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Full synopsis
Oct. 11th, 2003 10:49 amI finished my synopsis last night, and decided to post the full version, since I got so many nice comments on the unfinished version that I had up. :):) All of the old stuff is in italics; the new stuff is after that.
***
Kai and Treb's youngest daughter is Riannen. Because her father is a commoner, she has no titles in her own right, although her aunt and uncle (Kayla and Aren, the monarchs) have bestowed upon her the title Countess of Anyran. She has been married to the Earl of Lenndram for three months. While returning home from a visit with her family in Nalaen, her ship is attacked. In the midst of the battle, she is injured and knocked unconscious. For the next few days, she fades in and out of consciousness, battling confusion, delirium, and debilitating headaches. She wakes three days after the shipwreck, confused about where she is, and with no recollection of who she is. Her rescuer, Captain Kyl, claims to have seen her floating amidst the wreckage, and rescued her. Rin doesn't trust him at first, and even less when he admits that he's a privateer for Araudus, the Maredian king. How can she know whether she can trust him, if she doesn't even know who *she* is?
Because they're several weeks away from their destination--and Kyl refuses to change their destination just to drop her off in the middle of nowhere, with no money, no contacts, and no idea of who she is or where she needs to be--neither of them have any choice but to live with her presence on the ship for the time being. Eventually, the truth comes out that Rin's amnesia wasn't caused by the shipwreck, but by Kyl's attempts to heal her after he'd rescued her.
As their journey continues, Rin learns more about Kyl, and they grow closer. Kyl fights the desire between them, at first giving the excuse that she's physically emotional vulnerable. As that excuse begins to loose validity, he starts physically distancing himself from her. He can't fight the attraction between them, however, and they become lovers.
Eventually, they reach their destination, Lenndram, which is, unbeknownst to the both of them, Rin's home. Rin, assuming that she is of the same nationality as Kyl, willingly helps him formulate and carry out his attack against her home, but while they're ransacking the manor, she is discovered--and, to her astonishment, welcomed with joyous tears and hysterics. She is told that she is a princess--and Erian. Kyl is welcomed as her savior, and both keep their mouth shuts about piracy. Rin is swept up in her newly rediscovered family, completely bewildered and not entirely certain she believes she is who they say she is.
After her return, Rin's family (not her husband--her FAMILY) insists that she endure a complete physical examination, to ensure that she's not suffering from any unknown injuries, and to attempt to determine the cause of her amnesia. In the course of the exam, it is discovered that Rin is pregnant. Rin's family is ecstatic, and thanks the gods profusely that the child survived Rin's accident and poor health. Rin, however, is noticeably *not* thrilled, and when Kyl inquires about it in private, she confides concern that the child may be his. Kyl is terrified by the thought of being thrust into fatherhood--he's a captain, a privateer, a wanderer. He's not the type for fatherhood, for ties and commitments. Terrified by the prospects of it, he ransacks the manor and leaves in the middle of the night. His rejection of Rin and attack on her home is only a catalyst to her terror and confusion.
In the midst of Rin's emotional chaos, she is approached by her husband, Aldes. He appears deeply concerned, and when prompted to elaborate what's bothering him, he tells a tale from many years before, of a young sailor who worked on a ship who made port in Lenndram. The sailor had a young, beautiful wife, who sat at home for months at a time while he sailed about and eased his wanderlust. The woman loved the sailor deeply, and eventually became pregnant with his child. When the sailor returned home and discovered his wife heavy with child, however, he became enraged. He accused her of infidelity, of being so lustful that she couldn't endure waiting for her husband to return home from his voyages to share her bed, and instead had warmed the sheets of any man in the city who'd have her. He had gone into a rage, and beat his wife mercilessly, until she was bruised and broken and bleeding and the child she carried within her had died from the horrendous abuse. The wife's subsequent miscarriage drained the last of the strength from the woman, and she died.
