"Testing - one, two, three. This is a test of the emergency screech system, had this been a real screech, you would now all be deafened for the remainder of the evening."
     It's Fiona's first time in a long time up on a stage by herself; there was always a reason why she focused on being behind the notepad and not the microphone. In her case : nerves. She's full of them, isn't she? And she always has been. A nerveless Fiona would be remarkably dull and peaceful - and probably dead. Or at least comatose.
     She's dressed to impress - well, no, not really. She's got on a white silk blouse, terribly strictly tailored and open at the neck, with a thin black suede vest sliding over that, open. A silver torc coils lightly around her throat, silver hoops in her ears, and she wears a flowing skirt of dark green down to her ankles, of heavy velvet. Her hair's done back with small braids and crystal beads and glittering glass bells over the main mass of heavy tresses, and while she's not wearing makeup, she's not exactly displeased with her appearance for this occasion. It's ... her, in ways which she doesn't understand and doesn't expect anyone else to.
     "Now that I've gotten your attention," Fiona tells the gathered pub-goers, with a small smile and a glance over her shoulder at Kelly and some assorted musicians, "I figure I'll break with tradition and with any expections you might have based on the way I'm dressed. You see, I'm strictly amateur - but I don't limit myself to folk. Try not to throw anything at me, hm?"
     Underneath it, she's nervous - hellishly nervous, truth be told. But she's British. Close your eyes and think of England. Don't think of Davydd; he's not here, and thank god for that. Right now, that's the last thing we need... "I'd like to begin with a song from a bunch of lads and a girl just across the water - U2 and Sinead, to be precise. I won't be ripping up any pictures of religious figures tonight, but if someone wants to contribute a photo of David Koresh, I might oblige."
     She pauses, trying to get over her distraction, fretful thoughts which insist on running to the person who introduced her to this bloody place, and Fiona clears her throat, settling onto a stool - sans instruments for now. Voice is enough - for now, anyway. "The song? Oh, yes. 'I'm Not Your Baby.'" A quirk of a grin is given to Kelly and the others, and then she closes her eyes, waiting... for her cue.

     It started up over a year ago, several lads joining in -- a band of musicians if not a band of like-minded brothers. Kelly Morgan on fiddle and guitar (he inherited that), Bonnie Charlie Parker on the kit, and occasionally Gifford Grace Walters on the stand-up bass. Kith and kin, they are, of a type. Music's the grand unifier, ain't it?
     Kelly's a blonder red and a shave shorter than Davydd ap Owain, but he lost nothing of his father's breadth, which only goes to make him a bit more of a brick shithouse than Llywelyn-so called. Charlie Parker's a skinny, lanky, tall Scot, complete with shock of blonde hair under a boler and a soul patch. Gifford Grace Walters is a dark-haired Welshman, must be that strain of Spain that Llywelyn himself introduced. He rarely speaks -- you know, that whole bass-player mystique...
     At the quirk of the grin, that's his cue, the song breaks acoustic, maybe strangely, becoming its own thing. Neither rock, nor folk, nor protest, nor ballad. It's U2, but with a difference...

I'm a breather... a receiver and I don't know where I stand not since someone informed me that my house was built on sand... And its not the earth beneath me, just some concept of the land... ...I'm riding to meet you on a brown-grey speckled mare... but there's something that unnerves me, like I ride on altered air... These few doubts desert me, thinking no one really cares.... And I'm jumping over fences on this obstacle course... but it seems I'm getting nowhere on the concept of the horse...      There were once great woods near Welshpool. Once great stands of trees, like fabled Broceliande. Dark-skinned oak and white birch. But it is all cut away now, the British demand for a navy still evident in the wide plains that were once thick with trees.      But there are enough, brothers and sisters...      There are enough....      In a patch of trees, holly and oak grow thickly. The oak is bare of leaves, the only green remaining in the lichen on the dark bark and the mistletoe wrangling above. The holly is evergreen, thorny, resistent. And he, among them all, a little bit of both...      All hail the Holly King...      All hail the Oak King...      It is the same entity...      Davydd walks through the thicket, jacket over his jumper, breath hitting the air. And as he moves, he becomes the forest around him. They open their voices to him, and he greets them. The air parts before him, and the earth changes beneath his feet, becoming the dark world of the In Between in winter. A silver spring full of salmon leaps suddenly past and he walks his domain and among the trees that make up the forest of his current thoughts...

     "It's a beautiful day today
     Everything is going my way
     Even the words are doing what I say
     Oh babe...got to get away..."
     Drancy's peering out, the words melodic, but with just a hint of fierceness, hardness. Remember, Davydd? The sidewalk - the bloody tree, and yes, that's swearing, even if it's also true. Remember it? Back when it all started. I remember - sometimes I wonder if that's when things went right or wrong.
     "To be impossible
     Isn't that difficult
     In the city you're invisible
     When you come from a small town
     Everything is all right
     Everything is all right
     I'm not your baby...please..."
     Invisibility proved hard to come by for both of us, didn't it? Hiding from ourselves or from others. Fiona lets her thoughts drift, eyes half-closed as she stands in front of the stool, eyes slightly narrowed, the hard blue-green of them almost artificial. Not that anyone'll notice with the lights. It's a Drancy moment - let the girl have her turn, after all. One song isn't so much, and the others they share.
     "Don't treat me like I'm a trick
     I won't treat you like you're a prick
     Don't need no doctor, I'm not ill
      I'm not your baby
     Cut out the poetry
     Let's hit the main artery
     No time for a tourniquet
     Let the colours all run out of me
     Don't want you to cover me
     Smother me or mother me
     I like to feel this incomplete
     I'm not your baby..."
     The song's got an edge to it - violent and soft and at the same time vigorous. It's the only chance Drancy's going to have to get out tonight, that's for damn sure - a Sinead O'Connor moment isn't in the offing. And - of course - she'll milk it for all it's worth. Knuckles are white around the microphone, voice harsh for a moment before settling back into the smooth patter of the song.
     "Daylight's a kind of robbery
     The night is your geography
     So you're not white, you're pink and rosy
     You could be right, but you're way above me
     So you've got a lot to say
     You don't sleep around, but sometimes you stray
     You don't believe, often times you pray
     For something, what is it babe
     Everything is all right
     Everything is all right
     I'm not your baby
     ...please..."
     U2 would've ended it on a techno note. Drancy is cut off in mid-syllable, ending it acoustic, the single word drawn out almost softly, with a hint of that anger, that frustration even as it turns to Fiona's voice again, pure and quiet. First song of the night. But then, she's following the big acts.

Cut out the poetry Let's hit the main artery No time for tourniquet Let the colours all run out of me...      Wandering feet halt beside a river, and the man who walks there is a modern spectacle and an anachronistic flashback, clothed as both even as he walks both lines, breathes both halves this time of year. His short hair is short still but longer, bronze curls given a bit more sway today, half waves as he half walks in a half world.      And the words of a song bounce off the leaves, a kind of missed communication, like a radio in the distance, echoing, that you can almost make out but not completely. The trees are speaking to him, and the water of his land, and the fish in the water, and the teaming life that he's a part of, that his energy feeds.      Twisting trees and clinging vines cover the earth and mistletoe the bows of the trees, twisting like the blue designs of the nine tattoos. And he wanders through the evening world, but the river is illuminated -- not by the moon but by his passing.      This is who I am...      Earth and briar and running stream...      And the bridge that crosses the brook...      And the book that holds every song of Taliesin...      It is not of the dead things, deader that the deadest stone laid on the earth for the feet of men. It is not of the cursed things, cursed even so it is not where he belongs. It only takes standing here to remind him...      It may be a solitary life...      But Life is not solitary...      There is a peace in knowing that peace is only ever temporary...      Davydd ap Owain walks his earth, following the tumbling twist of the fish-filled river lined with hazel, oak, ash and thorn...

     The song ends, and Fiona's actually half-relieved, really. It's good to get things out sometimes, isn't it? Getting Drancy out of her system before she does something stupid. Like jump off another bridge. Or go hunting for strange people in stranger nightclubs. Or fuck Davydd Llewellyn. Anybody's guess, anybody's game, and for tonight, she's not playing at anything but music.
     But music is its own game, and it has its own rules, and she's not gone and left the stage yet, has she? Her hair feels impossibly heavy tonight, pulling her head back a bit, tipping her chin up as she brings the microphone in. Someone in the audience has gone to their car to get a tape recorder. If it plays tomorrow, maybe he'll have something worth bootlegging. Or maybe it'll just sound like cats yowling in heat. Or maybe it'll be gone, a handful of dried leaves in its place.
     Faerie's funny that way.
     "I thought for the next song, now we've gotten some of the ... working week's aggressions out ... we'd go with something a little more in line with what we're all probably used to." Her tone is light, warm, purely Fiona at her most civil, even pleasant.
     It's still not the real her - just one of the faces she puts on for company - but it's a tolerable face, a friendly face. She glances to Kelly and the gang, grinning a little as she fixes the microphone in her hands. "A lovely woman named Suzanne Vega did this first, but I hope you'll like what I've done with it. 'Gypsy', ladies and gentlemen."
     It's Fiona's voice, this time, unadulteratedly so - but there's a husky note to it, not the high, pure choir notes she's capable of. A musing, a dreaming sound, a sound of someone lost in their own world and contemplating someone, something she's found there. She cants her head to the side as she sings, gaze turned inwards, and though the song could fit Davydd, it could fit Dei almost as easily - almost, but not quite, reluctant though she might be to admit it even to herself.
     "You come from far away
     With pictures in your eyes
     Of coffeeshops and morning streets
     In the blue and silent sunrise
     But night is the cathedral
     Where we recognized the sign
     We strangers know each other now
     As part of the whole design
     You are the jester of this courtyard
     With a smile like a girl's
     Distracted by the women
     With the dimples and the curls
     By the pretty and the mischievous
     By the timid and the blessed
     By the blowing skirts of ladies
     Who promise to gather you to their breast
     You have hands of raining water
     And that earring in your ear
     The wisdom on your face
     Denies the number of your years
     With the fingers of the potter
     And the laughing tale of the fool
     The arranger of disorder
     With your strange and simple rules
     Yes now I've met me another spinner
     Of strange and gauzy threads
     With a long and slender body
     And a bump upon the head
     Oh, hold me like a baby
     That will not fall asleep
     Curl me up inside you
     And let me hear you through the heat.."
     There's an internal muttered curse. Why does it keep going back to him? Why does it keep recurring? She didn't pick these songs for -him-, after all, but for herself - songs she was confident of, knew she could do - songs which might mean something or might not, but which would ... sound ... nice.
     But there's nothing nice about Davydd, is there? There shouldn't be...

