The night air is cool - wasn't it not so long ago (especially how Some People count time) that young women were warned to beware of the night air, lest they find themselves in an early grave? It probably wasn't vampires or Welsh gods that were the primary motivation for Victorian mamas to warn their darling feminine offspring against it, but ...
     It's a bit away from the castle though still on the grounds that Fiona's found herself wandering (and pondering) tonight. The night sky is slightly overcast, but between fingers of blueish-purple sky smeared with grey there are stars to be seen; the sun has gone to its rest for the night, but the faintest last glimmers are echoed in those distant orbs. "I should have a flute," she says aloud, conversationally, sprawled in the grass like a heap of dirty laundry left out and forgotten by some errant housewife. "Something to play a tune on..."
     She's dressed for sprawling, faded jeans paired with a loose grey shirt that even she'd be hard-pressed to say whose it was originally. An inheritance of Drancy's : clothing whose owners have been forgotten, all without the 'benefits' of anonymous sex. Her hair's braided, not loose, worn in a long coil down to wind through the grass like some otherworldly ethereal serpent which preys upon bobbypins and styling mousse.
     Rousing herself with some small difficulty, she eases to a sitting position and peers around. I have a picnic basket, she entices, the edge of a laugh in her thoughts as they wing your way, wherever you are. Her thoughts are lazy cardamom with an undercurrent of ginger and celery seed, all at home but with a dash of something new underneath, something unexpected and almost exotic. Come out, Old Man, it's time for you to face the music... less literally than your compositions...

     Where before he slumbered hovering just before waking, his sleep is deep now. There are no conversations during the day, no cheating, no telepathy, no movement, no sound before the last sliver of departing day is tugged away with a final flourish. It is as if he Is and then he Is Not. Nothing in between. His consciousness stirs like the sound of crickets and nightbird stirs after sunset, a wave that first comes with the scent of apples and roses and spills into a lazy Welsh syllables, not heard but felt.
     I don't want to face the music. I'm too busy facing the pillow... what's in the basket?
     If all else fails, food. It is the surest way to a man's heart and quite an attention getter for Welsh creatures.
     He is where you left him, sprawled out in a brilliant blue display, copper-bronze hair all disjointed, mouth almost holding a smile, some indication of restfulness. Davydd opens his eyes, blinks and groans.
     I vote for more sleep. And as I'm king, my vote counts twice. I win. What you cannot see, but can well imagine, is a large, Welsh form, blue dragons and vines and thorns and flowers everywhere, rolling over with great commotion and spreading himself over the whole of the bed's surface.
     Maybe if I ignore it, it will go away...

     I made knishes. You know what a knish is, right? It's cholesterol poisoning on the hoof. These're ground beef and mashed potato knishes... Whatever else one says about the Jewish people, they do have a great love of comfort food. And Fiona seems quite contended to comfort you with food - or make you comfortable... Also some strawberries which I rolled in chocolate flakes, a peach cobbler that I wish I had vanilla ice cream for, and some roast beef sandwiches. Oh, and you've got a choice of bottled beer or a bottle of the wine I brought back from my aunt's maison in Paris.
     The surest way to a man's heart and a woman's bed, it seems. She's grinning to herself, almost able to see you, but not quite - not reaching with all her senses as much as may be. I'm not coming up there to bring it to you this time, ap Owain. And I'm cruel enough that if you don't come down and join me, I'll eat it - and drink it - all by myself. Besides, it's a beautiful night for a picnic. Fiona glances up to the sky again, adding drolly, And if you're very good, maybe I'll even show you something you don't know.
     It has the leer of sexual innuendo to it - she knows you well enough, that you won't give up the sheets without a struggle... or a bribe. She ignores your proclamation of kingship with all the serenity of someone who Knows She Is Going To Get Her Own Way ...
     Even if there ends up being a catch to it.
     (And, with fairy men - how could there not be a catch?)

     Well, when you put it like that...
     Eyes open again and they roll from side to side as if in silent debate, do we don't we, as you list off the food. It is tempting. There is a period of silence. No thoughts exchange, nor images. There is only the sound of the out of doors, the smell of the grass, the smell of the rivers and meadows carried to you by the wind.
     A handful of moments roll into minutes that roll into one another, each one tripping the next, like gears slowly moved by falling water, until you hear the familiar sound of dogs barking.
     Well, there's bloody well not going to be a feast without Bwci and Rhyddid, not if they have anything to say about it. And then Davydd's familiar whistle at their misbehavior (in this case bounding forward too fast and hurtling themselves down the plateau to get to the promise of food). The air is still quiet, but then you feel the earth shift ever so slightly...
     Periwinkles pop up over the earth near where you sit and clouds move to cover the face of the waxing moon. The air is suddenly dense, like the pendulous moment before the first strike of lightning. I could do with a beer and a knish, couldn't I lads? He speaks with you and the dogs all at once.
     There, a form moving in the darkness, two other (and very round) lumps of darkness skittering your way. "Boyos," Davydd's voice lifts in warning. The corgies trundle over to you, slowing and remaining on the periphery, plopping down and grinning, glancing back to Davydd and then to you, wiggling forward.
     "Jesu, that's disgusting," Davydd clips, "... begging like that, and you call yourselves princes. G'on now," he motions to them and they move. Davydd grins, and the moon peeks through the clouds again to illuminate him. "So what's all this then? What's the occasion? Did I forget an anniversary?"

