Booted feet scuffed a barren, dirt floor, tracing a path clockwise until he reaches the north. The boots stopped their journey, shoulder width apart. There was nothing. There was silence.
     And then there was a song...
     Old Welsh, a variant of an older Brythonic, left his lips in lilting tones, held upon the tongue and rolled. Booted feet stomped, landing at the end of his journey upon a mossy tuft of Scottish earth.
     The fae superhighway...
     But this is a one-way road, from Powis Castle grounds to Dunsinane Wood. From Llywelyn princes to the resting place of Macbeth's Ghost. In the close distance, Strathfayr Castle, estate of William and Ian.
     Wouldn't they just be shocked...
     But boots didn't pause there. This, only the journey's beginning. Boots transformed to talons, and a falcon rose above the treeline...
     South...

     There's a wave for a second time as Marta grins. A aged wolf and a vampire companion, having turned to each other in comfort, sometimes need Marta's attention. A new stack of firewood, some fresh game, and blood packed in small containers. It'll help them for a few weeks, on those days and nights when neither of them are in the best condition to hunt for themselves.
     The pair close the door to their home, built in the side of a hill. No one has anything to fear from them, and they are left alone to the ravages of immortality.
     Back at her Range Rover, Marta picks up a list and looks at the packages arranged in her back seat and rear storage. Seven more stops to make this round, most before sunrise. She reaches over and pats Ruarri, the large mastiff that occasionally accompanies her, then gathers her skirts to climb into her driver's seat to head off for the next destination.

     The flowering moss covers the earth, peat interrupted by white and purple and stone. There is nothing. There is silence.
     And then there is movement...
     A murder of ravens coalesce in the air. Hovering, they find no slaughter to land on, no trees. They swirl as if controlled by one impulse, one thought, one desire. A strange formation, half deciding to land.
     They never do...
     Lifting, the ravens (there are nine) spread their wings, a hopping and flapping column that soon becomes a black-clothed man.
     Round toe boots, suede with a reinforced toe, thud upon the earth with sudden solidity, a total lack of airiness now. Jet black wings become a leather jacket that falls just past his hips. Black-breasted birds become a black button-down of silk and suede trousers. The edges of a blue tattoo is visible at his chest, and a silver talisman shining -- silver so bright it could not have been mined from the dark earth but is more like light given shape.
     Davydd stands on the heath, boots crushing the moss as he turns to the small cottage set in the middle of nowhere. And along with being in the middle of nowhere it also appears to be completely deserted. Donal not chopping wood and Marta's Range Rover nowhere in sight.
     This is what I am...
     A murder of ravens...
     A white stag in an empty field...
     A ripple on the water...
     A whisper in the ear...
     Davydd stands in the field, sidhe champion and former welsh prince with no one to welcome him! He turns in a circuit, a complete and perfect circle, clockwise. Closing his eyes, he whispers in Old Welsh...
     Where is she?
     And the wind answers...
     And the trees converse...

     "More to go," Marta says with a smile on her face. The dog commands the passenger seat, not startled when she leans forward to turn on the Range Rover's engine. It comes to life easily, and Marta turns the lights on to pick up the road once more. The mastiff leans on his door, sticking his head out of the open window.

     He hears their voices in the air -- the wind, the moss, the flowers, the stone -- each one at a different frequency, like light. The journey of a warm-hearted, gift-giver (moss still speaks in terms Beowulf), the distributor of food and comfort. And blood. Charitable, the earth gives back, the last of all to speak. And then it gives her direction...
     And a murder of ravens (nine) bound off the moss and the stones and the flowers, heading upward and outward.
     They are a symbol of carnage. Carrion fowl, harbingers of death in some religions. But they have also been called the heralds of the Otherworld, birds of dreaming lands. It is unusual to see a murder of ravens so far from the treeline.
     Unless, of course, some shite just died...
     Do you see them at all during your nighttime deliveries?

     "Bored yet, Ruarri," Marta asks, slipping Gaelic. It's perhaps all the dog understands. He looks over at her, tongue wagging, then sticks his head out of the window again.
     Marta grins, bouncing over the barely-sealed road. Her next stop is thirty minutes away.
     But then, Ruarri barks.