I've lived through many varied shapes before I came this form... Swordblade Raindrop Shining star The thunder of a storm I have been a written word, and I have been a book I've been a bridge that passed above ten rivers and a brook... I have been a lantern's light, an eagle flying free... I've commanded men at war... And sailed out on the sea... I have been a warrior's sword, and I have been his shield I've been the strength set in a heart, and viper in the field...      The Oak King leans against the body of a tree, one of his fellows, and oak as he. Tipping back his head, he closes his eyes, and with a breath he merges into the bark, becoming another section of the tree, or maybe its bark, his feet rooting deep into the earth to feel the pulse of its heart. A turn of his head and oak moves in a sway against a wind. Through the earth ... and to the stream, he transforms again, becoming the water that feeds the earth, that feeds the trees. I have been a water's foam The stone inside a mill An oak tree in a sacred grove And snake upon the hill I have been a shining star and know the secrets held therein Of stars before the earth was made Nothing Is that I've Not Been...      It carries him to a drop off of earth and stone and roots, and there where water droplets fell a dark bird is seen to lift. The dark and wintered world-between-worlds brightens beneath his wings, even as the dark world is the shadow of his every summer sun.      It doesn't matter who the consort is...      If the right world is chosen, all things that should be shall be opened...      Deny the self, deny the world its energy, and you imprison yourself...      It will be as it will be...      All hail the return of the king...

     "And now I'm all alone again
     Nowhere to turn, no one to go to
     Without a home without a friend
     Without a face to say hello to ..."
     From one song into the other, smoothly, flowing like water down a mountain side. The tempos aren't so different as all that, and it's a moment she allows to shine through her. The magic is starting to pick up in her, now. Fiona's aware of it, distantly, but she's lost in a rambling estate of music the size of a small planet. She's got the microphone in hand, but it's surely coincidence that it picks up her voice, for where she wanders, only those sensitive to nuances of magic could follow.
     Dark London streets... dark Parisian streets... does it make a difference? I've walked them both, before...
     "And now the night is near
     I can make believe he's here ..."
     Why does everything come back to make-believe? What's real? What's not? I don't even know anymore. Did it happen at all? Maybe I imagined it - I suppose it wouldn't be the first time... Am I losing my grip on reality?
     What's reality, anyway, and what's it ever done for me?
     "Sometimes I walk alone at night
     When everybody else is sleeping
     I think of him and I'm happy
     With the company I'm keeping"
     My own company, really. Unless I give him false form in my own head. Unlike Fanchine and Cosette, though, the only causes I seem to sell myself on are at least my own - an odd sort of integrity, but all I've got to my name...
     "I love him
     But when the night is over
     He is gone
     The river's just a river..."
     God, I hope Hwyll's not in the audience tonight... he'll be getting ideas, and I really don't want to break off his knob and hand it to him...
     Sparks of glamour are spreading, rippling, ribboning out over the audience now, invisible to those not sensitive to more than the mere ambience of magic. Her hair lifts and settles, as if in a stray breeze - eh, it's an old building, don't you know, drafts - but it's still just a ripple, not a flood nor a tidal wave...
     Only the merest pebble sent to ripple the surface of London waters and beyond...
     "I love him
     But every day I'm learning
     All my life
     I've only been pretending ..."
     Good god, I must really hate myself to be singing this song after everything going on. Who am I even talking about, anyway? Dei? Davydd. I am so confused. Let's face it, Fee, you need help. Mental. Utterly mental.
     "I love him
     I love him
     I love him
     But only on my own ..."
     At what point does one go from halfway in love with someone, or a little in love with someone, to the entire thing? Can love be measured out by coffee-scoops or tablespoons? And what happens when it feels like something more is supposed to happen? Ah, shut up, you've got more songs to sing...
     It's a mercy the distraction doesn't show on her face, the concentration seeming immense, as immense as the roil of emotions below the surface of that placid skin. If it were, the glamour'd be an explosion for sure.

     The three musicians with you feed off of the energy that begins to rise around you, and you feel yourself surrounded by at least one or two who may do the same in their own way. And the audience responds. To them, to most of them, it's just a damn fine performance. There'll be buzz about you come tomorrow...

     We are split into notions of dark and light, summer and winter, man and woman. We are always seeking the balance, or in some cases the Whole. We're the ray of sun chasing its shadow. That is why we seek Someone, what preoccupies us. Without Someone else to help the balance, to make us something other than halves of a whole.
     We cleave to one another in the constant need for procreation -- not merely of the physical but of the spiritual. In Us, it is Most Natural. And like to like, we are grabbed by the attraction of Life itself and the Magic it gives rise to.
     It isn't about seduction, on some level it isn't even about love -- it's far more fundamental. Primal. We need simply because We Are. And for the hope of May or Will Be.
     We seek familiar company...
     And understanding to soothe the otherwise solitary Way. We are all of us on a solo path, one which only we can truly walk, even as we are born and (most of us) die. But we continually seek partnerships with those who most understand our particular footprints on this path.
     In the end of all things, we are looking for Ourselves when we find One Another. Souls and hearts mirror in those we cling to, reflecting back pieces.
     Pieces...
     The halves constantly in search of ultimate cohesion...
     The dark bird hops upon the earth and Davydd stands, his steps leading him toward a golden illumination on the surface of the running, salmon-filled stream.

     Three songs left. Thank god, just three more, and I'm off the hook...
     It's frighteningly seductive, the magic, the music, the combination of the two - that she feels others join in on the end which isn't entirely mundane is startling, even if she doesn't entirely understand it. Eyes gone grey search the audience quickly, looking for you - Davydd? Are you there? But no, there's no immediate sign of close-cropped head of red hair. Likely for the best; she's altogether too uncertain of herself to see that face at the moment.
     The music shifts. It's darker now - as dark as dappled sunlight in Faerie is not. But Faerie can be dark as well ... Holly and Oak. A balance to be met, maintained.
     "Out on the wily, windy moors, we'd roll and fall in green..."
     Oh, yes, Davydd. You have a temper. I've met your temper, with my own frustration - and let's be honest. Jealousy, just like the song says. Jealous that you could walk away, had something to hold onto, when I didn't feel like I had anything, not even myself.
     I hated you, I loved you too..."
     Why do I fight it? Why not just admit it? Let's face it - before Dei came into the picture, you were there - all however much of you, bold as brass - as copper as your hair. Oh, I hated you so much! Irrational... I wanted to kick you in the shins and run away.
     Isn't that what children do on playgrounds to tell someone they like them?
     You - I was so sure I'd finally figured you out, that you didn't like me. Weren't attracted to me, didn't want me around, not as a friend, not anything else, not that there was anything else to have me around for. And yet again, you walk in so calmly and turn my world on its ear, Davydd. I don't know what to feel - it's all gone topsy-turvy.
     Was Dei something - someone - I wanted? Or was it one more step in my effort to forget about you, find answers which didn't include you?
     "Ooh, it gets dark, it gets lonely
     On the other side from you
     I pine a lot, I find the lot falls through without you
     I'm coming back love, cruel Heathcliff
     My one dream, my only master..."
     You can be a right bastard at times, Davydd. And yet, oddly, I seem to end up in tears the more often when you're being nice to me...
     "Too long I roam in the night
     I'm coming back to his side to put it right..."
     Coming back implies I left, though. I didn't - did I? Well, I suppose it's nice to know even my subconscious slips up now and again. But I've been roaming, certainly - and haven't found a goddamned thing.
     "Heathcliff, it's me, I'm Cathy, I've come home
     I'm - so cold, let me in your window
     Heathcliff, it's me, I'm Cathy, I've come home
     So cold..."
     Freezing, really. Don't know if I'll ever get warm again. But - jumping off bridges isn't supposed to be heartwarming, is it? Funny, everyone compares me to Joan of Arc. So where's the bloody fire?
     So cold...

