How to say rockstar without actually saying rockstar? As I work on the second in the Chronicles of Tethara I am trying to do just that.  Seems like it takes a lot of words when I could otherwise just say that they treated him like a rockstar–except that I can’t do that.

———————————————————————————————————–

For himself, Llew had spent the previous afternoon making the rounds of the castle and the village. He did not hold court; there simply was not time and Slow Tomos seemed to have domestic matters well in hand. Instead, he merely made himself available.

Isolated as Caer Mallcoedwig was, it was remarkable. Word of his deeds, and those of his comrades, had arrived quickly. With little else to occupy them, the residents had then spent most of the past year telling and retelling those stories amongst themselves. They were anxious to see him, and not merely because he was now their prince. Llew had experienced this phenomenon at Caerleon as well yet, in his experience, there really was no other parallel. In their eyes he seemed to be some high ideal made manifest, glorious and bright against their everyday lives, and all who came into his presence might somehow share in, for at least a few precious moments, what he represented to them.

Caer Mallcoedwig was not a huge place. Having grown up there Llew knew virtually everyone by sight, even if he could not quite put a name to all of them. They remembered him, too, first as just a virtually nameless spratling who was kept about the stables, then later as one high in the favor of their dread ruler, Queen Moriganna, someone to be treated with some modicum of respect and, as much as possible, avoided. There had been none of that avoidance this visit. They had all dropped whatever they were doing and came crowding to see him wherever he went, bringing out their children, even holding the smallest ones up so they could better see him.