LAS challenge 2 voting
LAS Challenge Two Voting
- Please note the changes to voting procedure!
- Read each entry to vote.
- Vote for your three favourite pieces, and please be sure to include feedback for each one. The fic you vote for in the first spot should be the piece you felt was best in accordance to the voting guidelines below. Vote 2 & 3 and the reasoning for each is entirely up to your discretion.
- First place voting should be based around quality only: Was the prompt met? Does characterization ring true? How is the spelling, grammar and punctuation? Did the piece hold you attention?
- With a view to being able to give each participant some feedback, reviews of the other stories are very much encouraged. If you liked the story, or noticed room for improvement, please let the author know!
- Use the form in the textbox below to vote. In "general comments", include any feedback for the other stories by indicating the number, followed by your review. A sample vote form is in the comments.
- Participants: do not vote for your own fic, or tell others to vote for it.
First pick: #
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Second: #
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Third: #
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Additional comments:
The prompt was: beyond Camelot. Participants had to keep the focus solely on Gwen, using other characters only to accentuate Gwen if necessary.
Voting closes Wednesday, February 10 at noon PST Tuesday, February 9 at 11:59 pm PST. Results and challenge three will be posted sometime on Wednesday.
#1. The Storm, G
There’s a storm brewing. She can feel it - the air is tense with it, thrumming almost palpably with the promise of violence. It’s midsummer now, and it’s been a long time since it rained. Weeks maybe. She’s lost track. Sweat clings delicately to the space just over her lip and the nape of her neck. She’s standing by the window in Morgana’s chambers, searching for a breeze, breathing in the humid air hanging a weird, otherworldly green over the courtyard.
The room is clean. There are fresh flowers on the table. On another day Gwen might even have put warming stones beneath the covers. Just in case.
But no-one else enters. No-one has, since the strange day when everyone woke up from a strange dream to find Morgana gone. Kidnapped, they whisper. Taken. Held. Lost. Gwen, in her quietest moments, when it’s just her in this dead room, has another word for it. Escaped.
She thinks of Morgana. The beautiful, so beautiful. Thinks of her as she’d become, those last months before she left. Her terror and her confusion, her desperate anger, the loneliness in her eyes that couldn’t be soothed away with a smile or a touch. She thinks of these and knows somehow that this, whatever it is, was inevitable. And it pulls something in her, something bittersweet and old.
She can’t even think the word to herself, although it’s there. Jealousy. As she squints and stares under roiling clouds, past chimneys and walls, past paddocks and farmhouses, as far as she can. To where hazy purple mountains form a final barrier to her sight. Something wild within her, small and shackled, keens at the restriction. Rages silently against the smallness of her life, of her world.
But only in her quietest moments.
The first dark rumble ripples through everything, and Gwen feels something shake inside her in response. It often gets like this, when it storms. In the crazed summer cataclysms of atmosphere and heat that only come around once every so often. The lightning cracks and it feels like it’s cutting her open, like for just that instant she catches a glimpse of something. A memory of a feeling, a realization quickly lost. The swelling of something huge inside her that she’s never been able to put a name to. Some hidden expectation. She feels beyond herself, beyond the person she’s always thought herself to be. Beyond the daughter, the girl, the maid, beyond blushes and boys and calloused fingers. Beyond the world she lives in every day. Beyond Camelot.
The sky opens and the rain plunges down in an angry downpour, with a sound that’s almost a sigh, a whisper of something, a secret that might have been Destiny into Gwen’s ear.
She shivers, and watches from the window until the storm passes over.
#2. The Lady's Lake, PG
It’s not the first time she’s came here, and she knows it won’t be the last. There was something in the air, next to the lake and facing the mountains, and it calmed her completely. It seemed to Gwen that she was never really alone here, stood idly on the edge of the blue water. She was surrounded. The winds would dance the leaves from the forest floors and make the ripples grow bigger and Gwen would swear that this was it. This was the place that souls dwelt and spirits slept.
Gwen would hear her mother, she’d listen as she scolded her daughter on the state of her hems or laugh when she told her what Merlin had got up to lately. Her father was there too. His voice encircled his wife’s as they kept their child company on the banks. Sometimes Gwen imagined that she should just like to stay with them forever. Such was the raw beauty of this one oasis that Gwen wondered what it would be like to never leave. To wake each morning feeling the moaning breezes and smelling the dewy grasses and hearing the whispers.
But Camelot called. As it always did and always would. The turrets loomed in the distance reminding her, calling her back, singing that there was nothing for her beyond its stone and besides, she was sure she would get lonely. Even with the glowers of past friends, Gwen’s mind would automatically run to the living. What was Arthur doing? Had Gaius finished that tincture? Was Merlin laughing? When did Morgana want her bath? And it was like a rush of reality had slapped her back into place, and the sudden silence of the lake deafened her.
No one can live with the dead, no matter how they might wish it.