     Despite the Winter...
     Despite the wetness of the season...
     Where the Oak King treads, small flowers spring up in his steps and the earth turns green. Even the longest night of the year is followed by ever-increasing light. Ahead, the way to Powis Castle glows emerald in his cresting arrival. To the castle that exists in both realms, the physical and the spiritual.
     He is being called and he responds...
     Boots sink into the wet Welsh sod and the wind moves over the rise and fall of the plateau and the surrounding valley. Streams that only exist in the spiritual world -- streams of light and energy as much as water -- carry the sound of her voice, the words of her song, they call her by her name...
     She is Isabel's Daughter...
     However many times removed...
     Ooh, it gets dark, it gets lonely
     On the other side from you
     I pine a lot, I find the lot falls through without you
     We have gone a thousand miles to avoid walking across the room together. We've wandered tangled paths that weren't required for the shock of the magic and attraction that left our hands that first night. I knew it then when you took my hand, when you turned my hand over to spy the dragons at my wrist.
     The rest of it was just the running... just the running from what was already done.
     The way is crossed...
     The spiritual way is faster than the physical...
     Close your eyes, you wish for me...
     Don't you see...
      It's as easy as that...
     You call me once, you do not need to repeat it...
     ...Between the folds of stone and brick, in ripples of mortar he makes his way on foot from Diagon Alley and Haymarket to the snapping flags of the Strand and the smell of The Thames...

     The next song - next to last song of the night, she warns the audience, with a small laugh she doesn't entirely feel - it's a bit more upbeat. It begins, tensed, with a hint of birdcall. And it's the first song of the night which isn't in some way, shape or form a love song; because if 'I'm Not Your Baby' isn't a love song, even defiantly - then what is it?
      "Winter's on the wing
     Here's a fine spring morn
     Coming clean through the night
     Come the May I say..."
     It's almost over, really, isn't it? But what will happen, when things end? Do things ever begin? No - the serpent's still got his tail firmly fixed in his own mouth. For good or for ill ...
     For better or for worse?
     "The winter's taking flight
     Sweeping dark cold air
     Out to sea, spring is born
     Comes the Day I say..."
     Spring brings newness. Everybody knows that. The song has a hint of excitement in it, hopeful but firm - it will happen, because it has always happened. Winter must always give way which gives way in turn to summer which turns to autumn and grows into winter once more. It is the way of things.
     There's energy in the song, and the song is not just powered by magic - in its own way, it is magic. It's building in her, as it has been. It might not be the full and final release of the night - yet - but then again, maybe it will be.
     "And you'll be here to see it
     Stand and breathe it all the day
     Stoop and feel it, stop and hear it
     Spring, I say..."
     It teases the audience - she teases the audience, flirting with her voice, coaxing them, pulling them in with the promise of Spring. See, look you, it isn't winter anymore. These traces of snow and frost? They can be shaken off. Fiona is at her most playful, her most fey - and isn't even aware of the audience she's toying with. Maybe Kelly recognizes what's going on, and maybe not - but it isn't hurting anyone, is it? Spring is a time of thirst, after all.
     "Glaring down through the gloom
     Gone the gray I say
     The sun spells the doom
     Of the winter's reign"
     Sunlight and warmth - heat and fire. Ice cannot last forever any more than a flame lasts without kindling...
     "Spring, I say I say!"
     Isn't that the mark of the magician? Command the magic, the power, and it will respond. Focus - and release. Martial arts... a weapon... orgasm... Magic.
     "Be gone, ye howling gales
     Be off, ye frosty morns
     All ye solid streams begin to thaw
     Melt, ye waterfalls
     Part, ye frozen winter walls
     See, see now it's starting!"
     Magic, whipping to a frenzy - glamour - the wind outside is picking out, rattling newspapers along the sidewalk, building to send treebranches quivering and moaning with a rubbing of limbs. Street signs vibrate with a metal hum; traffic signals dance on their wires.
     "The storm'll soon be by
     Leaving clear blue sky
     Soon the sun will shine
     Comes the day, say I
     And you'll be here to see it
     Stand and breathe it all the day
     Stop and feel it, stop, and hear it
     Spring, I say!"
     But before it can get there, the storm has to break. The energy is there - the wind howls once, then quiets as it dies off. But the underlying energy is pent up - held - waiting. Oak King ... where are you?
     Apparently, some small singer has an announcement to make...
     Fiona pauses for breath, reaching down for a glass of water to moisten her lips, her other hand pushing tangled hair back from her forehead. Everywhere, there is the buzz and hum of magic, rendering the world almost unreal - it's a thick curtain of quintessence, cutting her off from the so-called view of reality. And for once, she doesn't care.
     "Last song of the night, ladies and gents - place your orders now while I take just a moment to get my voice back under control." As if it ever weren't. She's waiting ...
     For something...

     The wind outside lifts the shorn-short curls and buffets against the wool of his jumper and his coat. Visible beneath the lamplight, he moves in shades of black and white: summer and winter all over again. Each bootstep falls upon the concrete with a punctuating mark of magic felt, and Magic as He Is, he responds. It answers you in the crackling of air, in the feeling that the door is about to open...
     And it opens...
     The crowd is packed, you've packed them all chair to stool, and there's a crowd beside the door, not quite needing to prop it open to contain the rest, but they linger there, unable to find seats. It's a shock of red and something far more golden, something sight-unseen by most of the room. You let yourself go, you let the music lead you nearly past the veil.
      Davydd remains by the door, his eyes to the stage, and golden-auraed he smiles at you. He waves off a drink and slips his hands into the pockets of his coat. His head tipping back. Everything halted to listen.
      If you lived in his in between world, you would see the periwinkles blooming around his booted feet. You would smell the summer sweet grass of a Welsh meadow. You would hear the sound of the rivers of the world. And when he smiles, you'd catch the cresting of the sun...

     It's as if it were on cue, really. You walk in, and she gives the signal for the song - the last song of the night. It's a surprisingly quiet song to end the night on, too - not loud and boisterous. Instead, it's low - almost quiet - and there's a curious tension in the song. Fiona's seated on the stool, back straight, microphone lifted to her lips, as if she's going to whisper into it instead of sing it.
     "As I said folks... last song of the night. I know, I know, it's not the sort of sound you're used to leaving on - but every door opens for people going out and people coming in alike, right? And I don't think anyone's going to complain about the sentiment in the song... so... have yourself a bit of 'My Sex'."
     Is that Drancy's ironic knowing gaze, half-bitter? Or just Fiona, squinting for a moment against the stage lights?
     "What I want
     Mornings to the winter and afternoons to the summer..."
     She's aware of you, of course. Power calls to power... Right now, with the both of you in the room at the same time, with everything that's going on, it's a wonder there's any bloody room left for people...
     "What I want
     Is for you to be waiting round the other side of every door..."
     What world does she occupy? She doesn't cross over. But her otherworldliness travels with her - she doesn't quite fit, does she? She doesn't quite fit in Faerie, she doesn't quite fit here - everywhere she goes, she can at best disguise herself. She's too much herself to be anyone else.
     Rather like you in that regard.
     "What I want
     To walk through the wardrobe of other bodies we have known..."
     More for you than for her, isn't it? She's paid less attention to the bodies - but then, there's still the souls in those bodies, and while maybe she hasn't opened her legs, she's opened the raw wounds of her personality. Close enough.
     "What I want
     Is fifteen minutes of you..."
     Will you be tired of me after fifteen minutes, Davydd? Will I join the pile of cast-offs, the gowns at the foot of your bed?
     I wonder... I shouldn't be wondering this...
     "What I want
     A lover who loves me when others have loved me not..."
     Ouch. Songs can cut. Songs can wound. She's wounded herself on this song - and magic is pouring out, now, razor cuts to wrists in an essential sensitivty. The eyes are blue, they're grey, they're tinged with green - the elf-locks seem to glow in the lights in the bar, more than the beads and baubles tangled in her braids. Fiona glances up from making love to the microphone, almost furtively...
      "What I want
     Is a big love, two spoons in a drawer, the master plan..."
     William said to be selfish...
     "What I want
     A lover who can love me slowly..."
     How slow is slow? How fast is fast? Ask me something I know...
     "What I want
     To make your heartbeat faster..."
     Like my own heart beating right now - since you walked in - every pulse pushing blood along its way, sending glamour through the room on spirals and ribbons ... god help me if I explode ... who'll help me if I don't?
     "What I want
     Is to love you everywhere and everyhow..."
     The glamour is brilliance, and to those who can see, well - right now they couldn't. There's too much magic in the room - it's pouring out into the night, building like a raging house fire - a tenement fire. Motes and sparks are shooting like stars, and her hair has a life of its own, it seems - and meanwhile, the crowd in the club is oblivious. Fiona's not oblivious, though, for once in her sweet life - and yet, all she can do is hold on, looking up - locking gazes with you as best she can.
     It may be the most deliberate thing she's done.
     "What I want
     To kiss you until our lips are numb..."
     skip
     "What I want
     Kiss you 'til everywhere hurts..."
     light
     "What I want
     Is to hear the rain against the window again."
      And the song ends. On a quiet note. Introverted - withdrawn.
     And the glamour ...
     for lack of a better word ...
     Implodes.
     There's a blinding flash of gold and silver that radiates out from an epicenter that is Fiona. It is nothing short of immense...
     There will be witches clucking in Ireland tomorrow...
     Faerie creatures knocked out of their beds in Scotland tonight...
     Vampires sensitive to magic dropping their priceless glasses of blood and wine upon even more priceless antique carpets...
     Angels and demons sitting up from their eternal quests for their divergent Truths...
     And then?
     It's gone. The television has been snapped off, the picture reduced in upon itself. And there's just Fiona, standing from the stool to put the microphone away, cheeks flushed.