     Dogs always know. But then, they can smell evil. Well, not to say a murder of ravens is evil, particularly this murder, but still -- a dog knows. The road rises and falls, dips and gravels, and the flock of black-eyed black birds, large like the Tower variety, hops down upon the road ahead...
     And then a man shrugs his black jacket more squarely onto his large shoulders. Headlights highlight a shock of bronze hair, and holds in its hue a dashing grin as Davydd takes a step back to avoid being run over.
     A dog knows...

     The Range Rover jerks forward, brakes slammed. Ruarri continues to bark as he jumps from the passenger window, rushing out into the road again.
     Bright lights tell the tale. Marta peers - making sure no one's hurt - then narrows her eyes to take in the sight.
     "Davydd ap Owain!" she yells, spinning in her seat as she tosses her door open. Feet crunch the road dirt below as Marta stalks to the front of the Rover, hands in her hair.
     "What's wrong with you? I could have hit you," she motions behind her, "...with this car!" Cars are dangerous, you know. "Ruarri!" she yells, trying to shut up the loudly barking dog.

     You're so beautiful when you're furious. He wears it on his expression, but for his life, he doesn't dare say it. Davydd holds up his hands, both in surrender and in supplication to your anger, but the grin is firmly in place.
     "Ah, you were as good as a mile away," he clips in Gaelic. "I've been flying all over Scotland looking for you," his voice lifts in inflection, as Welsh voices tend to do, "... I'm now famished and I'll be sore tomorrow. Mind if I bum a ride? Cheeky, I know," his grin softens a bit, just as his voice, "...but I... really wanted to speak with you."
     He came all this way...
     No car in sight...
     Disguised as a ... flock of birds?
     How can you say no?

     She had been leaning forward, but Marta soon comes upright. "What's wrong?" she asks, her Welsh florid. Welsh with a Scottish tongue. "Something happen?" Someone's dead, right? Marta doesn't move yet, at least expecting the bad news first.

     "Everything," he notes, fiery eyebrows cocking up. But then Davydd more seriously amends, "No one's died. Not yet anyway. But you know, the universe is open to all sorts of opportunities." A wave. Bah. "It's not life-threatening, no. There was simply no other way to get here and back to Wales without being missed. For all my dearie," Sandrine, "...knows, I'm somewhere in Powis, napping."
     He looks to you, the dog, the car. "Look, no night's a good night, you're always on the road and I need someone to talk to, someone by Christ and Herne who has the best chance of comprehending me. But," hands come up again, "I know you're expected elseplace. Maybe we can do this ... on the road. I'll go with. Hell, for the shock I gave you, I'll even drive." Davydd looks at you and sticks out a hand, "Deal?"
     Deal with a fae? Strike a bargain! Come on...

     There's a sigh as Marta nods. "I'll drive," she says, shaking your hand firmly. "Get in," she waves, smirking as she shakes her red-brown locks. Ruarri, sufficiently calmed, returns to the car as he sees Marta head that way, bounding inside through her open door.
     "How's she?" Marta asks, shifting the car out of gear.

     Davydd circles around the Range Rover, giving a look to you before he heads in. He settles with an exhale, from the gut and rather deep. "She's lovely. She's bewildering. She's Finnish," he says, lolling his head over to the side to look to you as he pulls the door shut. "And I'm in a pickle."
     Rather...
     Although he hopped onto the road in the form of nine ravens, he buckles himself in. You know, women drivers. He's reckless but he's not crazy.
     "I'll just out with it," he says as much with his hands as with his mouth. "We're stuck. She's too... she's Nordic. And I'm so fucking isolated into my grand lie, I don't even know what to say anymore. You were right," Davydd murmurs, "...when you looked at me when I trotted that other anomaly out for you to view," Drancy, "... I am miserable."
     There. I said it. It's true. It's only taken me another four months to admit it.

     "Nice to know you're not a total ghailte," Marta says dryly.
     The Range Rover's interior looks well used. Dog hairs, fine, scatter on the seats. The floor sees feet and dirt. Other than that, it can't be more than a few years old. The road bumps and heaves as you share the ride, the Mastiff having decided to sit in the back seats.
     "So, what are you going to do?" Marta asks, staring ahead into the darkness. It's pitch black out here, and any aerial would pick up her lone lights breaking the night. With the open windows comes the mix of peaty earth and dampness, while inside, the scents compete with the smell of food, wood, and stored blood, for those with that particular bent.