     "Hello, you two." She ignores you entirely at first in favour of making a fuss over the dogs. Isn't it disgusting? "Aw, aren't you two cute? Here, have a bit of roast beef." Bits of cold sliced beef are torn off one of the sandwiches and tossed into the darkness towards the bouncing lumps - diversionary warfare. Fiona doesn't quite coo, but her liking of animals is plain in her voice. And then, of course, then there's you.
     "Look at you," Fiona murmurs, in a rather different voice from how she's addressed the dogs. "Making a production over everything, aren't you? Come on, sit down, Your Majesty. Don't expect me to be your serving girl, though - that's in the bedroom only." There's a hint of wickedness in her smile for a moment, and then she tosses one of the sandwiches, wrapped in foil, up at you.
     "Not an anniversary, no. I just felt like it. And since I felt like it," Fiona explains with mock-gravity, "that means you have to feel like it too. How much good grace you put up with it, of course, is entirely up to you. Besides," and now she turns her face up to the revelatory moon, "we've got stuff to talk about, haven't we? I'm fresh out of sealing wax and cabbages, but I might be able to manage a ship or a king or so."

     He didn't bother with showering before striding down his mountain and to see him sitting nearby you can tell he barely dressed. He's barefooted, the t-shirt taken off the back of a chair, the trousers of the sort he wears when doing yard work. In fact, he looks like he's dressed for yardwork. His hair had a hand dragged through it to settle it more or less artistically, but that's about it.
     Grinning in a slant, Davydd takes a seat beside you, a sigh given for the motion (like every person in their 30s). "Hey, all the world is a stage," he rumbles. There's a lean over and he shadows you, kisses you, let's his hand get a fondle and a pat in and then he reaches for the basked to do his rummaging. He could get lost in that for hours you've come to learn.
     "I'm always up for eating and drinking and other things folks do in the dark." Pause. "Like smoke cigarettes." He takes a bottle of beer, twists off the top and at the sudden burst of sound, glances over to you, the selfsame wayward smile yet in place. "You're a bit industrious. Good idea this, thanks. I am a little peckish."
     Peckish is a good word for it...
     Davydd takes a long drink of the beer, sighs gratefully and then lies back for a bit, bottle propped up on his stomach, his other arm tucking beneath his head. "So what's on your mind, fair Fiona?"

     "In the dark." Fiona gives you a half-skeptical, half-humorous look, then reaches into the basket as well. "I never did take up smoking - probably just as well, if I went cadging your cigarettes you'd likely have had kittens by now. Give me a moment." She dips a hand into the basket after your hands have busied themselves - first with her, then with the basket, then with the food - and pulls out a sandwich for herself. She's already had at least one, to judge by wrappers discarded neatly in to one side...
     "I've been forcing myself to be industrious - otherwise I've been getting a little bit too lost, lately. I don't know, Davydd. This place is beautiful - I think I like it the way I like you... a bit too much." She halfway grins, then abruptly fills her mouth with a bite of roast beef, spiced with a bit of sharp mustard, some sort of avocado slices mingled with lettuce and sharp swiss and tomato and a bit of bacon. She doesn't keep kosher...
     She flops back, chewing and then swallowing, staring up at the distant stars. "I keep forgetting about the real world - it's nice, but it's a bit like being wrapped in thick cotton wool at times. Do you know what I'm talking about?" She slants a glance up in your direction, then back to the stars - a bit self-conscious all of a sudden, even if without the usual combined belligerence. "What do you think? Good idea, bad idea, idea to be shot out of a cannon for...?"
     Another bite's taken, the sandwich used as a prop with which to gesticulate. "Oh," Fiona adds casually, "and ... well, what did you think of the bathroom reading material?"