     Dark green eyes are ever so. They are, perhaps, the most constant thing about him. The rest of him is rather like that old adage: the only thing that remains the same is that everything changes. Dark green like the Welsh grass, dark green like the moss and lichen that cover the oaks in a Welsh wood. Leaf and leaf's shadow.
     Davydd's eyes only leave you to follow the trajectory of your roman candle...
     And when his attention returns to you, in the applause that kicks up and calls for an encore, you might see him slightly smiling. Corners of his mouth upturned, but his aspect is serious. He brings his gloved hands out of his pockets, he brings them together. For you.
     Between the clapping hands, his stride in perfect time on the downbeats, a quiet syncopation, Davydd ap Owain moves from the door toward the stage. Kelly is setting aside his guitar, Bonnie Charlie Parker sits amazed behind his kit, looking over to Davydd, expression on his face: Where did you find her? And even Gifford Grace Walters says something other than a monosyllabic nod to Fiona as he passes by to get a well-deserved pint.
     The crowd gets the hint that the show is over after a few minutes spent in idle vanity of continued applause. Davydd mounts the slightly raised stage. "I think you may have just put me out of a job," he murmurs. The mic cut, you and he are likely the only ones paying attention. He looks to you a while, and then the smile returns. Not the usual comet streak of madcap, but something...thoughful. Emotional. Contemplative.
     He lifts a gloved hand to your face, a gloved finger moving aside a faerie knot.

     There's a pause of Fiona's hands on the microphone as you approach. Glamourous motes still swirl about her, despite the release of energy - it isn't as if the release made her unmagical, after all.
     Fiona, mundane. Now there's a picture noone who's seen her would believe...
     The applause is acknowledged with a general sort of vague smile, and she glances over her shoulder as people move past, smiling a bit more warmly to the other musicians. They earned their pints and then some, and for a moment, she does raise her voice.
     "Kelly," Fiona calls, "a round for the house on me, I think. It was a worthy night, wasn't it?" And it'll be much easier to clear people out if they're going happily...
     She turns again as you approach, hands falling from the microphone stand, and she misses her jeans, misses pockets, something to do with her hands. "Out of a job?"
     She tries for it to come out lightly, for it to come out like normal, and one corner of her mouth quirks up, almost without a quaver to it. "Doubt that, Davydd. Girls may come and girls may go, but there's only ever going to be one of you - and I'm sure Kelly knows it as well as any."
     What colour are her eyes right now? The blue of the summer sky? The grey of the Irish Sea? No - somewhere between, and twice as tumultuous.
     Fiona starts to add something. Something along the lines of, Your smile doesn't exactly inspire confidence-
     But your hand comes up, and she stops, and she still doesn't know what to do with her hands. Finally, in an almost schoolgirl fashion, she links them together, behind her back, tilting her face slightly to one side and then up. She's silent a moment. Then she asks a question of you, voice quiet, almost lost amidst the still moving crowd.
     "Looking for something, Davydd?"

     He can't resist it. You see the twinkle in those eyes, even before you catch the slightest twitch of his mouth, mirth and mischief. "Hmm... oes," Davydd whispers, and when he draws his hand away from your hair, like an old mundane magician he's holding a golden coin. Something won of betting... elsewhere.
     A parlor trick, and an old one. A slight of an old hand, old indeed, but quick. He's found a coin but there's a greater trickster even than he. Be that as it may, he shall not call the Trickster by his name. Fingers still holding the coin, his hand returns to her hair. There's no saving the skin from the energy -- moving down each strand. Glamour is what surrounds him, surrounds the air, thickening it like Welsh rabbit stew. It is what he creates by his simple (and complicated existence).
      The power...
     ... calls the magic
     ...that leaves the magician's body like an aura...
     ...that brushes against his hand...
     ...that finds itself in her hair...
     And in the middle of this crowded bar, in the middle of this crowded street, Davydd ap Owain, Oak and Holly King both, kisses the young, young woman who entertained in his stead.
     That's more than a polite 'thank you' or 'good evening'...
     In it...
     The darkened woods of his realm in winter...
     In it the flowing rivers full of silver salmon...
     that flows through oaks through whose boughs his name is murmured...
     Da... what are you doing?
     Behind the bar, Kelly stands, putting pints beneath the taps and watching the spectacle. ...ap Owain...
     The magic and the Sight from the kiss passes suddenly as the embrace is interrupted and Davydd, face reddening a touch (particularly across the bridge of his nose and high cheekbones and at his ears), lets loose her golden hair.

     Magic. Glamour. Does it matter what the naming of it is? They're two parts of one thing, the two faces of a coin. Drancy. Fiona. Gold is gold, whether you call it corn or maize...
     For someone who can count upon the fingers of one hand the number of times she's been kissed (without kneeing the bloke in the balls for the presumption) -
     For one who can count upon the fingers of one hand the number of times she's been kissed where the person's meant it -
     For someone who can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she's been kissed and wanted to kiss him back -
     It's hard not to flow forward into the kiss. She wants to - the intent is there, and where intent is, power flows, a river cut into a channel. Warmth, and fire...
     Spring is coming...
     One hand comes forward from behind her back, sliding up a King's chest to rest there. Hover, or push? It's a shock that needs no electricity behind it. Briefly, she glows - and it's a glow that teases almost on the edges of mere human perception. The swinging of a stage light, it'll be attributed to, or too much to drink - the angle of perception. But briefly...
     She glows...
     And then it's interrupted, and perhaps thank god - any god passing by and peering in the doorway - for that? Fiona steps back, and sits quickly on the stool, trying not to look as thoroughly disheveled and discomposed as she feels.
     "I'm happy to see you too, Davydd," she murmurs past lips that feel more bruised than they are for the warmth in them, her hand coming up to try and repair any damage to her hair. "Even if part of me feels like I ought to be slapping your face..."

     You know there'd be a few whistles, but a look from Kelly keeps such ruckus brief. Everyone quickly goes about their own business: drinking, talking, smoking or heading out for other entertainment.
     Davydd watches you as you stumble back. "It might make us both feel better. I'm sure Kelly could oblige with a glass of cold water," he says it too softly for a quip, but then it rumbles out, the dragon's familiar half-growl. "He looks like he's setting aside a pitcher for me. At least someone's watching over my conscious. I appear ... unable to do so myself." Green eyes settle on you and he fiddles with his gloves as he removes them.
     He exhales, "I don't know what gets into me this time of year," it's a lie and not even a clever one, or maybe it's not a lie, maybe it's just amazement. So it seems to be when, glowing on his own, he lifts his head, tipping it back a bit and shaking his head at the ceiling. Such remorse is short-lived. He gives it its moment and then its done with. "That's twice without your permission," he can count. It is as much an apology. But then... he's not really sorry. You can tell that, perhaps, in the shine of his eyes, in the fixing of his gaze. "I should go..." he starts softly. I should get out of your hair...
     Spring is coming...
     But Spring is coming, Fiona...
     "Let's go get a cuppa," he rolls out suddenly. "Someplace neutral, alright?" Not your apartment. He doesn't trust himself. "We haven't been to The Abbey in ages..."

     "Conscience? Davydd, I thought the only conscience you had both had horns and pitchforks - just one has sunglasses and the other doesn't." If she weren't glib, she wouldn't have any cover at all. One hand remains curving along the underside of the stool, holding herself in place...
     Fiona turns her head slowly, casually, looking over to Kelly, trying to ignore the flush in her cheeks, over the high cheekbones and in her mouth, over her collarbone as well. She turns back to look at you then, arching one eyebrow. "The Abbey... I don't think I've been back there except once, since you t- brought me there."
     Let's not speak of being taken places, Fee. You're both sensitive enough to innuendo without adding to it.
     "Night is the cathedral where we recognized the sign? Mm. I suppose it fits." Her smile is wry, almost turning downwards at the corners, and she stands, smoothing down her velvet and silk and suede.
     Neutral ground. She agrees wholeheartedly with that.
     "Let me just," she cautions, holding up one hand, not quite looking at you, "say goodbye to Kelly and the fellows, mm? And settle the tab."

     "Sure, but he'll probably spot you the tab," Davydd notes, "...take your time. I'm going to have a smoke out front. Charlie's a great skin-mate, aye? What a lad." He pivots and gives a wave to Bonnie Charlie Parker and Gifford Grace Walters, sitting in their usual spot -- in the middle of things and surrounded by faithful listeners. Kelly's filling the glasses and his Girls are taking them away as fast as they can.
     Davydd pushes his way through the crowd gathered at the door. He pauses to answer someone's question with a wayward smile, and he glances back over the throng to you. A pointing gesture left behind: I'll be over there...

     Kelly cocks up both blonde-red eyebrows, filling a tap and waiting for you to come on down. "Yeah... just put it over there, Heather. I'll look over it later. Thanks for finishing it up for me..."
     Heather. You've seen her before. Pretty. Buxom. Great smile (naturally). She knows you as a regular. But she didn't know about You and Davydd. Item? Huh. "Great show," she says as she breezes by, smiling warmly. Surely, she means the singing...

     The things people don't know about her and Davydd would fill a book. A book which Fiona herself has yet to read, more's the pity. She glances back, as if pulled to do so, then nods and forces herself forward again.
     Damn the man, he has no right to be able to knock me this off balance. It was just a kiss, that's all. Just a bloody kiss...
     "Thank you," Fiona answers Heather, smiling somewhat automatically, trying not to read too much into the comment. "I'd say the credit really has to go to the others, after all, but thanks all the same."
     She reaches the bar, dropping a hand onto it, turning to lean her hip against it as she offers Kelly 'and the gang' a small smile. "You fellows did a look to make me look good up there. I definitely owe you one. Kelly, how much do I owe you?"
     She'll try to ignore the man in the corner... Try, and undoubtedly fail.

