This is my Christmas present/gift/whathaveyou for , which I commissioned from

Sort of a long story behind this, see if I can keep it all straight,

Back in the summer of this year, after years of just lurking around FA not saying a word, I decided to take the remnants of a couple ideas in my head and leftovers of a character from a Skyrim playthrough, and create a whole new character I could slowly develop a story and life for.
Enter 'Taj', my roaming-warrior (of sorts) snow leopard of lost-royality, a prince unknown to even himself, at first he was just a bunch of paragraphs in a .word document, but then I decided it was time to see him visually, since words can only show so much of my thoughts and visions. Then the task became finding an artist I'd be happy with letting bring Taj 'to life' - so to speak.
If I remember correctly, had posted a journal, mentioning that Mab was then taking on "Wildcard Commissions", which were commissions where she would take a commissioner's character, and with artistic freedom, create whatever she was inspired to, be it a detailed headshot or the first piece ever drawn of a character - from nothing but text and create his image perfectly might I add ;)

So there he was, Taj was now more than just a paragraph or two, he had his 'build' & 'image', he had an outfit to survive the adventuring I had planned for him, and then I started working on what adventuring he'd be doing, idea's ranging from archery to training and sword mastery, and all the different settings I could see him in, taverns, forests, cities, and more.
He was free and adaptive as a new character could be, infinite story possibilites, numerous background settings, so on and so forth, Then I got a new character, Fei, a female wolf/husky runaway-princess, who I ended up also giving a backstory of royalty and fight-training. That's when things really started to take off for their story, it went from the story of one lost prince who traveled the world seeking his past, to the story of a chance-encounter between two lifestyles, starting as a grudge, and slowly turning into a story of love over dark-forgotten pasts.

Now to get back on track..., Taj and Fei's story has developed on its own, much farther than I ever anticipated Taj's developing alone. There's now his Pre-story, Pre-Fei, with-Fei, & Future-story, and Fei's Pre-story, her past with her Father, with-Taj, and their Future together, And that's not even the majority of it. I swear their stories are progressing faster than I can keep track of and share at times. which brings me to this gift itself.

Couple weeks back, it hit me, everything that's happened for Taj and Fei, in my head or on FA, may have never happened if Mab hadn't 'brought him to life' for me, kick-starting that creative-drive inside me, and maybe even helping her get back into the swing of things (If I remember correctly, the batch of wildcards I was in was the first after a short-absense - that or I'm mistaking someone else)
Either way, I thought it'd be nice to get her something for giving me and Taj more than just a piece of art, but something to build off of and develop into quite a story of royalty & romance, full of adventure, action, character building and history in the making.

"But what ?", was my question, "what could I get her ?, a story in a bunch of text ? - nah, that doesn't sound like a gift, so what about art ? - Yes!..., wait I can't draw...". Fortunately FA is full of talented artists, of whom I could commission a piece for Mab. Then came the question of what to have commissioned, I wanted to have something of Taj offering something to Mab for being the reason he's as developed of a character as he currently is, and somewhere along the line a 'knighting ceremony' idea popped in my head, only problem with that is Taj isn't a knight, but I didn't think it'd be a problem since Taj was to be offering to her, rather than being knighted by her. I decided to have Taj kneeling in front of her, his 'malady' of sorts, offering his sword and services to her as a knight in his own right, with a quote of my own inspired by one of knighthood, which read;

"Every Knight remembers (his dubbing) as the finest (day) of his existence..." —George Duby

Maybe it's a little 'cheesy', or cliche, or whatever, and I probably bounced around a bit while typing all of ^that^ up, but it's the thought that counts right ? o.O

And so Mab, after what is probably a wall-o-text by now, I present you with this, my Christmas gift to you, for the holidays, and for giving me that initial 'spark' to continue developing Taj's story into something much bigger and broader than I ever anticipated, Thank-you.

btw, do you know how hard it was to pick an outfit for you ? :P, lol, there were soooo many good ones, but went with a slightly older one that I thought would make you happy. (so if you were wondering why I randomly fave'd a few older works out of no-where, yes I was snooping >.> <.<)

I'll send you the hi-res shortly ^_^

Art ©
Taj ™
Mab ™