     "I don't know. Edward tells me to be honest. I'm not even sure what honest is anymore. I mean, when have I ever?" Davydd looks to you. "If I say nothing, I'll be gnawing my own foot off to get out of it. If I tell the truth, everything I have seemed to her -- and who knows who all afterwards, depending on the reaction -- will be a damned lie and I'll be even more strange," his hands wave, "...if that's even possible, to her than I am already. And it's not exactly the most important topic du jour, I'm sure of that," he clips it, "...but I suppose, to me, being a self-centered male... my heart and my condition are a bit paramount."
     There follows a mighty exhale. "I'm not a vampire. It's all a bunch of bollocks. Oh, aye, I explode in the sunshine, but... that's about the end of it. So... how am I supposed to fucking reinvent..." Davydd pauses, wild-eyed, and waves his hands, "... Everything?"

     Marta laughs. "You and yer Welsh drama," she snickers. "What's tellin' her anything about...you...got to do with you and her and what you do together?" There's a glance over to you, then Marta focuses on the road again. "What do you want, Davy? That's what I don't get."

     "Because even when I'm with her, and with her," if you catch his drift, and how couldn't you, he's not exactly subtle, "I'm by myself. How the hell else am I supposed to do it? And how am I supposed to explain to her that once a century, I pluck a girl from my own house, fuck her and annoint a child nine months later, on the nose, to help prop up this... this..." his hands gesture for a moment in empty air, "...edifice I have around me? She'll not understand that, what vampire would?"
     You're laughing at me. It's not funny. "I ... want... her to understand me," he says simply. "I want someone on planet earth to hear me and understand me. Love me, gods willing, if they see fit. I can handle a good solid liking if it comes to it, but eight centuries of knowing I'm absolutely alone in every sense has just... gotten to me." His voice inflects in lilts and drags of his own emotion, highly flecked, thick Welsh. He can't concentrate enough to speak Scots Gael.

     Marta sighs. You are frustrated.
     Marta murmurs, "Vampires kill and maim, destroy, and curse others. Vampires rape, cast magics, and torture. Do you think she does not know this?"
     "So...how is what you need to explain terribly hard?"
     "You're not a vampire," Marta goes on, lurching as she hits a bump, "...so what? If I were her, I'd be glad..."

     He laughs. He can't help it. "Well, when you put it like that, if I went up to her and said: I'm the Cardinal Richelieu, it'd be an improvement, aye." Davydd exhales again. "And if I tell her... and she leaves..." You don't have to finish the sentence for him, he knows where he's going. "... then, it's no worse than it already is." He lolls his head over toward you again, watching your profile a moment. "Either way, I'm already on my own..."
     Well, when you put it like that, ap Owain, what have you got to lose?
     He looks out at the road ahead, dark green eyes focusing on the lights, the night, space, his thoughts. "I don't know ... how would you start it, if you were I, Marta? How would you start it? Whenever I open my mouth around the woman I bollocks it up..."

     Marta's quiet a moment, her head tilting to the left towards you, as she drives along. Finally, she says, "I don't know really. You focus too much on what you're not and what you are, than talking about How do I change what is going on between us. That's what is important. The rest is really random wash, Davy..."
     "You just say...that you love her, if you love her, but you need more than what you both have, I guess."
     "Why do you think she doesn't hear you or understand you? Has she shown that to you?"

     "Neither one of us, I suppose, is convinced that we're happy. I do love her. But I need... someone to know. I need someone other than me to know. And maybe it's not fair to want to unburden myself simply because I'm tired." He's thinking aloud now, his voice has gone soft and his inflection not so pronounced. The Welsh rolls gently like a slow stream over rounded stones.
     He thinks on that last bit a moment, hands resting on the suede that covers his thighs. His index finger curls to satisfy a non-existent, or perhaps merely non-specific, itch. "She looks at me as if I'm the strangest creature she knows, and she doesn't know how right she is. When I speak, I confuse her. When I try to explain, she thinks I'm making shite up to be... dramatic as you put it. Once she told me, in her era, men were men, like her brothers and father, and didn't go about," his right hand lifts and makes a wave, "... worrying about how their women felt, or sommat like that. I'm too fucking civilized," he gruffs, "...that's my problem. She doesn't want to know. And she's as removed as I am. I know she's ... stuck as much as I. I'm hoping if... if I am able to speak of what's sticking me that she'll be able to thaw as well. And maybe that's not it. I'm just... out of other ideas. Edward," again with Meurelle and his advice on love. What's the world coming to? "... tells me I have to be honest, or what's the point really. I can buy that. But if I'm honest, then I have to fess up... and when I do that, the whole bloody thing is going to unravel."