     "Nothing," Kelly is quick to answer, quick to look up as he fills another glass. "Any profit I have of tonight you brought in," he looks to you, dark green eyes sparkling. "So, we'll just call it even. And you did well enough on your own. I doubt anyone noticed we were there at all," his accent is rolling, quick Welsh, capped off with a bright laugh.
     He looks up at you again as he fills another pint. "You heading off then? You going to trip the light fantastic with Llywelyn?" He's wearing a look of It's none of my business but I don't want to see you crying in the pints. "Make sure he stays sober, he's been "in a mood"..." As if he has to tell you. And you see him wonder what all the kissing was about, but it's none of his business! You see that a moment later. Kelly smiles pleasantly and changes the subject quick-like. "You did a great job up there. We'll do it more often. I could always use the practice anyway. And God knows Charlie does," he quips loud enough for Charlie to hear him. He's answered in laughing Gaelic. Something probably to the tune of: sod off.

     "Oh, you do yourself no credit at all, and I'm not going to stand for it." Fiona offers Kelly a small, half-rueful grin, and a little bit of a shrug, one shoulder up, the other down.
     She pauses for a moment, glancing over at the musicians, resting both hands on the bar as if for balance after all that promiscuous kissing.
     "Going off? My dear man, I've already left - while we were still playing, you know." Fiona watches the process of the filling of the pints, amber murky liquid poured and handed off, and she brings her hands up to under her chin, slouching forward. "Only going to trip the light fantastic for a cup of coffee, father, and then chastely to my own bed for a virtuous night's sleep. Alone."
     It's Drancy's prompting, no doubt, but she replies to the question beneath the question as well as the question itself, and the look she gives Kelly is something approaching fondness as well as exasperation.
     Why is it that everybody thinks I'm so damned susceptible? Or is it just that Davydd's so damned irresistible...
     Of course, they didn't exactly see me slapping his face and calling him a brute, either...
     She draws a fingertip along the bar, through a spilled pool of ale, watching it glimmer gold in the dim lighting. Glamour-charged ale-pools - she should charge, really.
     "Charlie was magnificent and everything that a drummer named Charlie should be," Fiona retorts lazily, then straightens up.
     "Na bigi duartha," she says quietly, in a voice which is hers, and yet, prompted of some ancient memory. Don't be worried...
     She lingers like that for a moment, then, reluctantly, pushes herself back, aiming a slanting smile to the bassist. "Try not to get your strings all tangled when you talk - it's only a superstition, you know, that talking will ruin your strings. I'd best get going, before Llewellyn thinks I've run off and married Kelly, here, instead of going for our cup of coffee..."

     Gifford Grace masks his absolute shyness with hipster mystique. He lights a cigarette, gives a half shrug and a nod. You're probably right. Not that he would say anything. Charlie finds it damned funny, himself and slaps the top of the bar for it. They're like opposite faces of the same coin: regular good twin, evil twin...
     "Bah, go'on," Kelly says, grinning and going pinkish as he turns about. "I'm like an old shoe, worn in and easily worn out," he protests, then smiles. Don't believe it. He nods to your apparent itinerary and seems content. "Cuppa sounds good, I think I'll go upstairs," where he lives, "... for some tea."
     "Just like an old woman," Charlie croons in his best Ian McKellan.
     "Aye," Kelly quips, laughing, "...and man enough to admit it..."

     Outside, Davydd's finishing his cigarette, poised to launch it into a wading puddle. He stands alone under moonlight and lamplight and street light, a moment of odd calm in a hustle-bustle world. And he doesn't need the moonlight or lamplight or street light to shine. He sticks out tonight. The preverbal sore thumb...
     A plume of smoke leaves the dragon's nose and mouth, simple tobacco -- not William's tarted up cloves. It lingers around him in a fog. And fog rolls lightly atop the waters of The Thames...

     "You lot take care. Kelly, you've got my number, if you decide you want me to perform again," and the place doesn't explode once she leaves it, "you know how to get hold of me." Fiona grins, tolerant of this sort of thing - and, really, this isn't any different from any of the times she's hung out with the band after a performance, as Drancy...
     Just a little less effort put into being aggressive and confrontational...
     Holy shite, I've been hanging out with the wrong type for years, haven't I...
     Well, no, not literally. She straightens up, pushing her hair back, lifting it with both hands and letting it fall again. "I'd better get going before the old ballocks outside gets edgy," she says, matter of fact about it. Nonchalance is a wonderful cover for nerves. No wonder Drancy's getting off the leash so much as she is. "I'll talk to you lot next time, mm? Start thinking of how you want to do it - if you do."
     A wink and a smile and a bit of a sigh and she turns away, stepping carefully through the crowd still pressed up to the bar. "Pardonnez-moi, mademoiselle, m'sieur, ja, no spicka da ingrish real good." Hey - if it gets her out of there...
     And she steps outside, half-lit, backlit by the light from the pub, hands on the doorframes, peering around. It's easy to spot you. You always stood out, no matter the colour of her world. That's half the reason for all the fights.
      "Davydd? I'm here."

     Old Ballocks, indeed. Kelly grinned at that and waved. He wasn't going to stop you. Though, he had half a mind to...
     Outside, a streak of fire lights an arched trajectory from Davydd's fingertips to a puddle of water in the gutter and he's turning, nodding. "A cuppa sounded good to me... and I figured... you know... we could chat up..." He gestures toward the sidewalk with the outstretch of his hand. "Maybe even take in a bit of art, you never know... so... that was pretty incredible up there. You... did you ever think that'd happen..."
     Davydd's normal stride is a march of Mars, but he's dropping into a regular stroll alongside you, bending way to The Abbey. It's a bit of a walk, but maybe both of you could use that. Just...as long as it doesn't lead to him pressing you up against a building. He smirks at himself, hands going into his coat. "I heard you," he murmurs, "... from very far away. When you called me without calling me..." You wished to see the Oak King, and unlike the other faerie men you've known, he actually showed up. "We've come a long, weird way, ha'n't we?" Dark green eyes look aslant to you as he walks.

     "Quite a few things keep happening lately that I never thought would, actually," Fiona answers, folding her hands behind her back in order to stroll alongside of you. She's careful to keep a certain distance from you - not a tremendous distance, but more than six inches.
     What is the regulation distance to keep electrical currents from arcing?
     Is it going to be enough?
     Fiona focuses her gaze on the sidewalk ahead, muttering to herself more than to you, "I feel half as if I'm on a school walk. 'Students will please refrain from conversing upon these walks...'"
     She's silent a moment later, listening to the shuffle of footsteps upon cement, the quiet sounds of the city. And you speak, and she flushes slightly, one hand lifting to rub the back of against her nose before she speaks.
     "It was a busy night. I've gotten out of the habit of using the telephone to call people - I ... it's the first time in a while though that I've called someone and not gotten the wrong number." Fiona lets the words drop into the space between you somewhat hesitantly, as if it builds a bridge to close that distance. "...'Course, it might be that this is the first time I've dialed the right number. I don't really know."
     Is that it? Is that why, of all of them, you're the one who's shown up? Is this why she came the closest with Huw of all of them? The one closest to being like yourself...
     She returns the glance with her own half-blue, half-grey one, then abruptly turns her gaze forward again. "It's been strange," Fiona agrees, voice quieter than it was. "I don't really know what to make of it." A pause. "So ... how's Sandrine?"

     "I never went to school," Davydd notes, glancing over to you as the two of you walk with such a considerate distance between you that even Nasr ben Yusuf, the former Sultan of Grenada, might be pleased. "I had a couple of private tutors." A pause. "One priest, one poet and my da," he corrects.
     And this marks the first time in your entire association that he is actually speaking of himself. The house of cards, his carefully constructed universe? Well, he's already knocked it down. And when he did, he realized it didn't need to exist at all.
      "It... has been," Davydd quietly agrees, his eyes on the way ahead mostly. Occasionally straying over to you. "I've been trying to... reason it out... blaming it on the season." A roll of great Cymric shoulders. "But I'm not sure that Reason has much to do with it." And then there is Sandrine, his self-called Queen of the North. The woman who stopped the storm of him long enough for him to realize where he was and who he was. Even if to her detriment.
     "It's hard to tell," he admits it. Peering ahead, into his thoughts and then at you, he continues, "I've never been good at it, knowing what she's thinking. Or even what she's feeling. She's hard to know." A pause. "She deserves better than my skipping off to kiss other women in the big City," he rolls out, smirking. "And so do you..." Exhaling mist, Davydd casts his gaze to the direction of the moon. But he doesn't bemoan his fate, his actions. He simply recognizes them. "I know what I need to do," he murmurs, "... but I should wait until spring. I'm no use to anyone in this season, but for fighting, trickery, mischief or misery."

     "I went to school - the usual rounds of it. Got my O-levels, went off to university - did my degree a bit ahead of schedule. Amazing what sort of teaching money can buy." Fiona makes a nervous, slightly jerky gesture with one hand - it's almost Drancy in its bitterness. She's used to discarding where she's from, and no one asks as Fiona where she went to school.
     She shivers slightly - Spring may be coming, but for now, it's still winter. Now her hands are brought together in front of her, one hand absently playing arpeggios on the back of the other.
     "Blaming it on the season," Fiona echos, tone half-sardonic, half-musing. "How many seasons has it been, anyway? But - we should get to coffee before I start philosophizing too much." The shelter of indoors, and witnesses...
      She glances over for a moment, then back down at her feet, listening to the pulse of the city, the echos of magic that linger. "She's a nice person," Fiona agrees softly. "I don't really relish the thought of her pain." A pause. "Of course ... I don't really relish the thought of my own - but that's too close to philosophy."
     She takes a deep breath, then lets it out slowly, picking up her footsteps just a bit. "What is it you need to do? Or ... is the telling something which should wait, too?"