Aldes tells Rin this story, that the sailor was Kyl and that he had been the one to preside over his judgment and decree his sentence. He insists that he was lenient, sentencing the sailor to life imprisonment, rather than the execution that the city clamored for. But the sailor refused to accept the consequences of his actions, and fled the country in a pirated ship. The last Aldes had heard of him, he had established himself on the Maredian coast, feeding off of the rich Erian ships that traveled the currents past his new home and ingratiating himself with the Maredian king for all of the riches he earned for the country. Aldes concludes with his sentiment that it did not surprise him to discover that the Maredian king had granted Kyl the papers of marque he needed to make his plundering legal--although, he adds, it would surprise him even less to learn that the papers had been forged...
Rin is shocked and horrified by her husband's tale. And, still reeling from his callous rejection of her and the possibility that she might carry his child, she is inclined to believe him. In spite of everything they'd been through together, he had been able to brush her off with a few harsh words and a careless shrug; it required no stretch of the imagination to envision fury turning carelessness to rage and violence.
Although her parents and siblings are still concerned about her mental and physical welfare, Rin's medical exams have reassured them that she's not in mortal danger. They reluctantly return home, leaving Rin and Aldes alone for the first time since Rin lost her memory. Rin is despondent, unsure of what her heart feels or what her mind believes. Aldes comforts her, and then tries to shift from comfort to passion. Rin relents at first, reminding herself that he's her husband, and possibly the father of the child she carries within her. Its his right to share a bed with her, and her duty to share it with him. Shaking, disgusted with both of them, terrified, she lets him take her to bed.
But once there, it doesn't take her long to realize that, duty or not, she can't do this. She can't let him do this to her. She recoils, and tries to flee. Aldes grows angry, then violent. In a complete turn-around from the personality he showed her while in the company of her parents, he becomes cold, harsh, and unfeeling. The only person Rin has left to turn to has turned on her.
She flees. Using the skills she learned while sailing with Kyl, she signs on as a deck hand for a departing voyage. She doesn't know where it's heading or how long it'll be gone, but she doesn't care. With her memories gone, the only world she knows is the one that started when she woke on Kyl's ship, and now, she has no one to turn to. She longs for the emptiness she felt when she first woke, for the blankness. She was nothing and had nothing then. Anything was possible; she could be whoever she wanted, whatever she wanted. And now, with the only world she knows crumbling around her, she longs for that fresh start again. The job on the ship offers her at least a chance at that.
What she didn't count on was Aldes pursuit. He commandeers a ship ready to sail from the harbor and attacks the ship she's on. He has size and weaponry on his side, and it doesn't take long for Rin to realize that they're losing.
Rin knows that Aldes is attacking the ship only because she's onboard. Spurned by desperation for release, as well as the need to spare her shipmates, she climbs up the rigging and jumps from a yardarm. She is stunned from the fall, and willingly lets the icy water embrace her, letting it wash away all thoughts of who she is and what she's come from.
The next thing she knows, she is laying on her back beneath the harsh sun, the hard, rough boards of a ship's deck beneath her back, her lungs spasming as she coughs up seawater. She rolls over, blindly lets herself be helped to her feet and over to the railing, and leans over that as her stomach heaves. Even after her body has calmed, she remains where she is, facing the endless ocean, her back towards the rest of the ship. She assumes she has been rescued by Aldes, and is being taken back to Lenndram.
She feels a presence behind her, and stiffens. She feels hands running up and down her arms, and shudders. Then she hears Kyl's voice whispering softly in her ear. She can't believe it; he left her. But amidst her joyous laughter and tears, he tells her that he had turned back, only a few days out of port. Life on the ship hadn't been the same without her. He'd missed her. He loves her.
