Marianne bit her tongue for the fourth time since the meeting started. What a nerve did these people have! Not only were they ignoring her suggestions, but they were laughing at her with their eyes each time she spoke about peace with the Dark Forest.
It was always like this since she was old enough to start learning for when she'd take the throne. The Council was a bunch of old fairy men , too used to his father's reign since her mother died, too sure about their seats because of the high-status families. Not everyone was as disgusting as the two that snickered behind her back when they thought she wasn't listening, but the rest just followed them out of fear.
She couldn't wait to be Queen and strip these men of their positions.
"But, princess," one of the more reasonable ones were saying after her brief speech about opening new dialogue routes with the goblins, "they are savages! We can't risk our peace for such a silly-!"
"Watch it," Dagda said from his seat at her left side. The council man gulped. Marianne smiled gratefully to her dad.
"Have you ever been to the Forest, Liam?" she asked softly. Because I have , she bit the words before they came from her mouth. "Have you given them the chance to, I don't know, talk ?"
The fairy was speechless. The princess had never talked back like this, at least not in front of her father or in an official meeting. It was like since what happened with Roland (everyone knew about it in the whole kingdom by then) she decided to be another different person. This was not the princess they were used to.
Marianne took the silence as a signal to continue talking.
"You see, this is why making a misinformed decision is a bad idea; we don't know the first thing about goblins and their customs."
"But the archives-!" said another man.
"Old texts from a long time ago, Sheiran," she interrupted, already disgusted by the man's voice. He was one of the two that always attacked her attempts at diplomacy, "texts that can help us little to understand them as they are right now . If we expect actual peace we need to know the actual status of their people."
"They are savages," Liam said, "how can we even expect to form peace with a bunch of uneducated goblins ?"
Marianne knew that these people were just biased. That they never thought about things like she did. That they have never stepped inside the Dark Forest in their lives. But her blood still boiled at the fairy's words.
"How about this," Marianne sighed, venturing a look at her father, who nodded, "we try talking to them and if they don't seem very open to the idea, I forget about all of this and won't bother you with it anymore."
The council blinked in surprise. She seemed very confident that it would work between fairies and goblins, so much that it almost convinced a few of them.
"Very well," Sheiran agreed and everyone nodded. He was the oldest and people followed him without saying much.
Marianne sighed, knowing that this wasn't over by far. But she would talk to Bog about this and form a plan to make it work. She had been wanting peace between their worlds all of her life and maybe she should use their friendship to cheat all of this awkward politics.
Also, the idea of grumpy Bog walking in her sunny Fields was hilarious enough to make it worth the trouble.