     Half sitting up to take another swallow of beer, Davydd then sits all the way up and takes one of the wrapped bits, presumably a sandwich, and piles back down. Gracefully enough. Mind you, he doesn't want to spill the beer. His head lifts for another swallow and then he sets it on the grass just past his head. "I have no idea what you're saying," he rumbles out, a smile streaking across his features as he looks at you. "As usual," eyes widen for dramatic effect. "But, you've brought me treats, so I'll listen anyway."
     He laughs, bastard that he is...
     Hands unwrap the sandwich and he takes the first bite. Mouth bulging full, eyes rolling, the muffled, garbled words that probably mean 'Good fucking sandwich', Davydd sits up and stays up, legs spread out, food set between them. He twists to take up the bottle. "Well, this is life out in the country. You know, peace and quiet, clean air, the village life. You're bored then?" Fiery eyebrows quirk up and he chuckles after he swallows another bit of sandwich. "Good by the way, diolch. So... what should I think? What are you proposing?"
     Quit beating around the bush, his eyes sparkle and say. The bushes are already pretty damned disciplined.
     Brows cock up again, two comets in unison, tails of prophecy in copper-bronze. "The story? It was well written. Does it still bother you, I suppose it must, to answer my own question. You know... everyone's had their heart broken, Fiona," Davydd murmurs, his expression serious. "Everyone's known, or been, an asshole. You shouldn't let the schoolyard bother you. You're in your twenties, a young woman, about to be married to a wealthy landowner who has tattoos for days. Why the fuck should you let a prepubescent waste of sperm bother you?"

     "I'm not bored. Boredom would just piss me off a bit and I'd find something to do." Fiona plucks up a blade of grass, tossing it lazily at you and then tilting her head back to look at the sky again. "Anyway, glad you like the food - though if I put enough relish on a tie-tack, you'd likely eat that too. The idea," she twists round to look at you, facing you directly and dropping forward to prop herself on her elbows, "is to take another place - London, or someplace. Someplace where we're not so cut off from the pulse and flow of the world, I guess - I've learned a lot here, but I'm afraid of losing touch with myself."
     It's honest and apparently heartfelt; she doesn't seem to cringe in anticipation of rejection, her gaze remaining focused upon you with the steadiness of 'well? what do you think?'
     She allows herself to fall the rest of the way forward, lying down on her stomach and staring intently at a summer-yellow dandelion, nose to nose with it. "I don't know if it bothers me," Fiona says slowly. "It bothers me that I was that stupid. I got taken in by someone who didn't want me - but I let myself think that he wanted me, Davydd. I believed it - and I believed that it was true, and that he meant it, and that I was ... well. Everything desirable; something worth having and holding onto. Something worth sacrificing for, someone worth fighting for - can't say that I really ever wanted men fighting over me and breaking each other's noses, but I'd like to think that someone might. I was a lot gentler then, you know - it hurt very badly, not just because of heartbreak but because it was my world and that destroyed it. I couldn't go back to being the good girl after that. It hurt worst in my pride, of course."
     She glances up, sidelong to you, shifting so that the grass ripples around her. "As for why I should let it bother me - why does Rose get under your skin?"

     He was mid-bite when She Who Must Not Be Named is named. Davydd smirks. "You want to know why she bothers me? It's not because I came home and found her fucking another man in my chair. It's not even because she chucked my shit on the lawn and let Vincent help her -- though, I will say the lack of respect bothered me in that. It was that I lied to myself. I wanted to believe the woman loved me. I wanted to believe she was a saint for my always going out on her. I'm the first to admit that I'm a bit commitment phobic and tend to sleep with an inordinate amount of women, and usually in pairs," he notes. "She was my confidante. I took her into my council," not the most romantic phrasing, "...and she showed me just how manipulative and thoughtless she could be. And then... I had to address that part of myself that resembled that. She's all drama and lies. But I wanted to believe that no matter how shitty I was she'd still be there. Good for her for finding someone else, even if he's a total twat. I don't hate her. I just fucking don't like her. She's not a likable person, Fiona. She's a cold-hearted bitch who'd sell her soul for a little fame and recognition. But I'm not letting her ruin my party."
     And now, talk of Rose complete, he can go back to eating. He seems to be mulling on the rest of your words, he even frowns a little, though that's more in thought than in any emotion, and with a swig of beer he washes it down.
     "I'm sure it did hurt. But that's what high school or whatever the hell it's called is all about. Relationships between people who haven't the fucking faintest clue what a relationship is, or even sex, no matter how much they beat off to Teen Rag Mag. I'm sure you believed, girls at sixteen will believe almost anything a boy says so long as he seems earnest, which men rarely are. It doesn't matter if he wanted you or not, likely he didn't. So the fuck what? You were a young girl," Davydd quirks a smile. "Young girls do silly things, think every gesture and glance is the end of the world, and every broken heart will last forever. Neither you, nor he, knew anything about what life is like. You're what...all of twenty-two, three? You still haven't the faintest idea. Be young, enjoy yourself, and fuck all to the rest."

