I have contacts, among those who choose to live back home.
[ Allies seems like a stretch of a way to describe Fox and Rabbit. ]
And I've been aware of pathways into the Hedge for sometime now, so it was a matter of figuring out what to pay the gatekeeper.
[ Some things are universal. Guesting laws. Tithes. He'd approached stepping into Arcadia the way he would a Dead Dominion: with extreme caution and enough back-up plans to guarantee a return trip. ]
They can be picky, or so I am told. I haven't had much to do with them and my escort here has little need to pay tribute to anyone. [As far as she knew, anyway.]
You mean the man I saw you with? [Arthur asks, and Morgana nods but also shrugs a little as she's not entirely sure what Arthur had seen on that fateful day.]
Don't get your hackles up, he did what he did to protect me. He cares for me very much. He is kin.
arthur pls don't punch him he's just confirming shit
But it would make sense, now that he considers it. She's not Gentry, but if she were of Gentry-blood, then that would explain why she's able to wander without fear of being taken. ]
Quick question. [ Because he noticed it earlier but didn't think anything of it until now. ] We're on a border: fall and winter.
[ He nods to the line where the gold of autumn faded and transition into the crystal of snow. ]
You kept to this side when you were peering at Arthur earlier. Was that because permissions from the other court are required?
I like to stay where I am welcome and protected. I have few friends in Autumn and fewer kin, though I dare not say with certainty that I have none there.
[Faeries had a way of just popping up in her bloodline it seemed. It wouldn't actually shock her at this point if she had a whole host of cousins somehow in Autumn or Summer.] It is a fear-filled land, also, more prone to playing with that which haunts you most than Winter ever would.
I have lived here or in Spring but nowhere else, and I don't mean to try the other courts on for size.
[Arthur's frown grows so deep that it makes his forehead crease.
Then about a minute later, regardless of if anyone else is talking at the time.]
Wait, who is the fairy kin? They only took you so is it Gorlois?
Not my Da, no, but his kin. I cannot say if you have any in you, sorry. [After all, who could say with the way fairies fucked around and let other people find out.]
[ Fox had commented something about Arthur, but he doesn't remember it right now. Something about the boy not being Fae, but that he had protections more than mostβfor all that the boy was oblivious to it.
He crosses over the border and into Winter, no sense standing on the other side of the fence given that safety's more likely to be true if he sticks with Morgana and Arthur. ]
That must be the reason the old ghost seemed particularly convinced that you were okay, for all that he still has a bone to pick with your stepdad.
[ Gorlois had been an interesting discovery the day he'd followed Arthur to the cemetery where a 12-year-old Morgana had presumably been laid to rest. The old(er) man had stood close to Josh, his ghost particularly lucid for a facsimile. But then some of the restless dead became that over the years. An entity of their own with some limited sense of agency instead of an echo of what had been left behind. ]
Old ghost? [Morgana immediately is paying more attention to Josh, as though he had tugged a string connected directly to her.] My Da? Gorlois? You saw him???
[This, Arthur remembers. That look of pain that could become so intense on Morgana's features that he was tempted to flinch himself. He had never met the man, not even in a dream, at least nothing before all of this but he had seen him in a thousand ways Morgana was nothing like their mother or anyone else he had known growing up. She was more her father's daughter than she had ever been ygraines and it didn't take knowing the man to be sure of it.
Especially when she had that look on her face and she hadn't once asked after their mother, who, too, had never asked after her or considered Arthur might be speaking the truth.
Quickly he finds himself gently stroking patterns on her palm, to soothe and distract her.]
[ He doesn't expect such a visceral reaction, but he can tell that this is important. At least, judging by the way Arthur's taken to fussing gently over her. ]
Yes. He's still hanging around where, I assume, your mother had him buried.
[ The old ghost wasn't a Reaper, but it's telling that he was calling the shots and keeping the dead in line. He was also, if Josh was to take him on his word, capable of stepping away from where he'd been laid to rest to wander the Pendragon home. ]
He asked that I help Arthur. But yeah, was around.
Did she bury us together, then? Well not me but... you know. [There is such longing in Morgana's eyes at the thought of seeing her father again, of finally getting to rest with him. There had been times as a child she wished she could have and might have tempted fate enough to cross over if not for the steady anchor of looking after Arthur.]
She did, father was unhappy about it, but she did.
Uther is unhappy about everything, up to and including the rotation of the earth. Strange though, given... everything. [The betrayals, the immediate moving on after his death - or before it, really. The fact she had stopped noticing Morgana was even a person as soon as Uther came around.]
[ He's thoughtful as he watches their exchange; the barest hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Based on everything he's heard so far about Arthur's father, he doesn't care much for the man. But Gorlois was a whole kettle of fish altogether. ]
I... [ he pauses, purses his lips a little and then works out what it is he really wants to say. ] If you can travel out of here, I can arrange for you to speak with him.
