"Bianca showed him your crib. You floated out like a flower petal down the river to the reedy banks of Avalon. How she found you, and how the Orphan Queen was rumored to have disappeared were a perfect match," he whispers. "As perfect as myth and legend can be when shown to be true."

     "First of all, we have both been laboring under misconceptions, and I think we have been talking past one another, misunderstanding the other's viewpoint. This is something I would propose to change, if you are willing."

          Lord Fox gently smiles. "Do not spend long thinking yourself an idiot," he advises. "First, it is an untruth. Second, it wastes valuable time better spent reading and learning or... making sure that a good man knows that a good woman finds him attractive, and is interested in him..."

     In all this world, I am ...a solitary kind. Large eyes lift to look at the moon, his turbinate horn seeming to point to it. It is just you and I, fat moon....

     "I know Lord Lugh would shudder to think that I could be so easily distracted, or would, shudder to think, invite distraction. Distraction is typically deadly for kings," his mouth slants slightly. "But," green eyes lower to his hands again, "...maybe we should make time for distraction, now and then. The world does not have to be ...so serious all the time."

     The grin of Lord Fox is, as Stephen of Rose would say, rather foxy. He chuckles, dark-red eyebrows lifting to the notion of reward and punishment. "Often when one is given something by royal hands, it is both reward and penance, I find..."

     One contest, by the curl of the scroll, he suspects is done. But like all honorable, soldierly men, he shall leave the field with a tip of his helmet and a wave of his hand to the course.

     ..."I wish love would come on our terms, but we don't run it. If we did, we'd have no poetry..."

     "You know, you really should visit Paris sometime. The next time I go, would you care to go along? Or are you to be ...bagging other large, rooty vegetables now that Balthazar is off the menu?"

     The restaurant is quieter than it has been in days, what with the competitions finally over; there's a sense that the city's now resting up for the coronation. It has not stopped a cluster of young sprigs of the nobility from gathering; why not? Where there is good food, and good wine, and good conversation...

     "...Prince Balthazar is a wonderful man of intelligence and grace, and he comes from a family by whom I consider myself privileged to be granted the honor of this consideration. I am certain that he would be dismayed if I took him so for granted as to fail to give him the opportunity to display his abilities; but I do not believe that I shall go out of my way to invent tests for him, our courtship already being secure. Fate will find tests aplenty for us both, as it will for all living beings who strive for excellence. My only hope is that we may both achieve a level of such that we may be each other's equal."