     "She did what?"
     Fiona's eyes literally go wide, and she looks almost ready to bite the dandelion's head off its stem. She pushes herself upright, sputtering a bit. "Wait, wait - she ... and you let her live?" She shakes her head, running her fingers over her braid, then looks to the sky again for a moment. "Okay, okay, I'm going to hold onto my tongue for a minute because if you get me started, I'm not going to wind down any time soon." She takes a deep breath, then lets it out very slowly in a contained trickle until she seems almost deflated, eyes all but closed.
     "...Respect is important, Davydd. At the end of the day when everything else has wound down, even if it's someone you don't like or don't love or don't have any feelings for, if you can't respect them at all on any set of criteria, then there's no point in that person being alive. There has to be something there - something to prove they're not food for pigs, and I'm not talking about men, here, not just some concatenation of sound and clay and wind set to walking live down the street under a cover of skin pretending to be an actual person. Rose isn't a person." Opening her eyes wide, she looks to you, then away.
     "I'm sure you were a prick. You were shitty to me at times and I'm sure there'll be times again when you're shitty to me - and I intend to ride you mercilessly if and when it happens. But you either work it through or you walk away - you can't have it both ways. If something's worth doing, do it to death and hold on like the Grim Reaper... Anything else? Dig a hole and lie down in it, because there's nothing left."
     She makes a quiet choking noise, shaking her head and turning her body abruptly away, bowing her head to her hands and cradling her temples fora moment. "You don't take that trust and betray it. You can have faith with people on a lot of levels, but when you make a commitment to be something and you can't do it anymore, then you have to either let go, or find a way to mutually alter the nature of that commitment. Otherwise it isn't right. I don't give a fuck about fair - life isn't fair, you're not fair, I'm not fair - but what Rose did? Cats in heat have more respect for other people's notion of property than that."
     Fiona leaves her face in her hands, though her voice seems much the same as it was. "I was born both old and young and it's stayed the same ever since, Davydd. I can't enjoy myself unless- well, never mind that. I think I have more idea than you give me credit for. You're right that you've got more experience - but would you be marrying me if I was that shallow?"

     "I can't just go around killing people who piss me off or disrespect me," Davydd laughs, his inflection lifting in that Welsh way when excited. He gesticulates and then takes a swig of beer. "Shite, there'd be no one left in Kensington at all." A pause. "And half of Scotland. I dumped her, that was easy enough, I don't associate with her, and I'd just as soon not give her a moment's thought. The absolute worst I could do is to not give her the benefit of my time, which, no matter how long you live, is still precious. She'll have a shitty life, I content myself in knowing she's with a worse prat now than I ever was to her. Besides," he rumbles, "I'm not fucking going to jail for her. There are laws, Fiona," Davydd snorts. "And not just the mortal mundane laws. The world's bigger than that. And I'm no criminal."
     I thought I told you that story, his look darts to you. Apparently not. "In some ways, I had it coming. I mean, I cheated on her a lot. I'm eight-hundred plus years old. Some nights... I just can't be bothered with the social morays of this age. I'm not making you any promises either. I'll do my best. But no man's perfect, nor woman either as we have seen. Sure, fucking another man in my favorite leather chair, which," he points out with the beer, "I had to have burned, I'm not sitting in another man's leavings, pissed me off. So I do what any sane man does -- I fucking left. Until that night out on the South Bank, I hadn't seen her in years. Or thought about her for that matter."
     Davydd watches you. Shite, you're more upset than I am. "Most people do, Fiona. Mistakes happen," he murmurs, "... humanity is capable of real stupidity, incredible cruelty." He looks at the stars for a moment. "It's not as if she were Hitler. She's just a dumb, shallow girl. And for a while, it was alright. I didn't ask for much more. I just didn't want to go through this life so unconnected. I've learned a lot about my own choices recently. They haven't been the best. The trick is not to repeat them. There's only the potential of forever. Forever... really only exists if you're God. And I'm many things, but I'm not God."
     He finishes his first beer and rummages for his second. Air whooshes as he unscrews it with his hands. Harp in a bottle. Somewhere an Irishman is dying. "I'm not as black and white as you," he smiles. "But you're young. I have to remind myself just how young you are. You having a relationship with me is rather akin to you having a relationship with some old monument." He chuckles suddenly. "The mountains," dark green eyes widen and sparkle, "...or the oldest tree in the forest. Things just aren't that black and white in the real world. Not even with Rose."

