Most of the past week, I’ve been spending on fan-fiction. I set myself a bit of a challenge for the next chapter I’ve been working on. I have a scene in mind in which my protagonist (a mage-Warden originally from the Dragon Age: Origins video game) is required to improvise some verse in honor of his beloved wife. So I decided to actually produce some verse.

As a poet, I make a pretty good carpenter, so it took me a surprisingly long time to come up with a sonnet I could live with. Here it is. I find it isn’t actually all that closely tied to the Dragon Age setting, aside from a single reference in the second quatrain. This piece should also appear in the next chapter of The Voice of Silence, as soon as I can get about a thousand more words down.

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She walks along the margins of the night,
A creature wrought of secrets and desire,
With hair as dark as raven’s wings in flight,
Her golden eyes alight with reason’s fire.
In truth, she loves bright gold and precious stones,
The better for her beauty to adorn,
Yet Chantry’s power and might of kingly thrones
She never stoops to hold them but in scorn.
Still I know well the passions bright that burn
Within that guarded breast and wounded heart;
I count it all my fortune thus to earn
A husband’s welcome place in her regard.
Tho’ walk I now in winter’s bitter scope,
I trust, in her, to find the summer’s hope.