     "She is a nice person," Davydd says. "And I do care for her very much. It's a tricky thing, the universe. It gives you what you need, when you need it. And I needed her when she showed up unannounced. I was trying to be something... and someone I wasn't." He shakes his head, looking to you as he pauses, waiting for the light to change.
     Red light...
     Green light...
     "It is my nature, I think, to want to find my missing half... the balance between the halves of the year, man and woman. Without it, I sputter something awful," he smiles, more like that comet streak that is his trademark. The light changes for the good of you both and he heads into the intersection, turning up toward the Abbey. "But... that's really only part of the issue. She... isn't of a realm of magic, Fiona. It isn't her world. She doesn't understand it. She also doesn't question it. She's attempted to tolerate it, to accept it. She tries, I grant her that. And it's hard to understand... how the universe works, if you're not accustomed to looking at it." He can see the magical world and he can see the material world. Simultaneously. "And her life is not one in which I can really continue to participate fully within... I don't belong there. And until I make that more than a conviction, but a practice, I will always be stuck where I am, half of what I should be."
     Davydd pauses his stroll and turns to look at you, his hands still in his pockets -- it's the only place he can trust them! "You may not understand much of what has happened to you, or maybe you do, but you may not be aware of your potential. But with you there is a kinship that I first resented, then resisted, but have now come to treasure. Being in my element... as much as I am... I have realized that it was wrong to have feared it." He smiles a little, more in shades of forest than in motion, "...I ... want to encourage it, cultivate it..." A pause and he grins. "And kiss it... god help me..."

     "I think everyone's looking for something that's lost, Davydd. I don't know if things are broken into even halves - sometimes, we find pieces of ourselves in the damnedest places." Fiona's waxing philosophical despite herself.
     Sea-grey eyes focus on the light, one foot tapping quietly, keeping in sync with an invisible band. Tap ... tap tap ... tap ... tap tap tap ...
     She listens to you explain about Sandrine, about the difficulties, and she nods once. "I know a little of this, of course, but Davydd - I'm not going to pass judgment there, because if I do - well, I refuse to be the other woman in your life." There. It's said. It's out in the open. She turns with you, heading for the Abbey, but there's more which isn't spoken - or not yet.
     "It'd be too trite," Fiona explains, looking at the street signs as they're passed. "I can sympathise, but only a little, Davydd - I like Sandrine, and then there's you."
     You ... do I like you? I must, because you do make me laugh, and you've always been able to hurt me with weapons I never knew about. But ... there's more to it than that.
     "I don't want to be the one you run to, to fulfill you, while you're with her," she says finally, with an expulsion of breath. "Because I can see where that'd go. How many movies've been made about it? You'd end up hating me in the end, because - well, I'm -not- casual. And I'm greedy. But enough philosophy, okay? Let's ... get that coffee."
     She glances over at you, a flickering look, then forward once more with a resolute tread. "I'd like more," Fiona admits, voice low. "That's why it scares me so much, Davydd. It's bloody Joan of Arc, twentyfour, seven."

     "I wouldn't do that," a pause, "...despite the fact I kissed you twice, alright so I'm full of shite on that, I am a man," he half-protests, half-exhales -- as if to say: all men are pigs, I can't help myself. But he doesn't go there. No, he owns it, this. "I wouldn't do that to her, to you, or to me. Besides, at the end of the day... it can't be about either one of you. It has to be done more purely than that. For better reason than 'shag A' or 'shag B'."
     Are you hearing this?
     Davydd smiles and nods, "People're gonna think we're weird, out here discussing infidelity, sex and coffee in the middle of the street," alright, sidewalk. "C'mon," Davydd murmurs, and he starts the progress again. A weird sort of magical pilgrim's progress, at that.
     The Abbey is where you remember it to be, the gallery itself closed but the coffee shop upstairs still open through a set of independent stairs. What does William care -- that's what the security guys are for.
     "I've been battling with myself since I helped you off the sidewalk," he says, holding the door open for you. "If... after I set myself right upon the road I have to go.. you'd like to come with... then... trust me, there'd be no other pilgrims. Just me and my shadow," he smiles a bit at that, self-depreciating as usual but in a funny way. Not in a nervous, what-the-fuck-am-I-doing way that you've seen before. "I'm not casual either. I tend to stick like mortar and have to be blasted out..."
     That's the gods' truth if he ever heard it. He had to find Rose fucking another man in his prized leather chair. He has had to be threatened with oblivion and revelation with Sandrinaar. God only knows what'd happen next...

     "People're going to think we're weird no matter what we do or say," Fiona mumbles, but it's not even a protest - just a token rejoinder. The smartass has to be kept in the link, after all. She follows you, rubbing a hand over her elf-knots.
     Glancing curiously into the glass windows as they're passed, she's a silent figure, glowing too brightly to be a shadow. "We should have horses," Fiona comments absently. "Horses, and bells upon the bridles, to ride through the silent streets and make mockery of all these cars."
     Lightly, she reaches over and folds her hand into a fist, punching you in the arm with a knuckle. "Coffee, and philosophy, Davydd Llewellyn," she answers, climbing the steps with you. "We'll worry about what comes next once we can face it with caffeine and sugar."

     He wrinkles up his nose and makes a face like a third-grader who was just frogged by his playground love, then smirks. As if he even felt it, past the wool of his coat and the thick arm itself. It's like hitting a standing stone or sommat. "Sugar good," he monotones as he heads upstairs after, feet pounding and announcing his coming like a herald.
     "And you're right about the weirdness. There's nothing we can do about it..." Around the bend of the stairs he follows, entering the dimly lit confessional: part cafe, part cathedral, just like William likes it. He was always fond of the kirk, no matter what he says. The cafe's not completely devoid of life. Those who are here are particularly arty, as is the barista du jour. No one says hello to anyone. They're all too aloof in their hiptudeness. Tugging a strand of your hair, Davydd gestures over to one of the booths a bit away from the crowd.
     The barista gives you a nod as you head over. "Taking requests, the lines are now open," she drolls out, as if she's bored. Maybe she's just tired. Or maybe she's above it all and hasn't realized she's just slugging coffee -- hard to tell. Apathy is as much an art here as... art.
     "Fuck it," Davydd exhales, "... I just want a regular coffee, no mocha-surprise-me-latte. Coffee. Cream. Sugar. Honey."

     All this aloofness - nothing of Drancy or Fiona, really, echos to that resonance. "Sugar is good," she answers, placidly enough, moving through the room in her green velvet and white silk and black suede. She isn't fashionable. She is Timeless instead.
     "Requests? Oh, good, I'm so glad you offered. I just finished singing for my supper, and now this red-haired bastard wants me to sing for my coffee as well - you can sing for my coffee instead, right?" That's sheer Drancy coming through, nerves tensing, playing upon her voice. She subsides a moment later, though, with a lift of her hand to bat away yours from her hair.
     Touch-me-not just yet, the glance that accompanies it says.
     Take nothing for granted.
     "I'll have cappuccino with cream in it and maple syrup," Fiona chimes in, almost on the same beat as your mention of honey. "Whipped cream on top. Cinnamon on that - or cocoa powder if you've got it."
     Honey ... there's nothing 'regular' about me ...

     From where he sits -- opposite Fiona, with a table in between them, thankyouverymuch -- Davydd blanches but the barista/waitress takes the requests in stride. "I don't have maple, but I do have hazelnut and caramel. I can make it maple-esque," she offers. making a rocking motion with her hand. Her many ringed hand.
     She doesn't appear to be the singing sort. But she's humoring you well enough. For a communist punk artist gone bohemian hipster with a dash of Nietzche...
     Davydd twists, removing his coat from his sitting position. Even the aloof waitress/barista has to take a moment. The sweater is thin and white, and in this lighting, the neon acting like blacklighting, seven swirls of blue show underneath: wrists, biceps, shoulders, chest. Hands fish out his cigarettes and lighter and he sets them on the table.
     Good thing he takes his coffee regular. The rest of him is pure freak...

     "Just make it hazelnut - I like hazelnuts. Caramel is ... too much, right now ..." Fiona watches you blanch, her attention much more on you, now, than the barista. There's that illusion of safety, inside - with witnesses - with a table in the way.
     How much, really, can go wrong, like this?
     Then the coat comes off, and Fiona can just go quiet, staring while trying to pretend she isn't, failing miserably even at that. "You did that on purpose," she accuses lightly, settling her forearms on the table, hands atop each other.
     She pauses, waiting for coffee. Caffeine, set my mind in motion, for I'm about to unintentionally and intentionally match wits with someone who can likely beat the shite out of me ...
     A deep breath is taken, and released, then another taken. "So."
     "Would you care to serve first, or shall I?"

     "Alright," the Barista says, giving another appreciative look to someone with body art -- he didn't look like he'd be the type when he walked in, and then she heads back to her bar and counter.

     Fiery eyebrows lift in an arch, perhaps amused at the accusation, as he lights a cigarette. He can't sit and talk, sit and drink, without it. It gives him a prop. Sometimes a shield. Then he looks confused, then looks at himself. A great roll of his shoulders follows after that. "It is what it is, Fiona-bach," he murmurs curling smoke.
     "So," another draconic exhale, ash tipped into the waiting glass tray. "I know how you like to dish it out," Davydd rumbles, his expression mildly comical, "...so why don't you then..." For his part, he settles back in the booth, an arm lifting to rest against the back of it, while the other handles his cigarette.
     And in the background, the dulcet tones of espresso foam heating...