     "Mistakes happen, and we try to fix them, Davydd. Even animals can apologize." Fiona looks up, eyes reddened whether from tears or the pressure of her hands. "I don't expect perfection from you or from anyone. But I told you already - no concubines, no virgins. You had one virgin and you broke her, why should I or anyone else trust you with another?"
     Carefully, very slowly and very carefully, she stretches until she's lying in the grass on her back. "Forever does exist. Things may change in forever - of course they change. I've changed in just a few months, I'm not going to suddenly stay the same. But forever isn't about not changing. It's about lasting out everything else - and not letting the 'everything else' become more important to you than what you've committed to."
     Arms spreading out as if making snow angels in the grass, she readjusts her braid and then lies flat, closing her eyes with just the contours and geography that are her anatomy disturbing the earth around her. "I'm not black and white - but I have the strength of my convictions, Davydd. If I had to, there's many things I'd do - you have no idea how many things I'd do, whether because of you or anything else. I very nearly did a few of them recently. I may've packed up my fears and sent them to live with mother, but that's not changed and that's not going to change, I don't think; it's too integral to who I am. Did I ever tell you about Drancy?"

     "I didn't want an apology," he says it simply. "I wasn't going to apologize to her, why should she have to do so? I bet she is having a similar conversation, at least in her head. I was far from an angel. I've been... a bad man at times," the joke has some truth behind it. "Thoughtless, self-centered, even with those I love most. Intentionally, unintentionally," Davydd shrugs, "...what does that matter? Pain is pain."
     There's a snort as you speak of forever. "You have no idea," he murmurs. Eyebrows arching, he repeats, "None. When you do, if you do," and there is an if clause there, to be sure, "...you'll realize then how little you knew when you were sitting out in this field with me. I don't mean to talk down to you, I realize how it sounds, but a twenty-two year old knows nothing about forever. About how elastic time is. About how difficult it is to remain human. About how difficult it is to watch the world change so much. To try to find a place of relevance in it, when no one can know who you are. It's like visiting the zoo, watching the animals behind glass. It's nothing like you dream it to be, nothing like you expect, it's just time. Time pulls and time twists. There's no straight line. Things like fidelity, like love, passion, hate -- they change over time, they mutate, Fiona. Most human beings simply do not live long enough to really see the patterns, to really know how elastic such concepts are."
     Davydd chuckles quietly. It is not in humor but in the Knowledge that can only come from Time Itself. "I've had more virgins than you could possibly know. What's another five-hundred? Another thousand? It ... doesn't matter, Fiona. It's meaningless. To me. To you, I know it is so much more Now, so much more intimate, so much more meaningful. But see what Time does," he looks back to the stars, "...it renders unimportant the things that never last." Virginity being one of them.
     "I asked you to marry me, to be my queen. I'm now realizing that you probably don't have a good idea of what that exactly means. Of what forever means. Or if there shall be forever. And if so... the cost and the sacrifice. Relationships are... different... when you are speaking of something more than a mere forty years. We ..." dark green eyes fix upon you for a moment, "...should talk about that. Twelfth Century to Twenty-first..."

     "If no one knows who you are, then you have to let them know who you are. I know it isn't easy. But the essence of who you are ... it isn't something that's diminished by giving it away." Fiona smiles faintly, her attention drawn inwards. "I am who I am. I twist and turn and I change, not just with seasons but with moments. When you first saw me, Davydd, it was autumn - do you remember that? And I was ... as afraid as I'd ever been. And blind." She draws the edge of her fingernail along her arm slowly, watching the skin go white, then red. "I know things will change. But I really do believe in the future. Why not? It's elastic and has at least as much to offer as the past."
     There's silence from her for a moment as she weaves blades of grass together with a touch along the stems. "If you build a house, it might last. It might not. It depends what you use. If you build it out of stone, like Powis... or if you build it out of playing cards. You're right, I probably don't know what you mean by asking me to marry you and be your queen. To me, it means that I love you and I want to marry you - I want to fulfill you as much as you fulfill me. I know there is a kernel of something here," she closes her fist on the air, "which is in us both. It's something more than just children we'll have together or living together and - and playing house. Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to arranging furniture, but it'd get old after a while. What I'm talking about is the essential truth of it - something which involves more nakedness than just being without clothing."
     She plucks the weave of grass up, examining it as if reading some fine print on it. "Did you ever see me anything but naked, the entire time you've known me? We can talk about it - but there's more here than just me being twenty-something and you being older than dirt and twice as cheap."
     On that note, she rises to brush grass and crumbs away from herself, shaking her head so that the long braid thumps against her knees and the backs of her thighs. "I told you before what you've got to do, Davydd. I know you're not a coward, except you're afraid. I just ... don't know what it is you're afraid of. I charge headlong into things, even the things I'm afraid of. It might not always be smart, but it seems to work for me. Someday it's probably going to get me killed - I might go to war someday, you know. But come on - if you want to talk about our relationship, we can. If you want to lay me down on your altar, you may. If you want to take me up to bed and shag me rotten, you can do that too..."
     There's a small pause, Fiona glancing back over her shoulder through grey-green eyes. "...Just remember, whatever I give you, I'm giving you because it's valuable and I trust you with it. I can still be hurt. I can't be destroyed anymore - but I can be hurt. You take what you need, but I'll do the same. This is about love, to me - and love isn't something which you can argue with and try to put into contracts and on any terms but its own. If you try, you'll only end up destroying yourself and taking down those who love you with you."
     Bending, she picks up the bottle of wine which has been opened, peering suspiciously into its neck. "It'll go sour if it's wasted. Want to get smashed with me, ap Owain? Or don't fairy princes with fangs get tearing drunk?"

