Video - Seelie/Unseelie (Post dated to after the feast)

[curser]

[Have a curiously peering fairy, Drabwurld. It's a close up of one oddly colored green eye before it's drawn away and the rest of the face comes into focus, along with the horns and large wings as a backdrop.]

Is this some form of scrying stone? How curious. And I'm to talk into this?

[She turns to look at a pixie, one who's hovering near her head and giving her directions on how to use the locket.]

And one can address everyone this way? Marvelous.

[The pixie tells her that it's on and that currently everyone can see her and she eyes the locket again, wondering at how this particular bit of magic works.]

Greetings. To those that do not know me, my name is Maleficent. I'm curious to see if a girl has wound up here as well. Golden hair, blue eyes, and quite likely charming those around her. Her name is Aurora and if anyone has seen her, I'd very much appreciate being informed of this.

[She looks to be about to turn the locket off, but there's a small twitch of her lips as she begins talking again.]

I suppose I'd also like to be informed if anyone finds a raven who is not a raven. He's incredibly cheeky, but he's also mine.

[And that would be the end of her speech. No need for pleases and thank yous. Someone's clearly used to being obeyed.]

Comments

[curser]

It's likely for the best. He'd more than not attempt to talk your ear off.

[Did someone miss her birdy? Someone missed her birdy.]

[baseborne]

[Jon laughs, though it's a quick little dry thing that comes and goes faster than a fart on the wind. Wouldn't you know it, but he sorta misses Lord Mormont's insufferable bird too.]

That seems a likely habit of a raven. [Blame Sam for teaching all the ones at Castle Black to say his bloody name.] I am Jon Snow, my lady. If I see your-- friend, I'll send word. Though I admit I'm far afield of Caer Glaem at the moment.

[curser]

Well met, Jon Snow. Consider me grateful if you do happen to find him and send him my way, or at least inform me of the wretch's condition.

[Truly, if Diaval was stuck as a man, Maleficent worried more for him than if he was his true self. Diaval's familiarity with his human form was always around Maleficent or near the Moors. She'd no idea what the fool would do on his own in the wilds of a strange land.

Foolish bird.]

How far from this place are you? I'm still uncertain of the scope of this land, for it is far larger than I'd expected.

[She could fly, Jon. That meant she could get to the Unseelie castle in a day. Fly Air Maleficent for all your travel needs.]

[baseborne]

It was some weeks by boat, a dwarven kingdom to the west of the fairies' territories. I don't know from experience, but the whole of the land is large enough. It would take some months to go from the north of it to the south of it even ahorse, I would guess.

[Though he has no idea as for the wings. He'd stared at them long enough before thinking to reply, but asking about them (and her horns) only seems as though it would be rude. A man doesn't just as a lady the nature of her limbs, no matter how otherworldly they might seem.]

I-- my lord father sought out many maps when he was here, I could show them to you if you'd like a better idea than that.

[curser]

Would you?

[Maps of this land might come in handy, as well as show her a bit more of this place than what she could see by air. It was one thing to fly overhead, but it was another to see what the humans (or fae) had to write about such places. If the place he mentioned was west of where she currently was, she might have seen it in her flight, though it wasn't likely. She hadn't strayed too far on the chance that her charges were near.]

That might be very helpful, Jon Snow.

[She even graced him with a pleased smile.]

[baseborne]

[Oh, but that's just unfair. There's something that puts Jon in mind of Melisandre in that smile, in her blood red lips and strange bright eyes, but Maleficent doesn't give him the same sense of absolute unease that he gets around the priestess. He's still suspicious there's some power in her, though. After all, what manner of creature looks as she does, with those horns and those wings? Jon does not know (he knows nothing) but she's certainly the comeliest creature he's ever laid eyes on.]

It will take me a moment-- [And it does, several moments, though when the video comes back on it's focused on a wide table blanketed in an impressively detailed illustration of the land. It has been poured over, that much is plain - candles melted nearly down to the holders, pools of wax on the well-worn corners of the page. There is a great number of little markers laid down all over some mountains near the word Cothromach.] Until I return to the castle with these, I'm afraid this is the best I can do. [But it's a nice and clear (if slightly unsteady) shot of the map!]