     "Not sure how much there is to dish out right now, Davydd," Fiona answers, propping one hand on top of the other, absently scratching at a faint bruise where she'd caught a bit of skin in her wardrobe door. She listens to the sound of the espresso machine - ah, familiarity. It's those little touches of home one misses, when they're gone...
     Damn the man, how is it that I end up never knowing what to say? And I don't want to mother him, but I don't want to attack him, either.
     She shifts, with the satin glide of hair over silk and suede, elf knots slipping back over her shoulders. Pressing two fingertips to her forehead, she slouches down on her side of the booth. "So. Tell me, really - how do you feel about ... mirrors? Because we seem to be in one now. Or we were, before."

     He looks at you squarely, leaning in for that moment, arms folding on the table, cigarette given to the ashtray and rolled in his fingers. He watches the ash drop off and the sparks fly. "We should probably start with the snogging," his mouth upturns, a mischievous smile peeks out from the corners, and then forest eyes look on you again. "I've tried to keep a distance from you since I picked you up off the concrete," this sounds like a confession. "That kiss was some two years in the making, I'll be honest. In fact, I'll be honest about things I haven't before, because... it's needed now, for all parties concerned," and in that he includes his woman, Sandrine. "I'm every bit as much a faerie git as Heckle and Jeckle," the dragon's voice rumbles there again, meaning Huw and Hwyll. No love lost, apparently. "They called me the Oak King, you remember that?"
     He is looking at you again, exhaling smoke away from you. "I am the Oak King, King of the faerie Summerlands, living in exile upon this earth ... perhaps mostly self-proscribed," he smirks at that. "I was chosen to be so, as a mortal man, and this is a rarity," he points out, gesturing with his cigarette. "Maybe it was because I was descended of faeries like yourself. But Ysbail... Isabel," he murmurs, "... and Hafwen ...and Ragnell of Gawain's fame, all three... did these," a gesture to the tattoos nearly visible. They do glow when he wants them to.
     "So," he exhales and softens his voice as the espresso machine quits in the background, "...in you I find a kinship that I have had with no other for many... many... many years, Fiona. And ... since meeting you, at Isabel's insistence, I might add... it has thrown my world into a tizzy. And that is why I ran. And that is why I made you ...and myself...and possibly another woman... miserable."

     The barista puts the finishing touches on the hazelnut concoction and brings it and the plain cup of coffee over. The hazelnut cappuccino has a mountain of whipped cream, hazelnut syrup and a chocolate covered hazelnut on the side. The other is a simple cup of plain coffee, with sugar and cream and honey. Both are set down in turns and she heads back to the bar.

     There's silence from Fiona as she absorbs all this, expression turned inwards - the mask of British civility resting lightly on her face as she absently massages her forehead. She doesn't speak immediately, even after you finish talking - the barista's brief intrusion taken as an opportunity to pull her cappuccino in front of her.
     Sticking one fingertip into the whipped cream, she laps it up with a contemplative air, as if expecting Great Truth to be found in the hole thus made. "Light cream," Fiona pronounces, making a face. Then she looks back up again, pretense stripping away from her as if a change of clothing that just ... doesn't suit any longer.
     "I chased after Huw without chasing him and probably drove him half-mad - well, more than he already was - because he reminded me of you around the edges, Davydd." Fiona? Blunt? Perish the thought. She lets her hair slide forward over her shoulders, falling into her face. "Half-flirted with Hwyll when I wasn't trying to kill him. I came close, with Huw... closer than anyone else except for one person who's neither here nor there," and how little she reckons the truth in that statement, "but at the last minute, I chickened out. He accepted it better than I did - and now I'm left wondering how much he knew or guessed which even I didn't."
     A moment of silence is allowed to drop onto the table with a ringing as of silver on wood as she sips the frothy drink in front of her, ending with whipped cream on her mouth and nose. Unhurriedly, she licks her lips, then swipes at her nose with the back of her hand. "I can tell you one thing, though. Right now? We are right back where we started." Sea-grey eyes lift to your forest-hued ones in a direct, frankly frustrated stare. One hand lifts, a fingertip winding around a braid with a gentle chiming of crystal baubles. "We were here the first time... sitting in this booth, opposite each other, trying to avoid touching each other - drinking coffee and trying to talk and failing out of fear. I'm not sure I believe in any sort of coincidence anymore - not anymore."
     Another small pause. "I don't like being miserable. But well, I'm willing to concede that I do give as well as I get. So you're the Oak King - I'm ... something else ... and at its heart, we're still ... people." Fiona bites her lower lip, gaze slanting down to her hands where they're joined around the base of her cup.

     He stamped out his cigarette at the mention of Huw the Hunter. Not his polar opposite by any means, but certainly he and Autumn are opposed to one another in the seasonal scheme of things. "Huw the Hunter is a wretch, but a very talented wretch," Davydd exhales the last bit of smoke and pushes the tray aside, dark green eyes residing again upon the features of your, still, very Isabel-like features. And he half-thought he was making that shite up before, seeing what he wanted to see, maybe. But no, the resemblance is true. It is there.
     "Hmm...oes," he says to the notion of the Returning. "The wheel has turned twice since then, two ...very strange years," that was to himself it seems. Davydd adds cream into his coffee then drops exactly seven cubes of sugar into the drink. "It is good that you refused Huw, and I don't mean to play the chaperone here, but it wouldn't have been a good match. He is all trickery, thieving, conniving, hunting and ultimately death and decay, as all Autumn spirits are. Good at what he does though, if you need someone to fight the beasts of Chaos, there's no better man. It's one of those 'Takes one to know one' sort of propositions." Ah, Huw is chaotic, isn't he.
     Davydd lifts the cup of coffee and sips at it. Perfection. Then he holds it for a while, feeling the warmth of it all. "I haven't talked this frankly in years. I have to admit, I panicked when we sat here back then. You took my hand, you traced the lines of the Holly dragons, and you knew... intimated... how long I had been on this earth, mostly solitary. Until this century, really."
     This century, he said...
     Davydd sips at his coffee and seems to visibly relax. In fact, his eyes seem glassy with it, with watery-held relief. But there shall be nothing that falls from the eyes of the Oak King. He has to be drunk or right after battle for that. Okay, sometimes after singing or sex. But never at dusk! "I don't want to be miserable either, or to cause misery. I really don't. So, I am sorry for kissing you without your permission. Twice. You should have slapped me. If you still want to, I'll let you."

     "I let Huw hunt me through London on a wager," Fiona states, shifting to sit sideways in the booth, back to the wall, one booted foot atop the other knee. "I almost got away, but - not quite. He allowed it as a draw, nonetheless." She is like Isabel in many ways, though ultimately, she is herself - somewhere between the hard, biting anger of Drancy and the sweet airy laughter that is Isabel. She glances up to the rafters, closing her eyes. "When it came right down to it, I couldn't commit to him. It ... wasn't right for me. Nor for him, really, and," there's a hint of cynical amusement, "he didn't want to hurt me."
     Why would anyone want to? She's perfectly capable of hurting herself on the sharp, jagged edges of the world, bumping her knees on Truth in darkness. The slender hands lift her cappuccino in to herself, holding it to her chest.
     Her chin tilts downwards, a brief moment of introspection again in the still grey eyes. Then she looks back up. "I'm curious," Fiona says carefully, "as to how old exactly you are. When I met you, I thought you were ancient, for some reason. Later, I revised that estimate downwards to oh, about thirty-five - which to my mind then was still pretty ancient, even if not quite so mossy as I'd first taken you for. Now ..."
      "Well ... you said you were lettered by a priest. Never went to school. That - rather pushes my estimate back up, just a bit."
     Fiona then snorts slightly, sipping her drink. "My mother would love it if I'd just settle down and marry some nice accountant, you know. She's given up on me marrying a lord or something - she despairs of my taste in men. I'd love to see the look on her face if I ever tried to explain you to her." Her voice softens, growing quieter. "I'm not going to slap you, Davydd. I didn't slap you either of the times you kissed me - and I could have. You're quite a good kisser, but I didn't want to slap you then. I don't particularly want to slap you now, even if you're a red-haired bastard of the first degree."
     Now she shifts, sitting properly, the cup coming down to the table, elbows propping her up, chin on her balled-together fists. "But," Fiona remarks, "don't take it as permission to kiss me whenever you like. What I said the last time still holds true - and I know I've got all these feelings for you, but there's also a bit of a catch..."

     He laughs a little, it's good to cut the air with a joke. He can appreciate a woman who understands comedic timing. Maybe it's a Welsh thing. Maybe it's a faerie thing, but he needed the momentary respite of it all. He takes another sip of coffee. "Fucking ancient, at thirty-five. I'm thirty-six ...plus some eight centuries," he murmurs. "Hold onto your kit..." he rumbles, and amused at it all suddenly, leans back and smiles. "They want aristocracy? I could give it to them twice over. Bah, the British and their insistence on blood, when they're all mixed whelps from Germany anyway, saxon peasants the lot of them. You cover a peasant in gold and what do you get?" He chuckles. "An overdressed peasant. A king shouldn't smell of turnips."
      Old enough, ancient enough to be able to use the word 'Saxon' and mean it. Riot!
     Davydd is curious about the fallout, the idea of it may even tickle him to some degree. Will she faint? Will I have to revive her? "Point duly noted," he says about the kissing and he reaches over to take his cigarettes up again. There'll be at least one after this one before the night is over. "I won't kiss you again without your permission." He looks at you seriously. "And not unless I can really and truly mean it. The attraction is there, the kinship there, all things ripe for burgeoning emotion," he admits that freely. Easily does that lilt from the Welsh prince's, and faerie king's tongue. "But I shall not do it with a twain heart. If it is to be done, it must be done completely. For happiness sake."