[ He still has most of what they weren't able to use up for the Dumb Supper, Morgana not actually being dead and all. ]
I have never gone on my own. Grandfather sometimes let me in the lands betwixt but never fully home.
[Yet her desire to see her father does more than enough to cover any fear the idea brings her, she looks deep in thought even as Arthur's eyes grow more eager. Faerie seemed nice enough, for such a strangely fair and foul place, but to have Morgana home, amongst the living, somewhere he could always find her?
That, he couldn't let go of. Not now, not ever. He squeezes her hand, and though his knowledge of such things was hardly anything at all, he spoke with confidence.]
I am sure you will pass safely with us, Morgana. You say these people love you and they have no love of us yet we were safe enough.
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[ Allies seems like a stretch of a way to describe Fox and Rabbit. ]
And I've been aware of pathways into the Hedge for sometime now, so it was a matter of figuring out what to pay the gatekeeper.
[ Some things are universal. Guesting laws. Tithes. He'd approached stepping into Arcadia the way he would a Dead Dominion: with extreme caution and enough back-up plans to guarantee a return trip. ]
no subject
You mean the man I saw you with? [Arthur asks, and Morgana nods but also shrugs a little as she's not entirely sure what Arthur had seen on that fateful day.]
Don't get your hackles up, he did what he did to protect me. He cares for me very much. He is kin.
arthur pls don't punch him he's just confirming shit
But it would make sense, now that he considers it. She's not Gentry, but if she were of Gentry-blood, then that would explain why she's able to wander without fear of being taken. ]
Quick question. [ Because he noticed it earlier but didn't think anything of it until now. ] We're on a border: fall and winter.
[ He nods to the line where the gold of autumn faded and transition into the crystal of snow. ]
You kept to this side when you were peering at Arthur earlier. Was that because permissions from the other court are required?
no subject
[Faeries had a way of just popping up in her bloodline it seemed. It wouldn't actually shock her at this point if she had a whole host of cousins somehow in Autumn or Summer.] It is a fear-filled land, also, more prone to playing with that which haunts you most than Winter ever would.
I have lived here or in Spring but nowhere else, and I don't mean to try the other courts on for size.
[Arthur's frown grows so deep that it makes his forehead crease.
Then about a minute later, regardless of if anyone else is talking at the time.]
Wait, who is the fairy kin? They only took you so is it Gorlois?
Not my Da, no, but his kin. I cannot say if you have any in you, sorry. [After all, who could say with the way fairies fucked around and let other people find out.]
no subject
He crosses over the border and into Winter, no sense standing on the other side of the fence given that safety's more likely to be true if he sticks with Morgana and Arthur. ]
That must be the reason the old ghost seemed particularly convinced that you were okay, for all that he still has a bone to pick with your stepdad.
[ Gorlois had been an interesting discovery the day he'd followed Arthur to the cemetery where a 12-year-old Morgana had presumably been laid to rest. The old(er) man had stood close to Josh, his ghost particularly lucid for a facsimile. But then some of the restless dead became that over the years. An entity of their own with some limited sense of agency instead of an echo of what had been left behind. ]
no subject
[This, Arthur remembers. That look of pain that could become so intense on Morgana's features that he was tempted to flinch himself. He had never met the man, not even in a dream, at least nothing before all of this but he had seen him in a thousand ways Morgana was nothing like their mother or anyone else he had known growing up. She was more her father's daughter than she had ever been ygraines and it didn't take knowing the man to be sure of it.
Especially when she had that look on her face and she hadn't once asked after their mother, who, too, had never asked after her or considered Arthur might be speaking the truth.
Quickly he finds himself gently stroking patterns on her palm, to soothe and distract her.]
no subject
Yes. He's still hanging around where, I assume, your mother had him buried.
[ The old ghost wasn't a Reaper, but it's telling that he was calling the shots and keeping the dead in line. He was also, if Josh was to take him on his word, capable of stepping away from where he'd been laid to rest to wander the Pendragon home. ]
He asked that I help Arthur. But yeah, was around.
no subject
She did, father was unhappy about it, but she did.
Uther is unhappy about everything, up to and including the rotation of the earth. Strange though, given... everything. [The betrayals, the immediate moving on after his death - or before it, really. The fact she had stopped noticing Morgana was even a person as soon as Uther came around.]
no subject
I... [ he pauses, purses his lips a little and then works out what it is he really wants to say. ] If you can travel out of here, I can arrange for you to speak with him.
[ He still has most of what they weren't able to use up for the Dumb Supper, Morgana not actually being dead and all. ]
no subject
[Yet her desire to see her father does more than enough to cover any fear the idea brings her, she looks deep in thought even as Arthur's eyes grow more eager. Faerie seemed nice enough, for such a strangely fair and foul place, but to have Morgana home, amongst the living, somewhere he could always find her?
That, he couldn't let go of. Not now, not ever. He squeezes her hand, and though his knowledge of such things was hardly anything at all, he spoke with confidence.]
I am sure you will pass safely with us, Morgana. You say these people love you and they have no love of us yet we were safe enough.