[curser]

[She had no problem waiting, taking the time to look around the rooms she'd been given and fussing out the window until she managed to call a tree nearby to grow a little closer... a little closer... just a littl-- yes, right in the window, just like that. The bed was likely quite comfortable, but she preferred to have a nest of sorts. It was easier on her wings.

She'd set the locket up on a dresser so that she'd see when he came back, so Jon might have a bit of a view of her coaxing the branches into the right position, fairies draping bits of this and that over it to make it 'pretty'. Silly fairies. It was plenty pretty the way it was.

Hearing him come back, she moves over to the locket, peering at it to see the maps he showed her.]

Ah, yes, I see now. Well, it certainly is well read. And would you say it's accurate? Having traveled that way...

[baseborne]

It seems so to me, my lady. We went by boat for this journey- [He draws a finger around the coastline that they sailed by, to demonstrate.] But it is not the only time I've ventured far afield of Caer Glaem. The maps seem mostly in order, to my reckoning.

[But now that he's back, he looks at the tree, and the way it creeps along like living fingers through the air where she wills it. That, at least, brings him to a full stop.] That tree-- [It wasn't there in her window a moment ago, he's almost completely sure. He has an eye for the details, and he'd been making a point not to stare at her in the feed too directly as well. She is so very, very comely, and he'd been trying hard not to notice it.]

[curser]

Are they? Well, that's good to hear. I don't suppose you can bring them with you if you plan to return, can you?

[Or, perhaps, she could find a way to make her way to where he was, if it wasn't entirely too far. Though, she wouldn't mind a bit of exercise and a flight sounded lovely.

The mention of her tree, however, has her smiling at him wickedly, one brow arching as she urged him to continue that thought. Humans were so very strange around acts of magic. It was amusing.]

Yes? What about it?

[baseborne]

[Oh, humans are the strange ones? Jon rubs the bridge of his nose between two fingers, like that might make things make sense in less a way that causes him to sound like a fool... but, well. He goes for it anyway:] It was not there, only a moment ago, I swear it.

[curser]

[Humans were oddballs and you know it, Jon.]

Well, no, of course not. Most trees don't have occasion to creep into castles unless invited. Most have the sense to grow far enough away from human dwellings that they'll not be cut down.

[Like that explained everything.]

[baseborne]

[Jon has to pause for a moment. Why are they talking of trees as thought they can think?] Well, it's a bit of a security risk, isn't it? If anyone can climb a nice knobbly tree right into your bedroom window. That's asking to have your throat slit in the night. [Never mind that most smallfolk live in houses with windows near enough to the ground that any man could just climb in. When Jon thinks of sleeping, he thinks of doing it in castles, as he always has. Except all those months with the Wildlings...]

[curser]

Are you concerned that someone might creep into my room and slit my throat? Dear boy, that's somewhat sweet.

[And kind of hilarious. As long as Maleficent didn't drink any drugged drinks, she would be fine. She had Diaval to keep watch and there were any number of pixies and fairies flitting about her rooms. Not to mention her ties to nature itself. If someone were foolish enough to try to scale the tree to harm her, it would be easy to merely turn them into a caterpillar. Not much harm can be done by a caterpillar, now can it?]

[baseborne]

[Oh... well, that's perhaps not the nicest thing he's ever implied about somebody. Jon flushes, and tries much too late to smooth it over:] My lady, I did not mean-- [To put his foot in his mouth? Well.] I'm sure no man would have reason to do such a thing.

[curser]

You'd be wrong, but that man is dead, so it's of no mind now.

[She shrugs her wings, as though to remind herself they're still there and to lose the weight of the thought of Stefan from herself.]

I take no insult in the truth.

[She'd had Diaval as a companion for almost twenty years, after all. She'd heard the truth whether she'd wanted to or not.]