If I were Tamora Pierce, the book on Maura of Dunlath, coming out in 2015, would be out now, as would Mastiff. they're not, so I'm not. If you recognize anything else in here, be it some other author's work or your own, I apologize and assure you that no plagiarism was intended. I beg you to review. And now, if you stick with me this far, go! Read!
Mythical
Evin thinks dragons are mythical creatures that are great fun to dress up as, right up until Kitten lands in front of him squealing.
Passion
"This is an abomination, an outrage, a tragedy, a… a… Its so terrible there isn't a word for it! You have never been to a Player's show?"
"And you've never been to a clambake?"
Picturesque
Evin loves the way the sea looks right up until he's actually in it. Then he decides looks are deceiving.
Miri smiles at him a minute later, soaking wet and ecstatic, and he's back to thinking 'This is the prettiest thing I've ever seen." Then a hand collides with the back of his head.
"You're staring." Buri informs him with a smirk.
Cactus
Evin decides the green, prickly looking plants from the desert would make excellent additions to the King's Own's bedrolls. Miri rolls her eyes and informs him that if they come after him, she will not heal him. He puts one in Miri's bedroll instead.
Reflection
She thinks his outward tallness is a reflection of his inner instinct for hogging the spotlight. When she shares this theory with him, he laughs and takes her to meet his family. She decides that Evin is quiet in comparison, but can't help thinking that she wishes she were a part of the loud, dramatic festivities, instead of just a guest.
Festive
They really did mean to give the Own a festive holiday. Everyone knows that pinecones in the bed and evergreen branches on every surface imaginable, not to mention a bucket of red paint above the door, is really just the way people celebrate Midwinter. Buri doesn't buy it for a minute. She does congratulate them on a job well done, though.
Pristine
He thinks that it's weird how clean her room in the Rider's barracks is. He dismisses it as on of her quirks, though, until he hear she telling Daine about how she keeps her floor clear because a lover of hers once tripped on a boot, and it completely wrecked the mood.
Oh. After that, Evin does his best to leave his stuff on the floor of her room.
Creation
Miri finally finished her masterpiece. She gave it one last look, licked her fingers, and turned around for a second. When she turns back, her glorious creation has been desecrated.
Evin had destroyed her one concession to girliness: He'd swiped some frosting off her cake!
Tapestry
A hand grips his wrist, and yanks hard. He goes tumbling back into a section of the wall that wasn't there a moment before.
"What in Mithros's name is going on?" He asks.
"You're behind a tapestry. You know your latest noble lady? Her fiancé was coming up behind you looking angry." Evin sighed in relief, resigned to the fact that somehow the ladies he courted always were spoken for, before realizing that the space behind the tapestry was a bit small, and Miri was pressed up against him in a not unappealing way…
Mithros save him.
Grandeur
He gets the letter in the middle of breakfast. He reads the beginning, spits out his bacon- all over the annoyed looking leader of Spiderdeath- and turns wildly to Miri. She takes the letter of his hand and reads it. She laughs.
"Don't get delusions of grandeur, Commander Larse."
The Spiderdeath leader's eyes pop. Commander?
Crest
The Queen's Riders are told to design a new crest to put on their shields, their old one is too close to the one the ha Minches suddenly claim belonged to a knight of theirs, generations ago. Evin is on the verge of announcing that the Riders are having a drinking contest, and losers will draw a crest.
Then Miri steps in and puts a crown on a blue background with a horse rearing inside it and a border that is half normal, half distaff. He never loves her more then he does then.
Lavish
Lady Phillipa looks gratified as Evin lavishes her with praise.
He winks at Miri. She scowls. Stupid oblivious best friends!
Historical
When Evin is passing thru the page's wing (read: running away from the Own into the pages wing) he hears two little pages discussing the historical battle for Pirate's Swoop, and Evin himself! Apparently he was a hero!
He struts around for twenty minutes. Then Buri informs him that since he is now Commander, she no longer has to attend balls. He does.
Thirty years later, Evin Larse is remembered for his hatred of balls.
Mistletoe
Miri will kill the entire Third Company. Painfully. They strung up mistletoe everywhere, and Evin kissed her, and now she's aching for him to do it again!
She denies all involvement in the unfortunate chain of events that ended up staining the Own's white shirts pink. If she had been involved, though, she would have told the Own that they made it easy: they were such slobs the laundresses and maids hated them.
