Rain
After stirring, on the verge of waking up, Rain felt Tarja's arm wrap around him as a warm gentle breeze from the open window greeted his return to the waking world. Elves don't need a great deal of sleep but he hadn't rested for a while so had decided to sprawl out for an hour or so.
"Hello beautiful." he said smiling.
Seeing that he was awake, the palace panther jumped down off the bed and sat on the floor. Rain briefly rubbed the side of her neck as he walked over to the washbasin to freshen up and playfully flicked water at her. She sneezed and padded over to the window, starring affectionately at what she saw below.
The palace is situated right at the heart of the Centre Circle, which itself is situated at the heart of the Inner Circle, at the heart of the Circle itself. As big as a large town, it wasn't exactly clear where the palace ended and the outside started. It was built, like much of the architecture in the Circle, as a continuum rather than as a definite and well defined structure.
Rain went over to the window to check the time by looking at the sky, the fresh aroma of the bakery reached his nose, 'hmm, I love that smell'. He saw Tarissa in the courtyard just below practising for the archery tournament being held later in the day so he left his room and made his way down to see the other important lady in his life.
"Afternoon sis." he said to his twin.
"Good sleep?"
"Yea until Tarja woke me. I needed to get up anyway, they'll be here soon."
"Ah the burdens of being emperor."
Tarissa had set up a a target in the courtyard a while back so that she didn't didn't have to go to the range to practice. She preferred practising alone most of the time and she had always loved this courtyard.
"How's practice going?" Rain asked.
"Good. I might actually beat her this time, I'm tired of always coming in second."
"Well, stranger things have happened I suppose." he said with a feigned look of disbelief on his face.
"Thanks for the support." she replied, half agitated, half amused.
"Why would you want to be the best? If there were no such thing as forest elves you'd be no better with a bow than you are now, worse in fact because you wouldn't have had as much motivation to up your game."
Rain cocked his head slightly while looking at her bow.
"I think you bent it, you've overused it. You need a new one." he said as he took the bow from her.
"No they're supposed to have that curve in them. That's how they're designed."
She took the bow back, looked at the target and then looked back at Rain while drawing an arrow, pulling the bow back and launching the arrow straight into the centre of the target.
Rain fought hard not to show how impressed he was to keep the banter going.
"Alissia would have done it without having to recheck the target before looking away."
Tarissa just looked at him, part amused, but mostly agitated.
Rain dropped the pretence.
"That was awesome! Pity there's no looking away while shooting category in the tournament."
"You could make it a category."
"Should I make it a rule that those whose name starts with a T get a hundred points to begin with?"
Tarissa looked thoughtful, as if actually contemplating the idea.
"The knights are here" a loud voice said from a balcony above them.
Rain nodded up at the balcony.
"They're early. You coming?"
"Nah, I'm going to practice some more. I'm in the zone."
"Okay, I'll let you know if there was any exciting news."
Rain made his way to the meeting hall and sat in his usual chair.
"What's going on my peeps?" he said to the elven knights.
"Nothing to really report." said Kriss, commander of the knights.
"You came all the way here to tell me that? I know it was a scheduled meeting but you could have just told me that through a crystal."
"That's not why we're here." Cassandra said with a grin. "We brought someone with us who you've been wanting to meet and we had to see it."
Rain knew straight away who she was referring to.
"Let's go." he said with great anticipation.
They went straight to the arena, where a crowd, including Tarissa, was gathered. Markus was standing in the centre of the ring. He bowed his head slightly.
"Emperor." he said with respect.
Rain was a legendary fencer and Markus was an up and coming fencer who had won all his his fights so far against the some of the very best of opponents. Rain had heard of Markus' exploits about three months ago and was keeping track of his results. A month ago Rain had officially challenged him to a friendly match.
"Markus." Rain said with equal respect as he moved into position and raised his foil to signal that he was ready. Markus did the same.