#3. Untitled, PG
There was considerably more than a moment, in Hengist’s cage, when Gwen thought she was going to die. She was surprised to discover that in that not-moment, one of the things she missed was Camelot. If she’d thought about it, and she tried not to, she wouldn’t have imagined she would feel such sorrow at the idea of never seeing Camelot again; the people in it, regret for all the things left unsaid, stories unfinished, if she’d thought about her death she would have expected those feelings. What she wouldn’t have expected was to want, desperately, to see Camelot, one last time.
*
Gwen had been waiting for the visit to her mother’s cousins for ages. She knew that they lived in Olaf’s kingdom and she knew that there were only a couple of days left until they left. When Dad told her that her mum was sick she was more upset about the cancelled trip than anything else. By the time she understood what it all meant it was too late for anything except grief.
*
Lancelot went without saying goodbye. She told herself it didn’t matter and wondered what she would have done if he’d asked her to go with him. If she was being honest, she didn’t think it would have taken long for her to decide. The sudden attachment she felt to Camelot scared her a little. It had never been that important to her before, except as the place where those she cared about lived. She’d be happier if she could pretend this new connection was all about Arthur but it wasn’t. Somehow Camelot had woven itself into her future.
She tried to convince herself that the lightness she felt with every pace of her mount was more to do with getting away from danger than getting closer to Camelot. That didn’t explain, though, the way she strained as they got closer for her first sight of the familiar turrets against, pale against the horizon. By the time she felt her breath catch, sharp inside her chest, she couldn’t pretend any more. Her heart jumped and twisted like the Pendragon flag as it was buffeted by the wind. She was home.
*
She noticed the way the other girl’s eyes flashed behind the tears before she noticed anything else. Later, pressed shoulder to shoulder against the wall of the forge, those same eyes were fixed on the action of the hammer as it transformed cold metal into something useful. Gwen told the other girl all about how she was going to Mercia to learn how to be a smith from her dad’s old teacher, even if she couldn’t be a proper apprentice. The girl went away with a smile and a small, sharp dagger. Two days later Gwen was summoned to the castle and the King gave her the position of maid to his ward. Gwen knew she’d never see Mercia.
*
She hung back as Arthur and Merlin rode into the courtyard. She might be drunk with the smooth, bitter, warming ale of homecoming but she still remembered caution, still remembered how easily Uther removed all that displeased him. She trailed in behind them and fled to the sanctuary of Morgana’s rooms. Later, she spent the last of the afternoon wandering the castle and its grounds, the rough stone of the walls scratching at her finger tips. When Merlin caught her stroking one of the stone dogs guarding the entrance to the castle he paused and watched her for a moment, peering at the dog as though he expected it to come alive. He even reached out and petted it before walking on bemused.
*
Her dad was dead and Gwen knew her life in Camelot was over. There was nothing left for her anymore, despite Arthur’s words. She packed the few belongings she knew she’d want to keep. She waited, sleepless, through the night. She decided to allow herself one day to say goodbye. When Merlin came to ask her about what Uther’s death would mean to her she realised it had been one day to long. She couldn’t leave while she was still needed in Camelot.
*
Arthur found her as the warmth of the sun began to fade, replaced by the nip of night air. She stood on the battlements looking out over the castle grounds and the town beyond. He didn’t say anything, just stood by her side, sword worn fingers brushing her own and watched with her as the sun set. She knew, even with the silence, that Arthur understood. There might be a whole world beyond Camelot but her world was within it.
#4. What you find when you go beyond Camelot, PG
Run away
It should be easier to get away from your problems by leaving the place which causes grief. Unfortunately, the nagging sensation in the back of Gwen’s head wouldn’t go away.
She tucks her blanket more closely around, tears streaming down her face.
I know you’re scared
‘What is a beautiful maiden like you doing in a place like this?’ The tavern keeper asks Guinevere, as she plops down on the barstool in front of him.
Gwen looks up, eyes nondescript, purple underneath from lack of sleep, says, ‘I can never go home.’
‘Don’t you worry, miss, there are a lot of people who can’t go home,’ the tavern keeper slides her a cup of ale, ‘drink this. You will catch a chill if you don’t.’
With this, Gwen grabs the stein and starts downing the warm beverage.
So afraid…
After four rounds of ale, Gwen livens up. She starts rambling:
::I don’t know what is wrong with me. Everything bad that could go wrong will. I’ve been accused of witchcraft, my father has been accused of falsely/murdered for the same crime, the lady I served in the palace was poisoned by one of my newest friends; she was my friend, too. I’ve tried to hide my affections for two men. I kissed the crown prince of Camelot, me, Guinevere, otherwise known as the blacksmith’s daughter. I’m here because I need to find my mistress. I cannot bear to face the man I left back home until I find her.
The listening crowd bows their heads in silence. One brave soul speaks up, ‘What happens if the lady does not wish to be found? What then?’
