The Lord of Darken Fel

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

His eyes were like the sea and like the sky, which is to say they changed colour with his mood and were always cold.

Rosie would remember that, always.

When he was angry, they could become as grey as the winter wind. He was never hasty with his anger. Rather he grew quiet and cruel. He had a hound once, which angered him. Rosie never knew what the hound had done to anger him, but she remembered its pitiful whimpering when her Lord flayed it. She remembered his eyes which showed no softness and struck her cold when they flickered up towards her.

When he was bright and happy, and his plans went well, his eyes would become a glorious blue, as bright as a peacock's feather. His step would become as light as the wind and he would move rather like he was dancing.

When he was contemplative, and his mind turned to cunning things, his eyes took on that odd blue-grey hue that is normally seen in Damascus steel. He was as sharp as a blade, and his mind took great delight in cutting apart the world, until he could reforge it as he liked.

Yet, for all this, there were the quiet days, when the Lord was at peace, and his eyes softened to a twilight blue. He would come and sit at the prow of his ship, and perch with his foot resting gently on Rosie's head, where she lay as his figurehead. He would croon melodies at her, and sometimes he would talk.

"I shall show you the stars, my beautiful beautiful creature", he said, and smiled. "And we will go mining, and rip them from the sky. I'll make my crown from Orion's Belt, and set a great ruby made out of my Lady's frozen heart in the centre."

He would sometimes lean down and caress Rosie's cheek.

"Why did I waste all those sapphires on your eyes?" he said once. "I can't remember..."

But he didn't rip them out, as Rosie feared he would do, and so she took that for a sign that he liked her eyes where they were. She was, she knew, a little ridiculously ornate for a ship's figurehead, most of which were just painted wood. She was bronze and enamel, and beautiful. The whole ship was gloriously ornate, for it was the flagship of the Lord of Darken Fel.

The Lord of Darken Fel loved his ship. It was what defined him. He was his Lady's arm, to go where she could not. It was what made him feared in the cold reaches of the sky-sea, and what made him admired amidst the ice castles of the Northern Reaches. He was constantly adding to it. In the time Rosie sailed with him, he added the four winds (north, south, east and west), which he kept locked in a chest. He had stolen them from the carved up body of a rival of his. They sometimes sang to Rosie too - melancholy little songs of the homes they missed and the life they once knew. Once the East Wind tried to escape through the Hedge, but it ran towards the South, and was hunted down by the jeweled ship and punished. After that, it's song was even more melancholy and even Rosie (who's heart had been removed years ago, and replaced with a hidden compartment where her Lord could hold his secrets) felt a mild sense of regret that something should be that unhappy.

Yet it had to be unhappy. That was the way the Lord of Darken Fel wished it and so it had to be.

He was the Lord of Darken Fel. He was fair. He was handsome, and he was as entrancing as the sea, and like the sea he was cold and he was cruel. But he was handsome and he was all that Rosie really knew. Everything else had been lost long ago.