     One eyebrow slides upwards, and Fiona sighs quietly. "Eight centuries. You know, I knew I was in over my head," she continues in a mournful tone of voice, "but ... You do realize people are going to think you're robbing the cradle? I mean, I thought you were about old enough almost to be my father. Now..."
     Try great-great-great-great-great... add in a few more greats ... grandfather. And even then. "Well," she quips, "you're rather well-preserved for your age, so I'll try not to hold it against you."
     Solace and inspiration are sought in the bottom of her mug, and she scrubs at her lips for a moment after, as if to strip them not only of the whipped cream and sugar but also of the lingering residue of kisses past. "Well. Daddy's in the House, and mother's always felt it necessary to uphold his position because of it. Frankly, at this point, as long as you keep those," she reaches forward over the table to point at but not touch the limning visible through the sweater, "covered, they'd likely welcome you with open arms."
     The grey eyes lift candidly, and Fiona adds, "Mother'll half-kill me if she finds out you've got tattoos, though. Err. She would, I mean." Stop talking as if this is settled, Fee. Nothing's settled and we're still dickering over the price.
     And then you continue on about kisses, and she nods, slowly, warily, pinpricks under her skin making her guard her tongue both more and less than she ought. "There's another reason," Fiona puts in, voice lowered further. "I ... Look. I know that at least some of these feelings are 'real', inasmuch as anything is - but responding to you? I don't know, Davydd. How much of it is me, because of my feelings, and how much of it is because ... you put your foot forward?"

     That look is pure Davydd and pure Welshman, a moment of divine incredulity and comic offense. Well preserved? It passes a moment later into that comet-cast smile. "Rather remarkably, if I do say so m'self. Bah, robbing the cradle. As if I care," he quips. He leans in again, voice dropping to a breath, "What my friends don't know won't kill them," he grins. That man! Couldn't you just knee him?
     Davydd goes serious not a half-second after, looking to you as you speak of your parents, their position and his tattoos. "As far as the mortal realm is concerned, I'm a nobody. I sing a good enough song when I blow into town. I might have stock in the bar that turns the business when I do perform. It's all a game, a construct. What I do own, I can't claim. What position I have, I can't announce. You know more, right at this moment, Fiona, than anyone else in my life. Keep it well, girl." And the energy crackles against the air again. He exhales at it and sits back.
     "As real as anything can be between a faerie-blooded descendant of a faerie queen and an eight-hundred year old Exile," he smirks, and then he sighs. "Look... I am going to accept the fact that I want to be on the other side of the table right now," Davydd murmurs. "I am going to admit that I ... want that. That I think to fight it is, ultimately, futile. But I am not in a position now where I can give into it. And until it is a ... clean thing, until I know how my choice and my decision should manifest, to toy with it would be beyond cruel. To both of us. So... no more talk of kissing now, nor mothers and fathers, nor girlfriends in old castles, or even just what happened. I think the smartest thing we could both do is to leave it be for the now." He pauses, taking up the cigarette at last and lighting it. He glows with it more than he should. "And you should really think about the kind of life you want. If it's the mundane world of white pickets fences, an SUV, two dogs and a good job in the city, then I'm probably not what you're looking for." He pauses, smirking. "Alright, so I already have the two dogs and the SUV... still..." His hands gesture. You know what I mean.
     "I haven't had the best luck with women," he smirks, "...honestly, I'll admit it. But... it happens when you aren't true to yourself. And I'd rather you were true to yourself, Fiona, than true with anyone else."

     "I'll try to look like a weathered harridan of five hundred, but not a day older," Fiona answers dryly, gathering her hair up and back in both hands, twisting it and tying it in a knot which won't stay. She knows it won't stay. She just hasn't really any reason to care beyond the moment's convenience.
     And then you go serious on her, and it's uncomfortable - for all that she's been all but serious throughout, there's something which makes it real, less a play being staged, being enacted by someone other than herself. The distance she's fought to put between herself and the actual Truth is yanked away - fuzzy blankets stripped away on a cold Winter morning.
     "I think..." Fiona frowns a little, then shakes her head. "If I wanted a picket fence, Davydd - I do, believe it or not, meet men once in a while whose lives are entirely ordinary. In a way, Huw was too ordinary for me. I ..." She presses her lips together tightly, clamping down on the drawl of the single letter, the frown turning into a scowl. "If you were exactly and only what you look like to the rest of this room, Davydd - I wouldn't want you. There would be no question, no challenge, no trouble."
      Is that crushing, or what? But she continues. "I'm not interested in anything which is too easy and predictable and - normal. I know I've fought my way to a plateau where I ... fit in a little better with the world around me - but a lot of that's been out of fear and paranoia, after seeing how royally I fucked things up." One corner of her mouth quirks upwards, not entirely happily. "I care for you. Hell, I'm even a bit in love with you - we know this. I feel drawn to you, and have since I met you, and I just didn't admit it to anyone including myself until earlier tonight in the middle of that damned song."
     In song there is truth, but damn, sometimes truth has a face we're not prepared for.
     "I don't intend to push it, Davydd. If anything, if you want me," Fiona's voice slants slightly cooler for a moment, the deliberate choice of words clear, "you are going to have to work -your- arse off to convince me that it's the real thing. So ... yes ..." Her voice warms again, with wistfulness and regret. "...No more talk of those things. You've got over eighty decades. I've got ... two. With all your experience and bad luck ... at least you can recognize when to change the subject, right?"
     Crystal rattles as she shakes her head, baubles bouncing in her braids. "So who do you think is going to win the Cricket World Cup this year?"

     If there's one way to catch a faerie, it's to tell him he's going to have to Work For It, Hunt For It, Catch It and Skin It. And so, the Inevitability Principle is pushed again. Damn her, damn me and damn the world.
     The other way is to leave your window open with a pair of nice shoes, jewelry or food, depending on the kind of faerie you're after...
     "I would expect no less," he lilts off, not crushed in the slightest -- and now, certainly not dissuaded. He doesn't say anything about the life less ordinary and how that's what Life is, for him. But at any rate, it's neither Here nor is it There at the moment.
     It's more like All Over the Place, to be honest. Really.
     With a sudden nonchalance that comes from being completely full of shite, Davydd sits back, arms folded against his chest and fag stuck between his mouth. It moves writing curious phrases as he speaks: "I'm not into cricket. I could never abide the outfits. Now, futbol... there's a game. Horse racing. I'm in for that..."
     Like I'm into thinking about you bearing my plump, red-headed babies. The conversation takes place with my voice but it might as well be without me entirely. I should go, before I cock-and-ball this up beyond recognition.
     Davydd stamps out his cigarettes and smiles a little. Regret may be etched there, along with Knowing When To Quit. "It's getting late. You should be in bed, you've got to work tomorrow. And I need to be... as far away from your bed right now as I can be," he roughly mumbles. "I expect fully, girl, that you shall not see me until the spring. If I were a smart man," he murmurs, smiling at himself and at you and at his nature. "Don't leave your window open. You never know what sort of bird's going to fly in. He might want your food, or some other tasty thing." With that, he reaches for his coat.

     Clever or stupid Fiona. All depends on whether she wants that pursuit - does she? Doesn't she? Well...
     She's not leaving her windows open, that's for damn sure...
     But then, Huw taught her the folly of that.
     "So, no cricket." One corner of Fiona's mouth turns up again, this time in more lightness than before. "But I suppose I can put up with footy - I can watch men with nice bodies attacking each other. And I don't really go to the track terribly often - once in a while, that's all. I do ride, though - I ride to the hounds with the hunt every now and again. Been getting more into that again, though only as I've had time."
     Maybe I should quit my job to be a lady of leisure... but then what would I do with myself?
     She nods absently, running her fingers through her hair and sitting up. "I'll get it," she remarks, reaching for her wallet. "This time, anyway - I dragged you out for nothing, after all, the least I could do is buy you your coffee. I do have work tomorrow, you're right." And she'll just redden a bit and try to skip past mentions of your proximity to her bed, fumbling open the wallet to draw out some pound coins. "Spring? It'll get here soon enough. Then ... well, we'll see..."
     It's said on an exhale, the uneven jerk of her hands covered as she recovers. "Go on, Davydd, get going. You won't find my windows open until the weather turns anyway - and after tonight, I've a powerful need for a solid night's uninterrupted sleep. I'm off for the weekend - out of London for work - so if my window's open, you won't find me anyway..."
     Money's deposited, scattered as if in a casting of bones, and Fiona straightens to put her wallet away again. "Get you gone, Davydd Llewellyn," she adds lightly. "And at least I can reassure Kelly that I didn't get you drunk, and I went to my bed alone."

     Eyebrows quirk at the notion of Kelly and then he smiles a little. Observant wretch, isn't he? Shoulders shrug the coat into place and he lingers there silently until you shoo him off a second time. "Diolch," he says for the coffee. He's a cheap date, at least. Hands resolutely shove into his pockets, not to withdraw to grab or to clutch, to stroke or to lift.
     "I love Paris in the spring time," he sings as he starts to walk away. There's a glance back to you, and the distance he's put between you -- a safe distance, most needed. "We will see. Until then, good health. And keep up with the singing," he tacks on. "You were... brilliant." And brave. "And brace," he adds again. And a lovely thing. But he doesn't echo his mind on that. Leave it be.
     The sound of his departure is loud upon the stairs, but it is even louder to one with magical Sight such as you. There's a trailing brief 'calling card' of the Oak King of Summer.
     The smell of morning sunshine...
     The taste of clear, cool water...
     The scent of summer flowers...
     And the warmth of a just-parted kiss...
     That makes three times without your permission...

Posted by rowan at February 18, 2004 09:43 PM