A night at Strathfayr has come and gone. Time moves so slowly now, each moment marked in its sameness as the last. Upon the ramparts of Fearann Strathfayr, Edward's taken a seat, back against one of the smoothed walls, worn by centuries of age and wear. A cigarette hangs between his lips, and in his hand, his silver lighter flickers on and off, cupped from the breeze by his hand. He stares into the flame, then looks up to the dark night. Damned missing-ass moon.
     Flags snaps above his head, whipping in the stiffening breeze. It'll get cooler before it warms with the morning sun. Edward's feet slide upwards, flat onto the stone of the rampart, stiffening his back against the wall. A hand leaves its tender care of the lighter, and instead touches the gleaming amber around his throat.

     The universe may be known in the simple pattern made by one falling leaf. Here, the birch that are gathered below lose the errant leaf or two not due to any dryness of the season (anything but), but rather to the insistence of the wind, the constancy of the wind, funneling through the highland valleys and spilling over Dunsinane and the castle tucked alongside it.
     The path of one...
          ...solitary...
                     ...falling...
                         ...leaf...
     One such green and silver wonder lands beside you, skitters along the stone and slaps against a rampart, leaving behind a paler, but no less charismatic and balls-to-the-wall Welshman, hair disheveled and clothing rumpled.
     Hey, it was a long flight carried about by an unforgiving wind! I meandered for half an hour before I landed. Fucking highland wind.
     Davydd ap Owain looks ...beautiful. Tired. But beautiful. Stark colors -- pale cream of his complexion missing the ruddiness of Mars now all the more white for the red-bronze-copper brightness of his hair, burnished like Mars' own armor. His eyes are a deep, holly green, with periwinkle still tucked within it in slivers, death's reminders. "We've got to quit meeting like this," his voice is rough, and tears of scarlet, holly berry red, fall from his eyes to color his cheeks, smile and all. "Or folks're bound to talk...wot, Edward-bach..." At 'bach', that old Welsh endearment, his voice tightens.
     "I love y' ..y' crazy man," he whispers. "Can y'ever forgive me? Ever, Edward?" Not yet finding his breath, his rhythm, he seems more unreal than ever. And you notice, no less magical for all that. Leaning his head against the stone, Davydd looks at you, shaking his head side to side for a moment. "What a great fool I've been. And so wrong. For so long..."

     Edward starts, jerking away from the sudden person and voice. At a disadvantage, he doesn't make a leap from the ground. He's caught, and if he has to defend himself, he'll have to start on the ground.
     "Christ..." Edward whispers, realizing who it is that's beside him. Then, a look up again. Davydd. His furrowed brow and startled stance relax, and Edward exhales. You're up and awake. The internal dialogue causes him to nod his head.
     "What are you going on about?" is all Edward can come up with. The lighter clicks closed, and he leans left, to put the lighter back into his pocket. "And why are you crying?" he wonders, looking up with some consternation. He's unsure of each passing moment.

     His head yet resting against the stone, Davydd looks to you, not so much lifting a hand for the tears or a word of protest to your question, or to your looks. "I'm asking for your forgiveness, and crying in regret," lyrical his voice trips out. Distracted momentarily, his eyes look up and over the forest and then back to you.
     "You don't have to give it. It's out there. I'll wait for it, Edward..." Even if it never comes. You see him swallow. You know what the throat does to the ...newly initiated. But Davydd doesn't wince, he doesn't move, there's not a whisper of complaint. "There's no hard heart here," Davydd continues. "If you want to take this hand again in alliance, the hand will be ready. My heart is a wide place..."
     Cymraeg beauty, roughness of a warrior's cheek now smoothened like a god's, turns to you. And then he rises, slowly. His body, his soul, still rippling with his transformation. His hand grasps a parapet's stone for balance. "I know I hurt you, wronged you, that's not what I was trying to do, Edward-bach. I...really wasn't. But I did. And I am sorry."

     Edward rises from his seat, a rather confused look on his face. "What are you talking about, Davy? What is wrong? Why are you..." like this? Edward's shoulder remains against the wall as he looks. This...has come out of the blue. "You are..." Edward's hand lifts and falls in the air, questioning how you are doing. "No one said you were up..." he says, rather annoyed.

     He looks at you as strangely as you look at him. Righting himself with a hand on the stone, he turns and peers at you. "I know my mind's a bit foggy, but didn't we have a huge argument? Last thing I remember is being bit by a mosquito in London," the shot. There's a sudden, thorny-edged smile. There's no doubting it, nor hiding it at the moment, nor any way that he could not know that he is a vampire...
     He smiles at you again, then waves it all off. "It doesn't matter," Davydd murmurs. "I...just wanted to make sure we were square is all. And I mean it. Square, Edward. Not you merely telling me what I want to hear or what'll make you feel better, but the truth. That we're square."

