life is hard but UPDATE

[dragonlady7]

writing, the witcher

via https://ift.tt/gVbiMdX

I have done it, I have scraped this don’t-wanna scene into a new fic, and in the three hours it spent me to agonizingly come up with a title this morning, i realized one of the underlying themes, so go me.

Chapter one is up now, of Lion, Sable, Passant, https://archiveofourown.org/works/36878308 on AO3.

The timeline doesn’t connect in this chapter, which is sort of awkwardly long, but like, it will, next chapter, believe me.

For some reason this kicked my ass so if you ever wanted to be nice to me now is the time. I don’t know, this was hard. It just was.

Anyway the title is because actually akilah12902 https://tmblr.co/mmG9gp3S698rFJImW-pcxgg came up with this, one of the old heraldic crests for Temeria features a black lion, passant, and they adopted that as belonging personally to Foltest’s family, and because I’m concurrently working on another co-written fic with them in the unspooling series of how Roche got to be like this, that’s been much in mind, so. There it is. (There exists some beautiful art they commissioned incorporating the tattoo Roche got of that crest, but I don’t know where it is to link to it.)

So– a snippet:

Fuck, Roche almost said out loud, as he saw the massive canvas leaned against the wall in one of the receiving rooms. He’d thought it might be this one. Its dustwrappings lay around it in disarray, and the steward was officiously dusting bits of the frame— but there, nearly life-size, sat Foltest, aged about thirty-eight, crowned and smirking on his throne, with several of his military officers standing around him looking stern, and a few carefully-selected exemplary low-ranking soldiers as well, to commemorate… Roche couldn’t recall, exactly. One of the wars. Cidaris, probably. Foltest had insisted on including several low-ranking soldiers to record for posterity the people who had done the fighting. Natalis was there, younger and trimmer than he was now, with a sharper jaw and more hair, and he looked confident but a little sad.

And, behind Foltest, Roche: twenty-two, staring solemnly at the viewer, hands clasped patiently in front of himself, looking sharp and bright-eyed and dangerous. (Your picture was not posted)