She awakes as the sun sets, and finds herself, as always, listening to the forest of murmurs. A new voice, then, one full of pain, bodily and spiritual, shines through. It is its novelty that strikes her at first, followed by the intensity of the emotions.
And then it's the thoughts coursing.
Spartacus.
This one was in Rome, and if his suffering wasn't enough to make her come, that seals the deal. She comes bearing her timeless shawls and skirts, those of a Greek noblewoman, though she herself was a Patrician's daughter, once.
Her voice is calm when she speaks, slowly, in Latin.
"You will catch death if you don't take this," she says, offering the cape. By all appearances, she could be an ordinary woman, out in the cold dusk. She is, of course, anything but.
Agron is visibly startled, and he'll reach for his sword - that's absent. His abused hands couldn't grip it anyway. "You approach without sound," he states, almost accusing. "How?" He wears little, even in winter, but he is truly clothed with little more than a loin cloth, thanks to the Romans.
She speaks the common tongue, and so he wonders if he's passed on after all. He wonders how he came to be here. He wonders how he came to be in a different clime.
"Forgive me," the woman replies. "I did not mean to startle you."
She pauses in her approach, mantle still offered. Her tone is still quiet, disarmingly so, probably.
"I am Pandora. I mean you no harm, I promise it on the life of my betrothed and all that I love." Raising a hand, she adds, "May the gods smite me if I lie."
She pushes the cape towards him, still offering. "You are injured, and naked in the cold of winter. If you do not let me take you to safety, you may die in the cold, and if not, you may lose fingers and toes to frostbite. Please."
It's surprising how important this is to her.
Then again, she was a follower of Ovid, and took no pleasure in her compatriots' cruelties.
His distrust comes because she is a stranger, and she has the regal bearing of a Roman domina. Still, she's offering him aid, and that turns his mind to trust enough to accept the cape. His hands won't work though, still so freshly injured, and he nearly drops it when his fingers refuse his command to grip the garment. He tries to catch it between his arms, but in truth, he's barely on his feet. The cape falls to the ground and he nearly follows it.
He gives a bitter laugh. "I had thought to find the afterlife, and see again my brother, yet I would present less feeble in my expectations. Unless the fucking gods see fit to punish me even in death." He peers at her, his expression can only be described as stoic pain. "How might safety be found surrounded by Roman dogs?"
She is anything but a slave, but the kindest soul you'll meet, and one who would stop at nothing to help someone in need. An intuition, a dream even, wakes her as the sun rises, and she pads out of her rooms, unescorted.
The man is resting, eyes closed on a couch, and she blinks a moment.
A warrior, clearly.
One who has been given more pain than is warranted.
Guinevere of the Brittons does not condone cruelty, and so she will sit nearby, keeping watch, until he wakes. She feels as though she has been, somehow, given this mission by something or someone greater than her.
Agron is as quick to cheer as he is to ill temper, but confusion makes him peckish. Confusion because this abode looks nothing like anything in his experience, and the healing by his cape-giver still unexplained. While he is less acute, his injuries were grave and the woman only healed the worst. He's grateful for the sorcery, and yet is loathe to trust his current situation
( ... )
Guinevere is a light sleeper - a good thing, given her current mission, and the fact that she'd dozed off a little, in her self-appointed vigilance.
A blink, then, and she gives him a sad, worried little smile.
"You are safe here," she tells him, because he seems to hear it. "And you are still very wounded. Please, don't make any sudden movements, lest you re-open your wounds."
Her voice is gentle, but firm, as though she were used to this. She stands, and her chemise ripples about her - in this attire, she most certainly looks beneath her station, and as though she realized it now, she fastens her shawl around her shoulders.
"I am Guinevere, and tasked with seeing you to health," she says gently. There was a pitcher nearby, a glass is poured and proffered. "Drink. You must be thirsty, certainly."
"You are not the first to break word of safety, but experience teaches doubt on the matter," Agron murmurs. He doesn't move though, perhaps because even in his injured state, he's assured she cannot overpower him. "Are you the medicus?" They are traditionally men, but he's seen women who fight as well as any man, and it seems to him that they can heal as well if they so choose. "Is this your abode?" Her accent is not that of a Roman domina, and so he's assured by that at least.
We're not sure how much Pandora explained, but it stands to reason he is still confused about where he is, and why this stranger pledges to aid him.
