Arthurian advent calendar: 11st december
Arthurian Advent Calendar - THE CALENDAR (list)
warning: English is not my first language
11st DECEMBER: (Agravaine, Pellinore, Snow)
The other boy is strange, very strange, thinks Agravaine. He is as old as him and he has all dark hairs and his skin is darker than Agravaine. He is very strange.
“What is your name?” he asks him. He is curious. There are not many children in the Orkneys, just him and his brothers and sometime some of the villagers.
“Aglovale,” answers the strange child. His hands take the snow and let it fall again.
“Our names!” shouts Agravaine, excited. “I am Agravaine. Our names are similar! This is destiny, like a prophecy!” he continues, wise in his seven years old.
“Like Merlin’s prophecy?” asks Aglovale and Morgause’s son nods. Neither of them has the faintest idea of what a prophecy is but they think they can at least manage to grasp the concept behind the difficult word.
“And what does the prophecy say?”
“Prophecies don’t talk,” answers Agravaine. His mother is a witch. He knows these things.
“Then what do they do?”
“They do dangerous things. And other things. We should play with the
snow,” suddenly proposes Agravaine. A wise move. He has no idea about
what exactly a prophecy do. Better to change the topic.
Aglovale, who clearly is a barbarian (They have no manners in Camelot?) suddenly jumps on him, throwing him in the snow, laughing.
“No, no, that’s not how you play with the snow. You have to built things.”
Aglovale looks at him with his enormous eyes, hungrily observing Agravaine’s hands which model the snow, creating a face, a body, a castle. They spend an hour creating the best castle they have ever seen (Agravaine actually wants to send someone to call his uncle Arthur because Camelot is not nearly as beautiful as their castle) when their games are interrupted by a knight.
The knight is tall, enormous, and angry.
“What are you doing?” he asks. His voice is old and harsh.
Agravaine is about to answer that he can do what he wants because he is the king’s nephew when Aglovale speaks before him: “I am playing, father. This is how it is done, with the snow.”
“With him? He is one of Lot’s little poisonous snakes!” continues Aglovale’s father and he takes his son hand (which is cold from being for such a long time in the snow).
Agravaine would like to tell him that he is not a snake. That he is quite human, in fact. And he is quite sure e is not poisonous because a
week before his cat bite him and did not die of poison. He only manages to say “I am not-“ that the angry knight has taken away his new friend.
(When he asks Gawain who Aglovale’s father is, his big brother answers “He is the man who took away our father!”. Agravaine feels that he has quite the reasonable motif to feel hatred for such a man).