voice loaded sarcasm, “You will discover that in this particular eventuality my life is immeasurably improved by my possession of you, despite your obvious flaws,” he said, this last with a little snort of amusement and a further step towards the golden hind.

“If I do not accept this betrothal” - he spat the word, the first time he had actually said it since being told the news leaving an unpleasant taste in his mouth - “then I will be exiled from the Kingdom. Take a look at me. How long do you think I’d last?” he asked, his eyes once again narrowed and the amusement completely wiped from his expression.

She might be entertaining, at least for this first brief meeting, but that would not overcome the brutally raw injustice of having this creature forced upon him.

Princess Myrna

Myrna’s scowl only deepened. Exile? King Babymaker was smarter than she’d given him credit for. He’d appealed to Svetlikin’s deep-seated instinct for preservation of himself and of his luxurious royal lifestyle.

She looked the stag up and down again, her muzzle still twisted up in displeasure but it seemed his assessment was correct. There wasn’t much more muscle on his frame than she had on hers. His white coat was about as subtle as a calving glacier. Even his mane and tail were longer than hers, more or less guaranteeing that he’d get snagged in any attempt to run for his life.

While she couldn’t blame him for his selfish inclinations to retain what pleasures he had in life, she did still feel a pang of anger towards the old man. Why couldn’t he be a proper stag who could actually defend himself against the threats that existed around Glenmore? What good was the royal strength in magic if he couldn’t grow enough grass to keep himself fed in lean years? She began to reassess her earlier assumption that he was smarter and therefore less useless and brutally boring than most stags she knew.

A rant deriding him for his weakness began to build up in her chest, but she kept her mouth shut and let it die out. What good would it do? He couldn’t change what he was, any more than she could. Yelling at him for it would only increase his distaste for her and decrease any chance she had of coming to some sort of bearable arrangement with him.

After a quiet moment she unpinned her ears and responded calmly, if rather coldly. “I see.”

She stood stock still for a moment more, thinking furiously. The betrothal wouldn’t be called off. She needed a new plan.

Slowly and deliberately she dragged a hoof through the dirt, watching it rather than the stag as she spoke.

“As it seems this betrothal is inevitable, perhaps we could find a way to make it less… uncomfortable. For both of us.”

What did this stag want? Well, he lived alone in a hard to reach glade a long way from the rest of the royals. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him at an official function. He famously avoided the company of princesses. Therein lay the key.

“I just want to be left alone. I get the feeling you do as well. As your betrothed I am required to attend to you at rut and at any official ceremonies you choose to attend, but aside from those occasions I don’t see why it should be necessary to inflict my presence upon you.”

She was staring intently at him now, trying to gauge how he’d react to such a proposition. Many stags would take insult at a princess, essentially their own property, trying to bargain with them but she got the feeling Kin was rather unlike the other royal stags. Of course, that also made it rather more difficult to judge how he’d respond.

Lord Svetlikin

As he glared at her, she glared back. There was nearly equal fury in each one of them, it seemed - which was quite frankly bizarre. For some unknowable reason Royal society felt that Princesses needed to be controlled and protected, despite their typical stupidity. She would be mated off, even if he refused her. The foolish girl must have realised that, surely? If not she was just as stupid as the rest of them.

All that considered though, her proposal wasn’t entirely distasteful. As this creature probably well knew, he hadn’t attended an official ceremony for nearly ten years and he wouldn’t be caught dead hanging around the Great Oak. Rut would be more painful; they would be expected to spend most of the season together with she attending to his needs and he protecting her from ‘undesirables’. Beyond that, there was the horrific question of actually mating with a Princess, and the prospect of producing more Princesses as a result. But this at least a little preferable to exile, he supposed.

With a snort, he gave a curt nod.

“Very well. Rut and formal occasions,” he replied. “But try not to do anything stupid like running off to Blackwood or trying to swim to Windborne. They’d probably exile me for that as well.”