     Marta sits quietly once more, hands gripped to the wheel for dear life. "Well, start there then," Marta murmurs. "You look at me strangely. I want to explain why, because I love you..."
     She doesn't doubt you're both trapped. Marta glances over at you, "This won't be one talk, Davydd. Start small...and make sure she knows that you need her. Not just love her or want her, but that you need her, and her specifically, with you..."

     His head lolls over to the side and this time ends up on your own shoulder. "I'm bloody awful at this sort of thing. Can't you tell her for me? Maybe in a series of," he chuckles, "poignant correspondence. I can just show up and give presents in the proper intervals and, god willing, get a lay in or two..."
     Those eyes -- you are going to deny those eyes? But then he smirks and sits up, running his hands through his red hair, unsettling it, and sighing out loud again. "Jesus... how did I end up being the one having to do the talking?" He pauses, picking at invisible lint, something to do with his hands other than smoke or fondle. "I have a bad habit of saying nothing for eons and then flooding at the first opportunity. She says that, you know. Dahvit," he says in her affectation of his Welsh name, "...why do you always talk so crazy? Here, have another plate of lemon tarts." Davydd frowns, there's no set emotion to it, just intensity. "I do need her, Marta. Sometimes, I catch myself thinking that she's the only thing keeping me here and not in the hollow hills somewhere..."

     Marta continues to stare ahead. Maybe this driving thing is hard for her. "What's so special about her, Davy?" she asks. "I mean, if it's all this trouble..."

     "I don't know, Marta. I don't know what it is." Davydd stares forward, actually thinking of it. "Maybe... it's just that she came. She was ...brave enough," he suddenly thinks, "... to show up unannounced on my borrowed doorstep. She found me, she reached out. She's ... brave," he notes again. "And frightened."
     "And alone..."
     "Just like... I am..."

     "Maybe...get out of your current environment?" Marta half-asks and suggests simultaneously. "Go somehwere where you can both open up. Where you can be different. Where you are comfortable, but it's a new place, that doesn't seem like....the same stuff you do over and over?"
     "When was the last time you both went on a very long sabbatical?"
     "Not a vacation," Marta restates. "I mean...leave. Maybe forever? Okay, not forever, but you know...sit out a lifetime?"

     Fiery eyebrows cock up. "We've been in Wales a while again. We were in London. Apart from that...? Never. Last time I rested," a hand lifts to scritch at the line of his jaw, "...was after the last great war, after The Blitz, until...say... 1963 or so. I just slept, I think. Oh, and fucked and fought with Rosamund. I was in a daze with that one."
     Davydd considers the suggestion seriously. Sit out a lifetime. Who'd notice with the pair of us? "I could pack up the dogs... go to Lappland with her. Maybe... get a place no one knows about," he murmurs, thinking as he goes. "God knows I don't have any other responsibilities. Huh..." He snorts at that. Interesting.
     Dark green eyes, with their periwinkle scattering of color here and there, settle on you. "Just ... pick up and go, all mysterious like. You know, I've never really travelled outside of Spain and France, part of North Africa. Maybe it would work..."

     "Maybe," Marta notes, slowing a little as she tries to find a turnoff. She peers ahead, then looks left and right. "Oh, here," she mumbles to her self, turning the wheel with large swivels of her hands.
     "But, don't go and just sit. You go...so you can not be as you are right now, Davy. If you do that, then nothing will change. Everyone needs a chance...to be who they really are..." And she might know.
     "Who..." Marta says softly, trying to stay on the packed dirt as a light from a shack gleams less than a mile away, "...is she. Who are you? What do you want to say or show each other...about what's inside?"

     He smirks at that. "Now where on god's green earth am I going to find a place to be who I am? Disneyland?" He laughs at that, no cackles. He needed that. "Hmm... well..." he says again after a moment, "...maybe the frozen wilderness is where we need to be. The Lappland Lady, so she can be who she truly is, beneath the Toreador. And I... to wander in the white and green world, soft footed sidhe archer and talk to new trees."
     He pauses as you continue. "She's a woman frozen, as pure as a fairy tale, and just as unreal," he whispers. As unreal as I am, in her own way. "It might... do her good to go home. And for me to see it. Somewhere remote," Davydd continues, "...so we don't have to be..."