Lest poor Agron start thinking that he's been sent to a female utopia or Amazon-land, here is a man, albeit one from his far future, with a very keen interest in the past.
Paul will be found in the kitchen, making Eggy in the Basket, because the typist is obsessed with breakfast. It's a bit late, but when he grades, the good professor falls a bit out of his regular schedule.
He'll probably be happy to make breakfast for two.
Agron has by now found a room. He finds the bed as curious as the rest of the house, but was comforted to find familiar attire in the tiny room attached to his space. He's dressed, looking every inch the warrior general that he is - or was, rather, in Spartacus' army of former slaves.
We're not sure how well he understands that he's amidst so many from the future, but he would be very interested in hearing the result of their war with Rome. He had been certain that eventually Rome would crumble, but Spartacus would be long remembered for his greatness. Spartacus, the man who he counted brother and friend.
He enters the kitchen while exploring, and his stomach will grumble at the smell of breakfast. Paul, he eyes to assess. Tthere is much strange in this place.
"By Jupiter's cock you might be, else you offer me that egg," Agron retorts, a slight smile on his face. Just because the egg hit the ground, unless it was raw, it's still quite edible to a slave fed gruel at the ludus of his master. He would stoop to scoop it up himself, but his hands are rather wrapped in thick bandages.
And a possibly familiar sight: Gawain, who may or may not, at this point, have found out about Lystra's indiscretions, is going to be by the hearth, meditatively sharpening his sword.
His gestures are calculated and slow, methodical, as if he relied on the exercise to find balance, which he does.
While he works, he's vaguely humming something from home, a lay of Lothian, and thinking about anything but his family and personal life. In truth, he's a little bit bummed, these days.
A sword is a comforting sight, though he's still not fit to grasp one. He glances down at his bandaged hands, and then to the sword and frowns. He turns his focus to the man sharpening the weapon, gauging his threat. "A fine iron," he comments, complimenting the sword.
Gawain appreciates the compliment, and gives the man a warm grin.
"Our smiths were the pride of Lothian," he replies in his language, though the Mansion is probably going to be kind and translate.
Being of the North, this one knight doesn't know Latin: he was knighted after his father helped Arthur get rid of the Romans, and his priorities were always on physical prowess.
It is fortunate indeed that the Mansion translates, for Agron only speaks his native tongue and the Roman common. His fingers itch to hold a sword again; his fingers wiggle of their own volition. "A fair weapon stands in a warrior's good stead in battle, but is nothing without a strong hand to wield it," he comments. "You've seen much battle?" Warrior small-talk.
Perhaps after Agron is mobile again, he might come upon Phedre, one late evening. She's by the fire and isn't doing anything but braiding her hair and singing to herself.
She's in a pensive mood these days, and that leads her to sing something old, something she'd almost forgotten.
Skaldic hearth songs, which will be unfamiliar to him in tune, but the language will most certainly carry some resonance: it is Germanic, and is rooted in Agron's maternal tongue.
Perhaps the sight of a woman who is may not be a Northerner herself, given her dark hair, though her skin is certainly pale enough, singing in a language close to home, will intrigue the gladiator sufficiently.
One thing is sure: Death's whore has once met someone... who was very much like him, in many, many ways.
Agron is well intrigued at the sound of so familiar a tongue. In fact, he races toward it's source, surprise clear on his face. "I had not thought meeting another East of the Rhine save Duro, who is yet still lost to me," he says in German, drawing closer. "Unfamiliar song, but such welcome spoken word." He is beaming. Agron is one to treasure the small joys.
Thankfully, in all her years at the Mansion, Phedre has learned the equivalences, between her world's map, and that which seems most commonly accepted, and so the Rhine is familiar to her, and she understands immediately what is said.
"I speak little of your tongue," she replies, once she's stood, as the man is already towering over her lithe figure, "but I was blessed to be taught these songs, when I was in your country, many years ago."
"Native or no, my ears rejoice in the song. I would learn it, if you were inclined to teach?" Agron requests, still smiling. "I am Agron, from East of the Rhine, though of late, from Capua." Escaped from a ludus in Capua, to be specific.
Comments 65
And then it's the thoughts coursing.
Spartacus.
This one was in Rome, and if his suffering wasn't enough to make her come, that seals the deal. She comes bearing her timeless shawls and skirts, those of a Greek noblewoman, though she herself was a Patrician's daughter, once.
