- And what a rise it was afterwards. Piper rose before the sun as her appearances required quite a bit of time to manage. (She told her followers that rising before the sun meant showing her commitment, waking to the light of hope, the sun is always dependable, yada yada yada.) Her glorious hair required quite a bit of cleansing, lathering, and combing, as did her skin require the most expensive oils to rub in. A lot of her materials were expensive, but what Great Knight would she honestly be if she went out looking like a commoner? She was supposed to represent Hope, not Dusty Faced Despair Eyed Doom Upon the World!
She knew some called her vain. Materialistic. Shallow. But the perks of being a Great Knight was that you got to be above all of that horseshit. Her actions were motivated by genuine concern for her people--so what if she was a little picky about how she was presented? When you have the kind of power she does, you need to know better than to look shabby.
Maybe she was a little too...magnanimous when dealing with the lower people. Smugly beneficial, some knights muttered. There wasn't a word for "haters" yet, but she didn't bat an eye at them. To her friends, she was the most generous soul of the land. To her enemies, she was a cobra, beautiful and deadly.
And to the chickens that no longer could plague her? They were dinner.
(She wakes up feeling hungrier and more tired than ever.)
