winter has come too late

[northseaflotsam]

He comes out of the bedroom as if he's been there all along -- a little tousled, granted, but more or less composed, the hazardous look gone from his eyes. In its place there's a kind of quiet resolve.

Comments

[thespaewife]

Clarissant is sitting on the living room floor, surrounded by papers and magazines, all open to articles on fishing. She has a notepad on her knee, which is rapidly filling up with notes in Latin.

She looks up. "Interesting trip?"

[northseaflotsam]

"You might say." He leans against the back of the couch, hands in his pockets, regarding her wryly. "Didn't tell me you'd met the kid."

[thespaewife]

Clar shakes her head and slides one of the papers out from under another. She frowns at it.

[northseaflotsam]

"Clar."

[thespaewife]

"He says over-capacity like it's revelation," Clar complains, pointing to the article, which features a head shot of EU fisheries commissioner Joe Borg that makes him look slightly like a somewhat startled suspect in a police line up.

[northseaflotsam]

"Clar, can we talk about something besides cod for a minute?"

[thespaewife]

She glares at him. "'s the entire ecosystem."

[northseaflotsam]

"Yeah, fine. It's been going to hell for the last sixty years, it can wait another quarter of an hour. I need to talk to you."

[thespaewife]

"You don't have treaties," Clar says, crankily, "You don't have to sip tea and say 'But don't kill us all, anyhow'."

But she flips the offending newspaper over and pulls up her knees so that the notebook is scrunched to her chest. "Talk."

[northseaflotsam]

Mordred drops to sit on the couch, carefully keeping his feet off the papers. "Kid. Bran. Says he talked to you."

Clarissant: making "Scottish and taciturn" contagious since approximately 900.

[thespaewife]

Clarissant brightens. "Yes," she says.

[northseaflotsam]

"You didn't say."

[thespaewife]

"No." She looks at him searchingly.

"A good child," she says.

[northseaflotsam]

Mordred runs his fingers through his hair. "What'd he say?"

[thespaewife]

Clar shrugs. "'What is Pendragon?'" she says, "'My friend has a secret.' Arms. Who had the Pendragon pennant after Uncle Arthur."

[northseaflotsam]

"Which was no one." Because even he wasn't that crazy. "Did he tell you why?"