     Edward's still taken aback at the sudden arrival and the dramatic tearing of mid-conversation. "Why would...you want to apologize to me?" Edward asks. "An' I'm sorry about that..." since we're in the middle of something here, "...yeah, I ...guess we're square." Isn't he the one who needs to apologize?

     There's a simple nod, a slap of his hand on the stone. There's a rising of dust, minor, but it's enough for him not to do it again. Folding his arms against his chest, Davydd pivots toward you. The expression is... well, it seems amused more than anything else. There's no resignation, but there is Understanding.
     He knows...
     Whether it was William who told him or some other way, he knows. And he's asking you for your forgiveness. What a looney. Davydd looks up at the sky, moonless, black. The new moon is the moon of the crone, the moon of death, the moon of the Holly King. But while there's no moon visible, there is a great swath of stars. "You can't get this kind of sky in London, that's for certes," he whispers. "Reminds me of the old days, this. Back when a man could know his place in God's Plan, in the universe spun by angels on spheres, when stars sang, and everything was holy..." Davydd laughs softly, briefly, and looks to you again.
     "Sometimes a man has to die to see it is all," he murmurs. "That's all. Sometimes a forest has to burn to grow. Sometimes a man has to die to live. There's nothing to say on it but that. No...ill will or...apologies are needed. I'd have done the same were I you and Gwilym."

     Edward continues to stare, not really sure what's happening. You are here. You are apologizing. And he? He was ill-prepared. And he really doesn't like the moon right about now.
     "You wouldn't have," Edward states easily. "That's a lie. You would have...figured out something else." Apparently, you are up on the decision-making process. What they felt was at stake. Edward does not move to retrace the steps, or justify their reasoning. Suddenly, he catches up. "You would have found another route. We're sorry, Davy." But they couldn't think of much else to do.
     "Look, I don't want you to be square with me, alright? I need to be right with you, and I don't think we will be. Nothing happens if it isn't executed...and that was me." Not William. No great idea happens, unless someone makes a move. "So, I'll take your hand, Davy, but not expecting that...it's much more than a truce." And you'll go your separate ways.

     "If you had done what I had done...you're right...I wouldn't have given you another shot at immortality, transformed you, changed you. I probably would have killed you. Look," Davydd sits against one of the crinillations, seeming tired -- as well he should. "...put it in a Medieval perspective. I'm high prince of Cymru, you're my brother, my man of war and man at arms. I find out you're really serving the French, you know what would happen. There'd be war, or execution. What I was shown was..." Davydd tips back his head a moment, then looks at you. "...great compassion and mercy. More than most would have shown. More than perhaps I would have shown if my family were on the line, if my neck had been for the chop..."
     His hand spreads against the stone, sliding, slipping, but not crushing. He listens to it. He listens to you. Davydd bends his head. "I can't say goodbye to you. I'm not going to," he whispers. "I am going to be square with you whether you like it or not. If you want to punish yourself needlessly over something that was, quite frankly, destined and meant to be, then I can't exactly stop you. I just...I just wish you wouldn't is all. I'd rather you were in my life than out of it. You made a choice long ago. Well, I'm making mine again now. You can do with it what you want."

     "I made my choice," Edward nods, brow still showing his confusion. "I made it...a long time ago."
     Compassion and mercy. Edward looks down, and his hand extends toward his friend.
     "I am glad," Edward nods, eyes glassy, "...you are not going away," he whispers, barely able to say the words.

     The hand is taken, the hand is grasped, the hand is held. "There's no such thing as death," Davydd whispers as he leans in, his other arm around his friend's shoulder. He leans there. "Nor end of a true friendship. It just changes over time. So... we're not only square, we're in each other's heart again. A little wiser, I think, for the wear." Davydd pauses, cutting a look to his friend. "Speaking for myself, that is."
     His strong, Cymraeg arm gives you a squeeze. It's lighter than it would have been before, likely due to his own waking weakness and a need for sustenance. "I'm glad I'm not either," his voice lifts in a sudden, more familiar quip. "I thought I was a goner there for a moment..." And that you were gone from me. "I couldn't bear it," he murmurs again, hand reaching up and giving your head a pat before his hand draws away.
     "Fuck me, I'm famished," he whispers. "What do they have for food around here? Ram bladders and blood sausages?" He smirks but then quirks. Blood sausages might not be bad...

     "Staff."
     Edward grins and shrugs. His hand comes around his friend's shoulder as he walks him to the hatch that drops down to the sixth floor. "I recommend the sixth floor. Nice girls," Edward notes for the record.

     Fiery-burnished-copper eyebrows cock upward and he considers that a moment before grinning. "They have girls who work here? G'on..." Davydd rolls in mock-disbelief.
     But he does need a little....something...
     And to make a few calls. How strangely Destiny moves. Just when one thinks one has it sorted out, the world turns upside down. If he thought it was topsy-turvy before...
     Another birch leaf lifts on a current of Scottish wind, rising and falling, spinning as it slides against the stone...

Posted by rowan at June 20, 2004 06:05 PM