     Davydd shakes his head. He is as unable to convey this state to you as he was his prior state to Sandrine. There is a smirk, completely self-directed, to have been born and died and reborn twice, just to end up back where he started. Only the players have changed. The story perhaps remains the same. Now it is you who are on the outside, who cannot share the world he's completely entered into. To you, he's just a fairy. Just as weird as the next fairy. But there is -- and has always been -- another universe.
     No, Davydd, it didn't change anything at all. Only everything and nothing...
     "No one can know who I am. I do not exist, Fiona. Not in the fairy realms and not in this realm. The historical personage of Prince Dafydd ap Owain, High Prince of Wales, is long dead, any semblance of the mortal life long lost. I am rooted to this world, this one, the one that bore me, birthed me, slew me and revived me. The lesson was... simply that," he murmurs. "I've built more houses than I could ever tell you, some out of stone, others out of sand, some others," dark forest eyes look to you, "... out of nothing but pure fancy and air. You have to, you see, when you are as old as me."
     Davydd looks at you rather bizarrely as you speak of fear. The mouth goes cant-wise, the eyes peer at you, strange creature, as if you just sprouted wings and a second head. "I'm not afraid, Fiona. I'm a realist." He exhales and lies back, arms outspread in a Holly King's traditional Christ-like pose, eyes to the stars again. "Why do you say the things you do?" he wonders suddenly. "As if you are arming yourself. What war do you expect to fight? Why on earth would you want to. The only battle you will find is the one with yourself. Nothing else matters, Fiona. You shouldn't fly so headlong, so quickly, to speak about war, destruction. No one is fighting you but you."
     Davydd is quiet for many moments after. He seems to be at peace listening to the crickets and the nightbirds, feeling and tasting the light spring breeze, hearing in the distance the brook and small river, barely big enough to be on any maps. "What do you want from a man? What sort of marriage would you want? What sort of life do you wish for ...however many years you have remaining? Do you wish to remain in this realm or leave it behind for that of the fairykind? Are you prepared to pay the price for having the one over the other? I am concerned that ... in our energy... both you and I have neglected to think about some very fundamental things. It is true, when I asked you to join in marriage with me, that word means something specific to me. What does it mean for you?"

     "It isn't about realms to me, Davydd. I'll go where I go and I'll be where and what I'll be. Who are you? As far as I'm concerned, you're Davydd. You're someone I love and want to be with - both rare things - and who for some impossible and incomprehensible reason wants to be with me." Fiona remains standing as she says this, craning her neck up at the sky, then tilting her head downwards to look at you instead, a small, almost despairing smile suddenly on her lips and in her eyes. "Whatever lack of age I've got, time is going to take care of that soon enough, you know. As long as I live, that's the way it'll be."
     She looks away a moment later, down the slope of rippling grass, reaching up to smooth the braid of her hair between her palms. "I say what I do because it's what I see, Davydd. Maybe it won't come to pass, but the possibility for it is there. It'd hurt, to turn into that - but the kernel of it's in me, that kernel of who and what I'd have to be if war came. I don't know the nature of the war or even the shape of it - I'm stumbling along, half-blinded by all the shiny things that come along. I just can sense it without knowing what it is I'm sensing - when've I ever known anything, Davydd? I just ... I do as is in my nature and try to make the best of what comes."
     Sinking back onto the grass, she composes herself into a crosslegged pretzel with her elbows on her ankles, her chin in her hands. "I told you this before, Davydd. I'm greedy. I'll give everything I've got, but I want the same in return. I want someone who'll love me and all the rest of that, but I need the sacrifices not to be all made by me." Fiona glances skew, sidelong, a wince in her shoulders before it's released. "The ties I've got here ... they're tenuous. They may hurt to sever, but whether I'm here or there or someone else, sooner or later they'll be gone. In a marriage I want something to build upon, Davydd. Someone I can rely on to be my friend and my lover, my confidante, the father to my children - my hiding place and refuge when I need it, my child who is not my child when it's needed. I'm greedy. I want everything, and I can't even begin to cover it without giving in to another voice that's in me..."
     She closes her eyes without otherwise changing her position, heels tucked slightly under her. In a rhythmic tone she half sing-songs the words, "Lover, husband, father, son, the emptying and the filling, the light and the dark. I want you to be strawberries and champagne, Davydd. I want you to be a thick solid steak. I want you to be difficult, sometimes - even if I won't always know that it's what I want when it's necessary. I want you to be there, because it's so easy for you to be somewhere else, even when you're physically present. It's not always cut and dried - and there'll be laundry to take care of and meals to come to some sort of agreement about and there'll be real things and magic things and I don't know what things. But that's life too. I'm stuck trying to figure out how to make you the beneficiary of my will - since you don't really have a legal name that I know of, I'll need you to help me out on that one."
     She glances up, singsong having dropped away on the final sentence. Fiona plops back into the grass, eyes closed, muscles tensed. "I want a life, Davydd. The rest I make up as I go along. What about you?"

