Duty - II

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I pray you can bear to make your home with a fool

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I pray you can bear to make your home with a fool.

Dusk was beginning to close in around the carriage by the time the palace came into view

Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.

Dusk was beginning to close in around the carriage by the time the palace came into view. From Katrina's window, the scale was somewhat daunting.

Nestled amidst the foothills of the mountain range that had grown from the dense forest they had travelled through for the last number of days, the pale turrets and high walls of what would be her home glowed a soft blush in the fading light. It was a stark contrast to the dark evergreen woods that climbed the first slopes of the mountains, but perfectly in tone with the colouring of the buildings in the town settled on the plain below. Neutral, harmonising with the grand scale of the natural architecture surrounding the centre of the kingdom of Brooklynne.

Beautiful, but still daunting.

The roads of the town were cobbled, following the ambling bends of the river it had grown around, before they gently began to slope upwards. The smaller buildings dropped away to leave the single road to the castle as a lone landmark, snaking between hills and leading to whatever Katrina's future may hold.

She had hoped her arrival would be quiet. After almost a month of travel, it had been near impossible to accurately predict when they would arrive, but two days past a pair of scouts from the kingdom had met them on the road and travelled back to bring news of their impending arrival. It had meant the people where looking for a strange carriage on the road, and the fact that her transport was flanked by mounted guards was surely enough to betray her identity, but Katrina hadn't at all been expecting any excitement to be stirred by her arrival. Arranged marriages happened more often than she could estimate, amongst families of status and rank - and from her experience, the citizens of kingdoms rarely took note of it. Aside from members of the royal court who would care to gossip about such things, most people let these events pass without much thought.

Here though... She could hear them, through the thin pane of glass behind her curtain. A curious brush of her fingers held the fabric back, exposing a rolling image of people rushing to doorways and windows that faced onto the street as the carriage bumped through the town. She could hear children laughing behind them, following them up the street, murmurs and cries for others to come and look.

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