Fragments Gallery
Underdressed
The knights marched by before you and you struggled to keep your expression neutral and your eyes on the tapestries across from you. How you longed to stare in jealousy upon their gilded armour, their polished weapons and their rich cloth and fur cloaks proudly displaying their family crests and personal sigils.
Your own armour and cloak, both standard issue for the watch, and less-than-spectacular weapons don't give you much confidence when standing next to the finery of these men and women, christened as the finest warriors in the nation. Standing beside them you feel like a barbarian not to mention underdressed. You struggle to keep your mind on your job, which is to stand watch as the procession moves through.
To distract yourself you focus on those old tapestries across from you. One depicts a scene of a battle long past where knight fought knight in a bloody civil war. That didn’t help keep your mind off of those men and women walking before you. You move onto the next, your eyes roving across the weathered old canvas. The next showed a veteran blacksmith forging armour. The smith appears to be creating a knight’s armour to your untrained eye. Your gaze wanders the next and final tapestry in your limited field of view. The final painting shows a ship at sea. Gigantic waves threaten to crush the ship as people rush along the deck and through the rigging of the ship. The artist has taken painstaking care to ensure that the spray is visible above the bow and to the side of the ship as it crashes down into the trough. Examining the old wall hangings, something you have already done many times before out of sheer boredom, can’t keep your attention from the procession for long. You return to trying to not watch the knights marching by in their somber silence.
How you wish you could join their ranks, how you wish you could even stare upon them in awe, but you are expected to stand motionless and unmoved amidst these people. Amidst these people who notice you no more than they would a torch set into the wall.
Eventually the flow of knights thins and the hall empties before you. You relax as you're left staring at the tapestries on the wall across from you. Finally. You can relax at last.