ＯＦ ＲＩＶＩＡ

(from this fantastic short)

Alan Lee ‘Peredur son of Efrawg’

from ‘The Mabinogion’, Harper Collins

Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time  (via wordsnquotes)

@little—games

Land of Oz by Jeff Marsh

     “ I never thought we would find ourselves here again. ” The words are spoken with a brusque and icy air that brushes off her discomfort like an errant fly. A place like Aedd Gynvael was hardly noteworthy to most, a town on the edge of greater things that only those who live there and historians found interest in. But for herself it was a place filled to bursting with bitterness, regret, and memories she has spends much of the time ignoring. A dismissive hand throws back a few curls, pushing them off of her shoulders as if the light and silk tresses were constraining her, choking her, much how it felt the very air pressed in upon her - full of questions she would rather not give answers to. Her horse steps forward two paces before she stops it, her fingers gripping tight to the reigns as she looks over to Geralt, her horse turned to subtly block his path. “ Much as I may appreciate the romanticism of revisiting places that hold past quarrels I think I would much prefer to press on, Geralt. ”

“ Surely you agree? ” The tone did not give much room to argue, but the wind howling behind her spoke otherwise, enough to nearly down out her words - and a bitter chill followed it. “ If we move swiftly we might find lodging in the next town over before nightfall - ”

     “Think if we avoided every place we’ve every fought in, we’d end up in Ofier.” His flat tone made it nearly impossible to tell if he was joking or being sincere, but he was showing just as many subtle tells of his own unease as she was - a rigidness to his shoulders that he normally lacked, an uncanny dearth of blinking. True as that might be, most places hadn’t born witness to a quarrel nearly as devastating as this one, and he was no more eager than she to revisit it. He’d been able to put the topic of many of their disagreements behind him with time, mark them for the petty things many had ultimately been, but the...incident with Istredd had stuck in his mind like a burr and buried itself there, never managed to shake itself free.

     Maybe if he was smarter, or less proud, or both, he would have told her outright years ago that he was sorry - for making her choose, for making her give up the security and reassurance of an ideal lifemate in an attempt to balm his own insecurity, when he himself had had no right at all to be angry at her for being unable to put all her metaphorical eggs in a single basket. He would have said I forced your hand because I was sure you’d choose him, that you’d choose the better option, and I wanted to have done with it. But he never had. This, like so many of their past hurts, still lay unresolved.

     “Fishing village two hours up the road, if you really want. Ealdorman won’t let me enter - his son was a lycanthrope, ended up having to kill him - but I’ll camp out.” He wasn’t crazy about the idea - he could taste rain coming - but she was asking in a way that made it clear she wasn’t really asking, and it wasn’t as if he didn’t agree with her.

yennefer-fan:

yocalio:

Anne Sexton, A Self-Portrait In Letters  (via wnq-writers)

Geralt of Rivia - Witcher fan art by Murat Gül