1. Arianrhod


    Date: 9/14/2015, Categories: Historical, Author: BethanyFrasier, Rating: , Source: LushStories

    Arianrhod was with her. The two girls were usually inseparable, and often roamed the woods together, searching for mushrooms and wildflowers, the latter of which Arianrhod often wore woven into the braids of her strawberry blond hair. Meghyn adored the older girl, her step-sister since Arianrhod had first appeared in the village years ago as a child, alone and abandoned. No one knew where she came from, or what had become of her parents, but Murhwyn had taken her in, when no one else seemed to know what to do with the unusual orphan. The mystery of Arianrhod's origins, over the years, had only been embellished by the local townspeople, to an almost fanciful degree. She spoke with an unusual Gaelic inflection, casting her from the outset as an outsider, but also imbuing her with an exotic quality, which was only enhanced by her growing pulchritude. Beyond her astonishing beauty, there was also a fey, almost other-worldliness to her nature, which the villagers attributed variously from her being the offspring of faeries to her upbringing in the house of the local witch. Murhwyn's reputation itself was none too respectable, and by extension, her two daughters were often viewed by the townspeople with a suspicious eye. While the other daughters in the village were usually married off soon after puberty, Arianrhod, despite her beauty, was nearly an old spinster at the age of seventeen. Not that the boys didn't look! Most were struck dumb in her presence, as if she herself had ...
    bewitched them with her charms, leaving them with stiff members and buttoned lips - too intimidated by her beauty to engage her in conversation. Padrig, son of Gwillem, had somehow summoned the courage to speak to her one spring day, and at sixteen, they had become friends. Meghyn often teased her step-sister about the son of the smithy's apprentice, but Arianrhod judged the boy to have a brave heart, and encouraged his attentions, despite her younger sister's derision. After a year of coy and joyful courtship, he had asked for her hand, and to everyone's surprise, she had accepted. Their engagement had served to ameliorate Arianrhod's peculiarity, somewhat, in the villagers' eyes, and she began to be regarded with a more inclusive attitude by her peers. But she still retained her native mystery, as her long jaunts around the countryside with her sister to gather herbs and roots for Murhwyn's potions were perceived as proof that Arianrhod might be a student of the witch's dark craft. The magic of Arianrhod's allure was attributed by some to be the result of Murhwyn's witchcraft, rather than her own elusive origins. Murhwyn was a necessary enigma in the borough, as she often cured the ailments of those who put themselves in her hands as a last resort, when their maladies were not healed by the local physician or the priest's prayers. Leechcraft, and the bleeding of evil humors was the prevailing science of men schooled in medicine, but wise women had passed down the lore of herbs ...
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