     A little cold for Marta. "If that's the place, then," she nods. She doesn't really know. "I can't say I know her, Davy. She seems nice. Chilly, but nice. She likes you, it seems. She doesn't have an agenda...that I can tell. She is just...there." But Marta cannot say why.
     The Range Rover buckles and bumps as it moves slowly towards the house. Keen nose says that there are mortals there, but they are more than likely asleep. Ruarri is already up in his back seat, expecting a stop soon.
     "I just need to leave their box for them," Marta explains. "They will see it in the morning. Oh, and their firewood," she whispers to herself, making a mental note as she puts the Range Rover into park.

     "Aye," Davydd notes. He's not blind. He's not deaf. He knows she's a little more than just there, at least on some occasions. Sometimes, it is true, she does appear to simply take up space. She always looks impeccable, however. "Well, we all know who's fault that is, likely." Mr. Toreador Himself. "I'm half afraid of what I'm going to find when I thaw her out a bit," he snorts a laugh. "But no more than she's already afraid of what I might say next at any given moment."
     You put the Rover in park and he unbuckles himself, opening the door to help you. He's a celtic gentleman through and through. With another mighty exhale, he begins to set the matter aside for the night. "You're a good woman, Marta. And you know... you're a dear to me for certes. Even when I don't deserve it, which might be often." He cuts a grin and a wink and goes for the firewood bundle. "I'll ... talk to her. And I'll try not to say it all out at once..."
     Davydd stands on the turf and dirt, eyes going to the sky for a moment, then to his surroundings. Dark Scotland. "And diolch," he says thanks in his own tongue, "...for ... listening..."

     Marta stops, having dropped the back door of the Range Rover, "Your thanks is no good to me Davydd ap Owain." The box is larger than the last, and thank goodness Marta has some vampiric strength. It a cedar box, more than likely filled chilled foods. She grabs handles and shuffles to the front door with it, Ruarri following you instead.
     "I just hope," Marta exhales, standing up from leaving the box, "...things go as you want."

     He takes the bundles of wood and follows behind you, Ruarri following behind him. He says nothing from the Rover to the door and not until he stands nearby you. It occurs to Davydd that you and he would have made a horrible couple, but he does love you. You make talking easy. You're suited to what you have between you -- an enduring friendship occasionally peppered with arguments and a dash or two of copulation. No more, nor less than the deer in the field.
     You surely catch him staring...
     And then he shakes himself out of it with a bit of a smile and a shrug. "Things will likely go as they go. I'm sure I'll be alright at the end of the day. I've made it through worse things, god knows. We'll see. She wants to be happy. I want to be happy. Surely, it can't be that difficult. William and Edward have managed it..."

     "Yeah, so I hear," Marta says grumpily, not buying it. But she hears it to be true. "And you should know never to take advice," her Welsh moving quickly, "...from either of them about matters of love. Or women. Or anything," she says, shaking her head. "Especially now..." that they're both caught up in...well...that's for another day.
     "You can stop staring," Marta adds, closing the door of the Range Rover. "There's things to do, if you want to have a flourish or two before sun up..."

     Fiery eyebrows cocked up when you mentioned not taking love advice from those two, but when you mention 'women', Davydd chuckles. He hadn't thought of it that way.
     As for the flourishing....
     "Then I suggest you let me drive," Davydd ap Owain adds, mouth cutting a slant as he drops off the wood and comes up behind you a moment or twa later. "What am I saying... all of Scotland looks the same, I'd get lost. Alright, how many more stops on the list tonight then?"

     "Five," Marta points at a crumpled piece of paper. "And I will drive," she maintains, moving over to the right driver's side, and getting in once the mastiff hops up.

     Davydd piles into the Rover after the mastiff, one huge hound following another. There's a certain symmetry to it all. And as always after talking to you he feels much better. Maybe he confuses love with indigestion. Whenever he talks to Sandrine he feels like his stomach is falling through the floor.
     But he does love the woman...
     And he most assuredly needs her...
     And more than anything else, he needs her to need him. And to understand.

Posted by rowan at September 18, 2003 11:16 PM