Rin weeps at this revelation, with joy, and her own love confession spills from her. She confides in him her pain, her confusion and terror, since he left, as well as the tale Aldes told to her. Kyl tells her the true version of the story, that he had loved his wife just as much as she had loved him, that Aldes had taken a ken to her during one of his voyages and tried to court her. She rebuffed him, but he persisted, chased after her, and raped her. She became pregnant with his child. When Kyl came home, he found her heavy with child, and pale with sickness. He called all of the best healers money could buy, but the verdict was dire; her child had died from physical abuse, and spread its infection to his wife. Kyl stayed at her side night and day, watching her grow weaker in spite of the healer's magic and medicines. When she died, he mourned her deeply. And then he had stood before the Earl and confronted him with what she had told him, and demanded justice. Instead, the Earl had him accused of the death of his wife, bribed witnesses and officials, and sentenced him to death. Instead of face a sentence for a crime he didn't commit, he commandeered a ship and fled to Mared. He began his life there with piracy at first, until the Maredian king approached him with an offer of a pardon and papers of marque, if he would cease his piracy and take up the trade of a privateer instead. He agreed, happy to have the chance to legally take out his revenge upon the city and the country that had betrayed him. He was the one who attacked her ship--he had recognized the flags of the Earl--and that's why he had kept her aboard. If he seduced the wife of the Earl, it would be just revenge. An eye for an eye, and the Earl would know how it would feel to watch his own wife lay in bed heavy and pale with the strain of another man's child. And he had fled from fear, because with Rin's admission that she was pregnant, and she believed him to be the father, he realized that his priorities had changed. Instead of feeling pleasure at having achieved his revenge on the Earl, he had felt happy, to know that their child grew within her. He had felt hopeful, of the life the three of them might live together. And he had felt afraid, that perhaps her suspicions were wrong, and the child within her was truly the child of the Earl. It would have been the agony of his wife all over again, except this time the Earl would have won without even trying. In the face of all that, he had left.
And when his heart had broken, when he had woken every night calling out her name and reaching out for her embrace, he had turned around. Not to complete his justice upon the Earl, but to hold the woman he loved within his arms. To take her with him, away from the evil of the Earl and the bitterness of revenge. To start their own life together, free of all of that. And filled with naught but the love between them.
***
Kai and Treb's youngest daughter is Riannen. Because her father is a commoner, she has no titles in her own right, although her aunt and uncle (Kayla and Aren, the monarchs) have bestowed upon her the title Countess of Anyran. She has been married to the Earl of Lenndram for three months. While returning home from a visit with her family in Nalaen, her ship is attacked. In the midst of the battle, she is injured and knocked unconscious. For the next few days, she fades in and out of consciousness, battling confusion, delirium, and debilitating headaches. She wakes three days after the shipwreck, confused about where she is, and with no recollection of who she is. Her rescuer, Captain Kyl, claims to have seen her floating amidst the wreckage, and rescued her. Rin doesn't trust him at first, and even less when he admits that he's a privateer for Araudus, the Maredian king. How can she know whether she can trust him, if she doesn't even know who *she* is?
Because they're several weeks away from their destination--and Kyl refuses to change their destination just to drop her off in the middle of nowhere, with no money, no contacts, and no idea of who she is or where she needs to be--neither of them have any choice but to live with her presence on the ship for the time being. Eventually, the truth comes out that Rin's amnesia wasn't caused by the shipwreck, but by Kyl's attempts to heal her after he'd rescued her.
As their journey continues, Rin learns more about Kyl, and they grow closer. Kyl fights the desire between them, at first giving the excuse that she's physically emotional vulnerable. As that excuse begins to loose validity, he starts physically distancing himself from her. He can't fight the attraction between them, however, and they become lovers.
Eventually, they reach their destination, Lenndram, which is, unbeknownst to the both of them, Rin's home. Rin, assuming that she is of the same nationality as Kyl, willingly helps him formulate and carry out his attack against her home, but while they're ransacking the manor, she is discovered--and, to her astonishment, welcomed with joyous tears and hysterics. She is told that she is a princess--and Erian. Kyl is welcomed as her savior, and both keep their mouth shuts about piracy. Rin is swept up in her newly rediscovered family, completely bewildered and not entirely certain she believes she is who they say she is.