Longevity
Miri knows that it's in her family to have a long life. She just can't pinpoint when she decided that if she's to have a long life, then Evin's to have a longer one, although she thinks it starts around the time her kissed her under the mistletoe.
Romantic
Evin tries to be romantic with every girl but her. She thinks he would be better off being normal, like he is with her. She's in love with him, isn't she?
Visionary
None of the Riders are visionaries. It was knocked out of them a week into training. However, Evin still manages to spend an inordinate amount of time daydreaming about kissing Miri, touching Miri, bedding Miri… then he turns his head to the right and sees her talking to some knight. He almost wishes he couldn't manage daydreams either. It makes facing reality so much harder.
Celestial
She looks up at the stars a lot, when they're sleeping out at night. She wonders if the grand, romantic stories she tells her nieces about the stars could really be true. Then she looks over at Evin, who looks deceptively cute when asleep, and decides that her real life story isn't romantic, and so her star stories probably aren't real either.
Bravado
When the Own comes after Evin, he squeaks and runs. When they come at Miri- well, actually, they don't, not after what happened the first time.
She has extreme bravado, but not a bit of it is false.
Campfire
She looks beautiful in the firelight, singing a rude song and sipping cider. He slips an arm around her.
Sarge nudges Onua. "That'll be a match someday."
"They aren't trainees anymore, and haven't been for years. No matchmaking, understand?"
Cocktail
When she tells the trainees about the time he kissed a goat, he punishes her by making her go to a cocktail party with him to fend off stuffy noblemen who want to bother him about the Rider's progressive ways. The third conservative she has to dance with, and she's ready to kill him.
The fourth conservative gets a bit too handsy. She's too busy killing him to kill Evin.
Chocolate
Evin sends her chocolate to make up for making her go. She eats it, but glares at him for a week anyways.
Cloud
Evin thinks the cloud looks like a horse wearing a ball gown. Miri thinks it looks like a cloud. They agree that the shade it provides is wonderful.
Cinnamon
Evin doesn't believe that the fisher folk can work magic through their spices until everything he eats tastes like fish. When he admits defeat, Miri informs him that it really wasn't magic, it was fish oil in his food. He starts wrestling with her immediately to reclaim his stolen honor.
Happy
The Rider trainees learn quickly. When Group Leader Miri is happy, Commander Evin is happy. When she's not, he's not. When he's not happy, some poor soul will end up scrubbing the mess hall floor with a toothbrush.
Suddenly Miri is on the receiving end of numerous compliments and acts of kindness for no apparent reason.
Sad
"Onua's in Galla and we need more ponies, Sarge says that this year's trainees are so awful he's considering quitting, we need twice as many arrows as we can afford with the money those skinflints in the treasury gave us-"
"And you being sad won't change any of that. You can get some ponies from Wyldon of Cavall for reasonable prices, tell Sarge that if the trainees are worse then we were, then you'll kiss a goat again, and have the Queens Arrows go shoot down some birds and make the recovering groups fletch arrows for a bit each day."
"Miri, I love you."
"Do you? Do you really?"
And who's the sad one now?
Lick
Evin watches Miri lick her fingers, moaning in ecstasy.
"You couldn't have shared that meat pasty?"
Hurt
"Miri?"
"I don't want to talk to you."
"Too bad. I'm sorry."
"For kissing me? I bet you are. Don't worry about me. Go back to your latest court lady. I'll forget all about it. Don't worry."
Miri's voice is bitter, but Evin obeys it and walks away.
Mountain
Evin can't manage to apologize to Miri before he has to go to a mountain district to oversee the construction of new defenses from bandits. He wishes he could bring her with him; some days, she's better at his job then he is.
Rain
Miri always goes out and dances in the rain, and damned if she's going to let heartbreak stop her. She grabs her cloak and runs out the door to an empty field, where she starts dancing, alone, with tears running down her face.
She looks crazy, and her underlings are pretty much certain she'll be sick afterwards.
She's smiling, though, for the first time in months, so no one has the heart to tell her to come inside.
.
Strange
Its strange, how Evin will find himself turning to point something out to Miri, or talking to Miri, or saving something in his memory to tell Miri. She isn't there, he reminds himself, at every meal, every campfire, every race, and every night before he goes to sleep
Shampoo
She uses non-scented shampoo, because she will keep her hair long but won't fuss over it, but somehow always smells like lilies. When Evin rides through a field of lilies, he almost breaks down and sobs. But he has trainees and subordinates with him, so he restrains himself.
