It was dawn, and the scene was a steaming pile of unidentifiable carrion. A feast for scavengers. The murder of crows flowed about the carrion, gorging themselves, ripping free chunks of fur and skin and drilling their beaks into the putrescent flesh. Their wings were all extended, out and backwards, to allow more of them to fit at the feast, wings which occasionally twitched and flapped as they jostled for position.
Two crows tumbled free of the pile, disparate creatures linked by a string of sinew running from beak to beak. They regained their feet and tugged at the sinew, back and forth, beady black eyes bulging. They reached a sort of symmetry, two pairs of wings outstretched, stiff, mirroring each other, spindly black feet scrabbling backwards in the dirt in unison, two sleek, elegant heads connected by a line of taught, shining white sinew. But none of the other crows took notice. Suddenly the sinew snapped, and as if a shot had gone out the whole murder of crows leaped up, feathers and dust flying, cries of confusion and alarm from a dozen black, bloodstained beaks. We've lost so much, they said, and gained, have we truly gained so little?
~~*
The cart went over a bump, knocking the Lady Elrinade's head against the rail. She woke up, groaning softly and reaching under the wide brim of her hat to rub the tips of her fingers over her face.
"Yeh were mutterin' in yer sleep," the driver said. "Havin' a dream?" Elrinade leaned up into a sitting position, yellow hay flowing off her black traveling cloak and outfit of deep forest greens. The driver looked little more than a straw hat at the fore of the cart, sticking over the mound of hay.
"They say," he said, "that dreams'll come true, but only if yeh tell someone about 'em." Elrinade pulled her pack out of the drift of hay it'd jostled itself under during the course of the trip.
"If that's true, sir," she said with a smile, "then I dreamed you'll have a fine harvest this year."
"We're gettin' to the town, yeh can see it nah."
Elrinade crawled her way to the front of the haycart. Rolling rows of farmland and grazing fields, etched about with dust paths and patches of trees around watering holes, cottages, and the edges of fields. All the roads eventually converged on a town, downhill a mile or so, through which a river ran. A tall stone block of a castle stood next to the town, and tall poplars rose from a garden somewhere in the middle. Far off in the distance, the fields disappeared as the trees grew thicker, before hazy white mountains erupted out of the trackless forest.
"The pastoral ideal, free of the machine." Elrinade said to herself.
"Place called Bravestone." the driver replied. "Good town. Good people."
-----
Conflict between the ruling feudal lord in the castle and the merchant family in the house next to the poplar garden. They've been feuding, and want to marry their youngest children to resolve the dispute. The two children genuinely like each other, but don't want to get married if they're being forced to for political reasons, and the families are probably wrong in assuming tensions will ease because of one marriage. Elrinade resolves the dispute, somehow.
-Elrinade
-Noble Family daughter Guindolyn of Bravestone. Brown hair, black eyes, freckles. Learned and intelligent, but has a pride in her wits that actually gets in the way of them.
-Merchant family son Brevick Smithson. Curly, bright blonde hair, brown eyes, elfin features. Wears a baggy purple and gold hat with a feather in it. Exceptionally romantic and kind of slow, good-hearted.
-Son's older sister Aneirin Smithson. Called Angie. Cool big sis archetype - though vehemently against the Bravestone nobility. One of the Smithson servants, who she is infatuated with, was crippled during the fighting.
-Daughter's cousin, some sort of knight squire thing - one prominent curl over his forehead, which is obviously styled that way and looks kind of silly. His name is Garalt - not Sir Garalt, as he isn't really a knight yet, but he tries to get people to call him that. Feels the fighting with the Smithsons could be a way to prove himself, and so he hates the merchant family, but only in an abstract. He actually really likes Brevick, who looks up to him.
-Patriarch of noble family - The Lord Baron of Bravestone. Only referred to as that, though when she's annoyed with him his wife will call him "Pookie" in front of guests. Black hair, black eyes, sharp goatee - a would-be machievellian schemer who is depressed that there is nothing in backwater Bravestone to scheme against, except the Smithsons, who he underestimates.
-Patriarch of merchant family - Hyperion Smithson. An overblown man with an absolutely apocalyptic grey beard, Hyperion is everything the nobles hate about upstart merchants - he's gaudy, arrogant, puts on airs well above his station, and is shrewd enough that he probably deserves all of it.
"Elrinade was surprised by how young the two were - they couldn't have more than thirty years between them. But I suppose that's how it works nowadays."
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