After her return, Rin's family (not her husband--her FAMILY) insists that she endure a complete physical examination, to ensure that she's not suffering from any unknown injuries, and to attempt to determine the cause of her amnesia. In the course of the exam, it is discovered that Rin is pregnant. Rin's family is ecstatic, and thanks the gods profusely that the child survived Rin's accident and poor health. Rin, however, is noticeably *not* thrilled, and when Kyl inquires about it in private, she confides concern that the child may be his. Kyl is terrified by the thought of being thrust into fatherhood--he's a captain, a privateer, a wanderer. He's not the type for fatherhood, for ties and commitments. Terrified by the prospects of it, he ransacks the manor and leaves in the middle of the night. His rejection of Rin and attack on her home is only a catalyst to her terror and confusion.
In the midst of Rin's emotional chaos, she is approached by her husband, Aldes. He appears deeply concerned, and when prompted to elaborate what's bothering him, he tells a tale from many years before, of a young sailor who worked on a ship who made port in Lenndram. The sailor had a young, beautiful wife, who sat at home for months at a time while he sailed about and eased his wanderlust. The woman loved the sailor deeply, and eventually became pregnant with his child. When the sailor returned home and discovered his wife heavy with child, however, he became enraged. He accused her of infidelity, of being so lustful that she couldn't endure waiting for her husband to return home from his voyages to share her bed, and instead had warmed the sheets of any man in the city who'd have her. He had gone into a rage, and beat his wife mercilessly, until she was bruised and broken and bleeding and the child she carried within her had died from the horrendous abuse. The wife's subsequent miscarriage drained the last of the strength from the woman, and she died.
Aldes tells Rin this story, that the sailor was Kyl and that he had been the one to preside over his judgment and decree his sentence. He insists that he was lenient, sentencing the sailor to life imprisonment, rather than the execution that the city clamored for. But the sailor refused to accept the consequences of his actions, and fled the country in a pirated ship. The last Aldes had heard of him, he had established himself on the Maredian coast, feeding off of the rich Erian ships that traveled the currents past his new home and ingratiating himself with the Maredian king for all of the riches he earned for the country. Aldes concludes with his sentiment that it did not surprise him to discover that the Maredian king had granted Kyl the papers of marque he needed to make his plundering legal--although, he adds, it would surprise him even less to learn that the papers had been forged...
Rin is shocked and horrified by her husband's tale. And, still reeling from his callous rejection of her and the possibility that she might carry his child, she is inclined to believe him. In spite of everything they'd been through together, he had been able to brush her off with a few harsh words and a careless shrug; it required no stretch of the imagination to envision fury turning carelessness to rage and violence.
Although her parents and siblings are still concerned about her mental and physical welfare, Rin's medical exams have reassured them that she's not in mortal danger. They reluctantly return home, leaving Rin and Aldes alone for the first time since Rin lost her memory. Rin is despondent, unsure of what her heart feels or what her mind believes. Aldes comforts her, and then tries to shift from comfort to passion. Rin relents at first, reminding herself that he's her husband, and possibly the father of the child she carries within her. Its his right to share a bed with her, and her duty to share it with him. Shaking, disgusted with both of them, terrified, she lets him take her to bed.
But once there, it doesn't take her long to realize that, duty or not, she can't do this. She can't let him do this to her. She recoils, and tries to flee. Aldes grows angry, then violent. In a complete turn-around from the personality he showed her while in the company of her parents, he becomes cold, harsh, and unfeeling. The only person Rin has left to turn to has turned on her.
