RP The Silver Cycle: The Bear of Kells and the Red Witch of the Wood

[Deleted member 94]

 

[Phoenix]

Five days prior in Dealg Dubh, Sabrina Walsh had been summoned to King Walsh’s study. The messenger who had been sent to retrieve her had refused to leave her doorway without her in tow. She had waited two days, and still, he hadn’t left, instead sleeping outside by her garden. Finally, three days after the summons had been issued, she had accompanied the messenger back to the keep. She had strode in, her many-layered dress just barely brushing the floor as she walked, and had gone straight to the king’s study.

It was there her brother had spoken to her directly for the first time in three years.

“I am begging you to go, my darling. I have no one else to send. Your brother is off at the High King’s court, and I cannot go myself.” He had looked at her with such tired eyes, and then, as if like clockwork, just as the sun had been rising, the bagpipes sounded in the distance. Ethan had hidden his face in her hands and groaned in exhaustion. “You must convince him to stop.”

That had, of course, all been fine. Sabrina was known to be a neutral party, regardless of her connection to Dealg Dubh and her older brother, its king. So she had agreed, and he had written her a letter to deliver to the king of Kells, King Ó Comhgaill. She had happily accepted the letter and late that day, she had set off with a small escort to go see the king of Kells.

That was, until the end of the first day of traveling, when she noticed that the bags on the horses were far too full for such a trip. Until she had noticed that he had sent with her a handmaiden. That was when her suspicions had grown, and she had opened the letter to King Ó Comhgaill.

King Ó Comhgaill,
This letter is to inform you of my request to have my younger sister, Sabrina Walsh, the Red Witch, stay at your keep for the next four seasons. I have sent her to accompany it, and I hope that you will allow her to stay. I send her as a diplomat between our two fiefdoms, that she might make our relations more welcoming and continue to allow peace to prosper between us. It is with that that I wish you good health, prosperity, and peace.
King Walsh​

This was why she was furious as she strode into the keep at Kells, her escorts close behind her. She had been put in a lovely dress of green with gold braiding, her wild red curls tamed into two long braids, and she was anything but thrilled about the plain circlet on her head.

Her brother had deceived her. Betrayed her, even, and her trust. She wasn’t being sent to resolve a simple issue of Ethan’s daytime rituals being disturbed.

She was being sent off to hopefully be married.

So it was with that in mind that she stormed into the middle of the keep and declared, “I am here to see King Ó Comhgaill! Tell me where the bloody hell I can find him.”

 

[Deleted member 94]

Conchobhar could hear the woman's voice echoing up through his keep and he couldn't help the smile that grew on his face, he walked casually down from the ramparts, letting her rage and seethe at his men-at-arms and any poor servant who happened to walk by. He was laughing by the time he came out into the courtyard, he was no less entertained when he saw that the lady was not only fiery but a great beauty as well. He gave her an indulgence look over.

"A woman now alone comes knocking and demands to see a conqueror-king," Conchobhar laughed and he decended the last bit of stairs to stand over Sabrina with his hands on his hips, beaming joyfully at her. "You have found him, I am Conchobhar! Son of Fionn! of Clan Ó Comhgaill! Conchobhar the Red! King and Conqueror of Kells! I, who felled the High King Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill himself, this is who you have come knocking to..." Conchobhar then bowed low and took gently one of Sabrina's hands and kissed it. "I am also your humble host, to what pleasure do I receive the blessing of your company?"