     The answer appears to be satisfactory, for a time nothing is said. The words are left to hang upon the air where you put them, like so much laundry hung out to dry in the evening breeze. "There will be no war, Fiona. That, I will not have. You see, I have fought in too many, as a man, and as whatever-it-is-that-I-am. Through these hills, in fact. I've bled on forest floors and sandy deserts, city streets and castle halls. In battles against foes I cannot name to you, those both real and those unreal, two world wars and a handful of Christian crusades." His head turns on the grass and he looks at you. "And there are things I will never be able to tell you. There will be places you will not be able to go. There will be nights, I don't know how many and I can't know when, when I will not be able to be with you, nor divulge to you what keeps me from you. What I need most from a woman, from any woman no matter what role she fills for me, is discretion, caution and quiet. All the rest is negotiable. I can give you neither reason nor assurances nor promises. But then, neither can any other man to any other woman on this earth. The rest is just... hope really..."
     Davydd is quiet for a time after, ruminating on what you have said and the energy with which you have said it. "When I asked you to marry me, to be my queen," he softly begins, Welsh leaving that purring mouth in lilting soft torrents, like a newborn stream, "... it was to link your kingdom to mine, to have a mother for the heirs I would need to give rise to for her kingdom and mine. In part political, in part strategical, in part emotional. I care for you, do not mistake my lecturing for lack of emotion. For it's there," dark eyes settle on you, and so too a dark world, a primal world with all its shuddering urges, smoldering fires and neverending life and song, "... but we should be real about this. Not fanciful, it's easy to be fanciful and I'm more guilty of it than you. But real, Fiona. Honest, Fiona. To be honest, the original reason for alliance no longer exists. My kingdom goes on, as I do. But I can't live there. I can't hide there. I can't pretend that it means any more than this earth. Does this mean I am changing my mind? No..." he smiles a little. "It does not mean that."
     "You may be greedy," he goes on. Dylan Thomas never talked so much. "Most people are, but you don't own anything but your own skin. You'll have to do with sharing me between you and what it is I may have to do. Where it is I may have to go. And whom I may have to see. If you want a father for your children, I seek a mother for my own. If you wish a friend, you've had one in me, strange as we are. If you want to share my bed, all the better, I find you an energetic partner who won't give in so easily, the attraction is quite real. I'm agreed. If that's the sort of marriage you want, then you'll have that from me."
     He doesn't ask you if you want it. That decision is ultimately yours. There is only honesty without lyricism and poetry. "What I need from a partner," Davydd explains, his gaze not moving from you as he continues, "...is a woman who can Understand. Who can be on her own if need be. Someone for whom I don't need to worry, I can trust in her strength. And if I don't return, I'll at least know that I won't be leaving behind a shambles. I don't need or want money, I don't want or need material inheritances, even if it were possible -- and it's not. I have no license, no passport, no identity, no existence. I am a face in the crowd, and that's the way it has to stay. Our marriage cannot be legal, it is not binding by any other court than yours and mine."
     Davydd sits up finally, long legs still spread out, his hands to the ground. "The only reason ...my last partnership ended was..." He frowns a little but only in thought, lifting his gaze back to you from the insubstantial air, upon which he was forming his thoughts, "... my belief that I had to sacrifice one life for another. She could not have come with me to my kingdom, to stay there. Truth be told," fiery eyebrows cock upwards slowly, "...not only was it unnecessary, my kingdom is what I am and is where I am, I can't stay there either. In order to live properly one has to ... exist outside of one's self. Not everything revolves around me, or is filtered through me. In truth, there are no fancy castles and trees that drip honey. We can dream it," Davydd smiles a little, "...and we should dream about it, but the world needs dreamers who do. Not Dreamers who run from doing."
     With a last exhalation, Davydd brings his hands together. "I think we should stop here for the night. I think, yes... I agree... we should open that bottle of wine and we should drink. Get drunk if we can. Maybe copulate a little, that always makes the night better. And move, when we move... honestly..."

