The Bright One

[lionbright]

There's a dark, slender boy walking toward the house, his bewitching face as pale as salt at the moment, and he's dressed for travelling in the dead of winter at least a thousand years ago.  He has the bearing of a prince and a warrior, for all that he's never seen a battle, and carries no weapon.  The sheath that held his hunting knife is empty.

Comments

[sissy_queen]

Well, clearly, he has to come across Gwenevere, who never had a child from Arthur, and who is walking about, aghast in wonder at the beautiful colors of fall.

She will come to him, and gasp in shock. "Lo, sir, art wounded?"

Wrong time zones? There are no wrong timezones. XD

[lionbright]

and he looks up at her, gold and lovely and scarcely older than he is, and stares: frowning, bewildered. Because in some sense he recognizes his mother, in some sense she is his mother, but also clearly not. Also, it was snowing, where he was before. So probably he's dreaming.

He shakes his head in answer, still frowning, hesitating to talk to a hallucination.

[sissy_queen]

"But all this blood..." she takes a step towards him, looking at him curiously, finding perhaps something in him that is familiar, strangely.

[lionbright]

"It's not mine." He looks at his hands and shakes them, with a sharp intake of breath. Well, he's talking now, he may as well go on. "It was--I hurt my brother, my lady, and had to take stitches in his hand to mend it. I did not mean it--"

[mancalledspade]

Since he's likely to be descended upon by Arthurians, here's more of a shock: a tall, slender man, blond and beardless, from the 1930s, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette out on the porch. He raises his eyebrows, deepening the triple "v" of his face (the creases of his forehead, his eyebrows, and his mouth). "You look like hell. Did you run into something in the woods?"

T: No worries - lag is a problem for some of us in the "right" timezone too. XD Welcome.

[lionbright]

In fact it's a relief to find someone offering concern, even if the face is unfamiliar and the clothes are strange.

"In the woods--? Well, yes--I've been travelling with my brother." Cautiously. "And my cousin. We've been fighting."

[He's staring at the curious hat--it's wonderful. Smooth and soft, and you can tilt it over your eyes in bright sunlight.]

[mancalledspade]

Said hat is tilted back a bit with one thumb, so Spade can take a better look. "Well. Better than some of the alternatives. You've just arrived, then."

[lionbright]

"May a person stay?" Still looking around in wonder, because it does seem real. He starts forward suddenly, reaching toward the cigarette. "Sir, the paper is alight! Keep it from your lips--"

[unhappysteward]

Sir Kay, in this incarnation, is about forty, pre Grail quest, pre death, but well and truly set in his critical ways and his job as seneschal. So when the young man stumbles in, he frowns at this intrusion onto the order he's tried to create in this house, and says, "You need one of the doctors."

[lionbright]

He's so whacked he doesn't for one second notice it's not the Caius he knows.

"I'm not hurt. But sir, I must beg sanctuary of this house--and your protection, too, my lord, as ever--"

He pauses, looking around.

[unhappysteward]

Kay blinks. Well, it must be someone's son. Maybe another of the Orkneys - he's got a very passing resemblance to Mordred's sons, if Kay squints.

"Well, I'm not going to hurt you, at least, and as long as you stay indoors, you're fairly safe."

[lionbright]

"They can't be far behind." A quick glance back outside, clearly paranoid. And in the same breath, "Thank god you've found me, Caius."

[illgotten]

Mordred, just coming down the steps, pauses in startlement -- Kay is not wrong; he does look like a relative, especially at first glance. But they're pretty much all accounted for by now.

Still, his tone is gentler than it might otherwise be, for yet another bedraggled newcomer. "Are you all right?"

[typist: I LOVE YOU. That is all.]

[lionbright]

WHOA.

He starts back in deep, real, irrational and undisguised horror.

[typist: I am so. going. to. hell.

[illgotten]

"Easy-- easy." Mordred holds up his hands. "Easy, there. It's all right."

[it's cozy down here. :D]

[lionbright]

"Oh, so you say--what am I to believe or imagine, what?"

does a double-take.

"But you are not--"

agggh, so confusing, and he really doesn't trust his brain right now.

[It is! easy, easy, easy is the descent into Avernus...]

[thesunbird]

Telemakos looks down at him curiously from the porch, where he's crouched with Athena, sharing food with her.

[lionbright]

[t: does he see Mordred??? as I'm going to hell anyway...]

[thesunbird]

might as well. he's just kind of lurking.

[lionbright]

[well, in THAT case...]

He turns to finish climbing the stairs, and sees Telemakos, and stops cold again.