TM #145: Tell the truth about something you usually lie about.
Just picture us at sixteen. There's Gawain, who's only just got his growth at last, God love him, and who'll never stand more than shoulder-high to half the men he meets -- you can imagine the jokes. There's Mordred, prickly little bastard in more senses than one, all too easy to tease. They stare in wonder at the innovations of ten years ago. They're superstitious at best, half-heathen at worst; their talk is lilting, laced with Norse. Hopelessly provincial.
Gawain couldn't disown Orkney if he'd wanted to; it was his birthright, his responsibility, and he stood by it with staunch good humor. They liked him better for it. But Gawain's brother, Gawain's mother's misbegotten son, had no such excuse -- having only grown up there.
When I was small my mother would curse the place and everyone in it, from the King her husband down to the poorest of the fishermen. "And little enough to choose between them. God!" And she'd take my hands, gentler in her rage than she was at almost any other time. "You're none of his, you've no part in it. You don't belong here, any more than I do. Someday you'll leave here, I swear to you."
She was right in that.
So I laughed, when they teased Gawain that his kingdom was as small as he was. I'd tell anyone who asked me about the cold, the wind, the bitter storms, the midwinter days when the sun hardly bothered to show. I lost the accent so far as I could.
And I dreamt of treeless fields, and fog on the cold sea.
For it /is/ cold, Orkney is, and hard and poor and lonely; a pale pearl beside the glittering jewel that was Britain, then and later. But I belonged to it.
Mordred
Arthurian legend
300 words
Gawain couldn't disown Orkney if he'd wanted to; it was his birthright, his responsibility, and he stood by it with staunch good humor. They liked him better for it. But Gawain's brother, Gawain's mother's misbegotten son, had no such excuse -- having only grown up there.
When I was small my mother would curse the place and everyone in it, from the King her husband down to the poorest of the fishermen. "And little enough to choose between them. God!" And she'd take my hands, gentler in her rage than she was at almost any other time. "You're none of his, you've no part in it. You don't belong here, any more than I do. Someday you'll leave here, I swear to you."
She was right in that.
So I laughed, when they teased Gawain that his kingdom was as small as he was. I'd tell anyone who asked me about the cold, the wind, the bitter storms, the midwinter days when the sun hardly bothered to show. I lost the accent so far as I could.
And I dreamt of treeless fields, and fog on the cold sea.
For it /is/ cold, Orkney is, and hard and poor and lonely; a pale pearl beside the glittering jewel that was Britain, then and later. But I belonged to it.
Mordred
Arthurian legend
300 words