She flees. Using the skills she learned while sailing with Kyl, she signs on as a deck hand for a departing voyage. She doesn't know where it's heading or how long it'll be gone, but she doesn't care. With her memories gone, the only world she knows is the one that started when she woke on Kyl's ship, and now, she has no one to turn to. She longs for the emptiness she felt when she first woke, for the blankness. She was nothing and had nothing then. Anything was possible; she could be whoever she wanted, whatever she wanted. And now, with the only world she knows crumbling around her, she longs for that fresh start again. The job on the ship offers her at least a chance at that.
What she didn't count on was Aldes pursuit. He commandeers a ship ready to sail from the harbor and attacks the ship she's on. He has size and weaponry on his side, and it doesn't take long for Rin to realize that they're losing.
Rin knows that Aldes is attacking the ship only because she's onboard. Spurned by desperation for release, as well as the need to spare her shipmates, she climbs up the rigging and jumps from a yardarm. She is stunned from the fall, and willingly lets the icy water embrace her, letting it wash away all thoughts of who she is and what she's come from.
The next thing she knows, she is laying on her back beneath the harsh sun, the hard, rough boards of a ship's deck beneath her back, her lungs spasming as she coughs up seawater. She rolls over, blindly lets herself be helped to her feet and over to the railing, and leans over that as her stomach heaves. Even after her body has calmed, she remains where she is, facing the endless ocean, her back towards the rest of the ship. She assumes she has been rescued by Aldes, and is being taken back to Lenndram.
She feels a presence behind her, and stiffens. She feels hands running up and down her arms, and shudders. Then she hears Kyl's voice whispering softly in her ear. She can't believe it; he left her. But amidst her joyous laughter and tears, he tells her that he had turned back, only a few days out of port. Life on the ship hadn't been the same without her. He'd missed her. He loves her.
Rin weeps at this revelation, with joy, and her own love confession spills from her. She confides in him her pain, her confusion and terror, since he left, as well as the tale Aldes told to her. Kyl tells her the true version of the story, that he had loved his wife just as much as she had loved him, that Aldes had taken a ken to her during one of his voyages and tried to court her. She rebuffed him, but he persisted, chased after her, and raped her. She became pregnant with his child. When Kyl came home, he found her heavy with child, and pale with sickness. He called all of the best healers money could buy, but the verdict was dire; her child had died from physical abuse, and spread its infection to his wife. Kyl stayed at her side night and day, watching her grow weaker in spite of the healer's magic and medicines. When she died, he mourned her deeply. And then he had stood before the Earl and confronted him with what she had told him, and demanded justice. Instead, the Earl had him accused of the death of his wife, bribed witnesses and officials, and sentenced him to death. Instead of face a sentence for a crime he didn't commit, he commandeered a ship and fled to Mared. He began his life there with piracy at first, until the Maredian king approached him with an offer of a pardon and papers of marque, if he would cease his piracy and take up the trade of a privateer instead. He agreed, happy to have the chance to legally take out his revenge upon the city and the country that had betrayed him. He was the one who attacked her ship--he had recognized the flags of the Earl--and that's why he had kept her aboard. If he seduced the wife of the Earl, it would be just revenge. An eye for an eye, and the Earl would know how it would feel to watch his own wife lay in bed heavy and pale with the strain of another man's child. And he had fled from fear, because with Rin's admission that she was pregnant, and she believed him to be the father, he realized that his priorities had changed. Instead of feeling pleasure at having achieved his revenge on the Earl, he had felt happy, to know that their child grew within her. He had felt hopeful, of the life the three of them might live together. And he had felt afraid, that perhaps her suspicions were wrong, and the child within her was truly the child of the Earl. It would have been the agony of his wife all over again, except this time the Earl would have won without even trying. In the face of all that, he had left.
And when his heart had broken, when he had woken every night calling out her name and reaching out for her embrace, he had turned around. Not to complete his justice upon the Earl, but to hold the woman he loved within his arms. To take her with him, away from the evil of the Earl and the bitterness of revenge. To start their own life together, free of all of that. And filled with naught but the love between them.