     "If things have changed, Davydd," Fiona answers, voice steady, eyes looking straight ahead, "then I have to ask because you really haven't said. Is this what you still want to do? If it isn't - for whatever reasons - then you need to tell me that. If this is now something that you're just - going through with..."
     She stops talking, not as if about to weep or go into hysterics, but as if she's run out of things to say or isn't sure what language to put it into. "...If this isn't what you need and it isn't what you want, if you're doing this because you asked and now everything's changed and ... and so on ... then tell me. I think if nothing else, I've a right to know, especially if we're speaking of honesty - you've told me all the distances there may be and will be, but you haven't said that you still do find that you want this."
     She moves to her feet, sweeping her braid back over her shoulder, gaze still turning inwards, expression smooth, muscles still taut. "I've never given a damn for law, but you're still talking about children. In this day and age, where there's children, there's legal encumbrances, and solutions would need to be found, Davydd. If though there is no reason for us to be married - if you want to exist without needing me, without me needing you - I can be strong. I am strong. But sometimes I'll need to be weak as well as strong."
     She looks at the bottle of wine as if it'd suddenly appeared there from some foreign satellite, then shakes her head, lips quirking and then returning to their normal relaxed position. "I'm going to go down to the river first."

     "I suppose the shagging's out now then," he rumbles out in his usual way. He watches you rise again and he lies back. His arms cross under his head and he has the whole sky for a blanket. He's seen the stars change courses. Everything does in the end and then it starts all over again. He looks at the stars and he sees the vine of it all. No end, no beginning, constant change and discovery. The trees still whisper, he still hears them, oh but the things they now say...
     "I hadn't thought of it before." A pause. "I hadn't thought of a lot of things before, I do that," Davydd lilts. "But in a way, well... not simply in a way, it is the same. You, as I, have the choice between two worlds, Fiona. The world, however living it seems, of an immortal Welsh prince, a world that cannot be legalized and meshed with your mortal existence... or... you choose your mortal existence, however magical, at the expense of the other." Hmm, quirk the fiery eyebrows. It's not just me. "Now you know what it's like to be eight-hundred years old... this... right here and right now... it's tangible, only for this instant..."
     And there it is, says his expression, dissolving on the air between us, in the wind and in the smell of trees and nearby water. The departing hoofbeats of the horse of the Black Jack Davy. Hmm, say the eyebrows. An interesting allegory.
     "You'd have to marry Kelly," he notes. "...He has a life on paper. Your children would be mine. Your parents would never know my real face. They'd know his." Yes, Davydd's mouth puckers in thought. Yes, that is how it would have to be. "Think about it, Fiona." With that and with another exhalation, Davydd is standing, brushing the grass off his clothes. Despite the conversation, he leans in, his mouth brushes against your forehead. He's made his proposition.
     And an honest proposal...

     "I don't know, Davydd. I've changed from what I was. I'm still changing." Fiona doesn't move away as you lean in, though the eyelashes lower, accepting the kiss as if a benediction. Bless me, Father, for I have Sinned...
     "It isn't the immortality that's the problem. It's the doors." Fiona says this, gaze still cast downwards. "There may come a time when I'm called upon to open and close doors of my own, Davydd. Will you be able to live with that if and when it happens? If you can't - if you ask things of me that you can't give - then there will be problems. I'm telling you what I'm seeing, and it's not - look." Her mouth twists, expression crumpling with frustration, and she opens both hands, palms flattening downwards as she does so. "I can't tell you how I see this. It's something inside, I feel it - it's like having an arthritic knee, I can feel the weather change. There's a pressure in it. It doesn't want to be put into words..."
     If I had a penny for all the things I've known and ignored, or known without knowing...
     "I love you, Davydd," Fiona says finally. "But this isn't just my decision to make. Stop trying to make it just mine. I'll be back after I've gone to talk to the river."
     She turns, braid thumping against her hips, a breeze blowing up in her wake to ruffle the long blades of grass as she wades through them.

Posted by rowan at July 09, 2004 04:06 PM