Her voice is calm when she speaks, slowly, in Latin.
"You will catch death if you don't take this," she says, offering the cape. By all appearances, she could be an ordinary woman, out in the cold dusk. She is, of course, anything but.
Reply
She speaks the common tongue, and so he wonders if he's passed on after all. He wonders how he came to be here. He wonders how he came to be in a different clime.
His mind is trying to parse all this information.
Reply
She pauses in her approach, mantle still offered. Her tone is still quiet, disarmingly so, probably.
"I am Pandora. I mean you no harm, I promise it on the life of my betrothed and all that I love." Raising a hand, she adds, "May the gods smite me if I lie."
She pushes the cape towards him, still offering. "You are injured, and naked in the cold of winter. If you do not let me take you to safety, you may die in the cold, and if not, you may lose fingers and toes to frostbite. Please."
It's surprising how important this is to her.
Then again, she was a follower of Ovid, and took no pleasure in her compatriots' cruelties.
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He gives a bitter laugh. "I had thought to find the afterlife, and see again my brother, yet I would present less feeble in my expectations. Unless the fucking gods see fit to punish me even in death." He peers at her, his expression can only be described as stoic pain. "How might safety be found surrounded by Roman dogs?"
Reply
The man is resting, eyes closed on a couch, and she blinks a moment.
A warrior, clearly.
One who has been given more pain than is warranted.
Guinevere of the Brittons does not condone cruelty, and so she will sit nearby, keeping watch, until he wakes. She feels as though she has been, somehow, given this mission by something or someone greater than her.
Assuming with typist permission!
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A blink, then, and she gives him a sad, worried little smile.
"You are safe here," she tells him, because he seems to hear it. "And you are still very wounded. Please, don't make any sudden movements, lest you re-open your wounds."
Her voice is gentle, but firm, as though she were used to this. She stands, and her chemise ripples about her - in this attire, she most certainly looks beneath her station, and as though she realized it now, she fastens her shawl around her shoulders.
"I am Guinevere, and tasked with seeing you to health," she says gently. There was a pitcher nearby, a glass is poured and proffered. "Drink. You must be thirsty, certainly."
Reply
We're not sure how much Pandora explained, but it stands to reason he is still confused about where he is, and why this stranger pledges to aid him.
Reply
Paul will be found in the kitchen, making Eggy in the Basket, because the typist is obsessed with breakfast. It's a bit late, but when he grades, the good professor falls a bit out of his regular schedule.
He'll probably be happy to make breakfast for two.
Reply
We're not sure how well he understands that he's amidst so many from the future, but he would be very interested in hearing the result of their war with Rome. He had been certain that eventually Rome would crumble, but Spartacus would be long remembered for his greatness. Spartacus, the man who he counted brother and friend.
He enters the kitchen while exploring, and his stomach will grumble at the smell of breakfast. Paul, he eyes to assess. Tthere is much strange in this place.
Reply
".... Well I'll be damned," is the greeting Agron gets.
It's not every day you meet a warrior from so far back as pre-Christian times, and the Historian is flabbergasted.
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His gestures are calculated and slow, methodical, as if he relied on the exercise to find balance, which he does.
While he works, he's vaguely humming something from home, a lay of Lothian, and thinking about anything but his family and personal life. In truth, he's a little bit bummed, these days.
Reply
Reply
"Our smiths were the pride of Lothian," he replies in his language, though the Mansion is probably going to be kind and translate.
Being of the North, this one knight doesn't know Latin: he was knighted after his father helped Arthur get rid of the Romans, and his priorities were always on physical prowess.
Reply
Reply
She's in a pensive mood these days, and that leads her to sing something old, something she'd almost forgotten.
Skaldic hearth songs, which will be unfamiliar to him in tune, but the language will most certainly carry some resonance: it is Germanic, and is rooted in Agron's maternal tongue.
Perhaps the sight of a woman who is may not be a Northerner herself, given her dark hair, though her skin is certainly pale enough, singing in a language close to home, will intrigue the gladiator sufficiently.
One thing is sure: Death's whore has once met someone... who was very much like him, in many, many ways.
Reply
Reply
"I speak little of your tongue," she replies, once she's stood, as the man is already towering over her lithe figure, "but I was blessed to be taught these songs, when I was in your country, many years ago."
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