Giggle
All Miri's fellow female rides do is giggle! All the time, over everything!
She wants Evin back, dammit! Even if seeing him with other girls hurt her, it was better then this confounded giggling!
Band
On his first day back in Corus, he hears a band playing outside, and sees a group of women dancing. Miri is among them, dancing more gracefully in loose breeches then she ever did in a dress, and looking positively wild.
Later, he hears that it is a ritual that followers of the Goddess partake in, to help them fall out of love.
Coma
Evin hears Miri crying in the stable a week later. He goes to ask her what's wrong, and she tells him that her brother was hit in the head with a boom and went into a coma. He'll never wake up. He hugs her, and she cries into his chest for a minute, until she remembers that she hates him. She takes off running.
Warmth
She makes for the warmth of the kitchens. A wise cook, seeing her tears and the disarray of her clothes and hay in her hair, won't let the maids chase her off. She sits in a corner and helps chop vegetables for a stew. The warmth isn't just physical; despite the shouting and complaining and arguing over who has to serve such and such stuffy lord and his guests, every single one of these women would die for each other.
Some Riders wouldn't do that.
Shadows
She spends the next dozen command meetings lurking in the shadows, avoiding Evin. He knows she is, but he decides not to do anything about it. He begins to realize this is a bad decision right about when Daine locks them in a tack room with Buri's help and informs them that they will just have to work together to escape. And she's had Numair magic the room so that there is only one way to escape, and they'll never guess it.
Sunset
They're still in the room at sunset. They won't talk to each other.
Driven
Around an hour before midnight, Miri begins pacing like a possessed woman, then frantically looking for exits. She's driven by a long ago incident where she was locked in the hold with a bunch of rats for hours, but Evin thinks that she wants to get away from him.
Ancient
The words Evin uses are as old as the hills. Boys who screwed up have been using them forever.
"I'm sorry, Miri. I love you. Please forgive me?"
She doesn't answer, but he hears her sobbing.
Window
She starts seeing the world as if through a window. Evin apologized, said he loved her. She laughs bitterly, then sobs, detached from the scene, as he walks over and pats her back, telling her not to cry.
Angel
She looks like an angel to him, ling in his arms, with tearstains down her face. He tells a joke to make her laugh, and then kisses her gently. She responds. The door swings open behind them, but they certainly don't notice.
Roses
She tells him that if he ever buys her roses, she'll kill him
He buys them.
She kisses him.
Innocence
Evin can give innocent looks with the best of them. Miri is better off not getting into trouble in the first place. Neither of them manages to look innocent emerging from Evin's tent with clothes rumpled, and hair a mess.
Imagination
Miri can imagine introducing Evin to her grandmother, but her grandmother despises Players. Still, it is something to giggle about… Evin would look hilarious with an old lady's purse print across his cheek.
Kingdom
They've traveled most of the kingdom with the riders, but somehow, doing it together is better. But they still have tagalongs in the form of Miri's group, Group Askew.
And Group Askew has its name for a reason; Somehow, Layla shot a hole in Yoren's tent, and Peder managed to step on a griffin-fletched arrow. Noreen can't read maps, and Norman's shots always go backwards, and yet bring down game anyways.
But Stone Mountain still has beautiful hills, and Goldenlake is as wonderful as always. No amount of minor catastrophes can change that.
Options
Miri can quit so they can get married, they both can quit and then get married, or they can both stay here and they'll be careful with pregnancy charms. None of the options sound great.
Nurturing
It takes seeing Miri with his nephew, singing softly and rocking him, for Evin to realize what an amazing nurturing mother Miri could be. Someday, maybe.
Chasm
There is a huge chasm separating what they want and what is. They try accepting things that are, but Miri wants work and children. Finally, Evin talks to Buri, who talks to Thayet about light duty for pregnant Riders, instead of discharge.
It goes through. The chasm gets smaller and smaller and disappears.
End
At the end of every day, Miri looks around, and thinks about her life. She has a wonderful job, great friends, and an amazing husband. She toys with her pregnancy charm, until one night, she works up the courage to take it off. It is the end of her career as an active Rider for at least three years, but it is the beginning of something even better.