Gwen frowns, bowing her head solemnly, ‘I had not thought of that, but I am too scared to go home.’
But I need you so…
Another voice pipes up.
‘Sometimes the answers you have questions for can be found at home, you still have people who love and care for you back home, do you not?’
The question was like a jolt to Gwen’s senses. She could go home, couldn’t she, there were still people who cared about and loved her enough to make sure nothing bad happened to her.
If her lady did want to be found, she will make her appearance again.
Until then, she will do her duty to her countrymen.
Will you wait for me?
A bundle of nerves, Gwen made her way back to Camelot. The guard turned their heads to stare at her as she walked her horse through the courtyard towards the castle.
True love waits.
Like a prodigal
The prince greets the wayward maiden on the front steps of the castle. It may not have been a banquet fit for a queen, but the kiss planted on Gwen’s lips created magic throughout the kingdom. Camelot would never be the same again.
#5. Memory, PG-13
She remembers the last time she saw Lancelot. The way the sun caught his hair, glowing warm brown. His smile, sorrow caught between perfect teeth.
He rode off into the distance, into the hazy dawn, to...lands beyond.
She walks the halls alone these days, maids so used to her dismissal that they only show their faces when she expressly requests it. She draws her own baths, laces herself into her own dresses, in the echoing, silent mornings of the monastery. She holds onto that self-sufficiency, grips it with desperate mental fingers, because there is a part of her that longs for the days when it was all she had.
She remembers the last time she saw Morgana - dragged away in chains, surrounded by knights in red. Her green dress was torn and ragged, her feet bloody. She cast a glance back at Gwen - at Gwen, not at Arthur or Merlin or Gaius, but straight to Gwen's heart. Her eye was pale golden, shining through the dark tangles of her hair.
She eats little and smiles less, tracing long fingers against the walls. Her fingers are calloused - first roughened with housework and then pricked and bloodied with the tapestry needle - but she can feel how cold the stone is. How steady. Rock that will last for centuries.
Few things are so solid.
She remembers the last time she saw Arthur, hair graying at the temples, laid out in state upon the ship to Avalon. How still his face was. How pale his lashes, fanned over cheeks once rosy - she had reached out a hand, traced over his mouth. "Speak," she had begged him, angry and pleading, both. "Speak, you stupid, arrogant fool!"
But he was silent.
She slides her hands across her breasts, sagging with age, traces down her stomach. She grips her hips, hard, and remembers him bending over her, lips hot on her neck. Remembers his anger, near the end - the darkness in his eyes when she would linger too long over Lancelot's letters. Her memory puts his hands in place of hers, too-warm and too-firm. "There is nothing," the ghost of his voice breathes in her ear, "beyond Camelot. Not for me...and not for you."
She opens her eyes and breathes that nothing in.
#6. Fairy Tales, PG
As a little girl, Gwen had always dreamed of leaving Camelot. She had always been imaginative, thinking of all the different people who lived outside the kingdom that she had lived in her whole life.
She had been born in Camelot, had grown up in Camelot, had found her first love in Camelot and had her first of many losses in Camelot. It was her homeland, and she had never strayed far from the safe haven.
Her borders had been expanded when she began working as a servant for the Lady Morgana, although not always in the happiest fashion. She had been kidnapped and taken hostage and only rescued when the two men who she loved unconditionally and irrevocably came to save her.
As a young, poor girl living in a kingdom where the rich were outlandishly wealthy and the poor made do with what they could scrounge Gwen had already had her fair share of misery and horror. Her best friend had died at the tender age of five, victim of a fast spreading plague that wiped out a large percentage of the Albionian population.
She had always wished to meet magical people: druids, wizards and fairies. When she was a child, her father had told her stories of magical beings, of unicorns and Keepers and her young mind was filled with visions of ladies in flowing white clothes and fatherly men with long white beards.
She soon discovered that magic was not as it seemed in fairy tales.
Camelot wasn’t quite the safe haven she had always believed it to be, and evil was a force to be reckoned with.
Fairy tales and fables were long gone and only reality could take their place.
#7. Empty Cageand Tangled Wire, PG-13
Warnings: Mild violence, threatened violence, thoughts of suicide
Gwen rode as proudly as she could, back erect, thinking this is how Morgana would act. She pictured her lady at her most furious and defiant - as she had been this morning fighting their captors. Gwen's hands were bound behind her back, and she was having problems staying on the horse, as her muscles cramped from fatigue, but she couldn't let any of the men surrounding her know the bone weariness threatening to pull her from her mount.
Ahead of her Kendrick held up his hand, and stopped the party of bandits. "Get her off the horse." Was all he said and she was grabbed and manhandled down to the ground. She had trouble standing; her legs had lost feeling as well as their strength miles back.
Kendrick silently leered at her as took a knife from his belt. With his blade unsheathed, he walked towards her. She refused to back down, she refused to flinch, and she refused to do anything but look him in the eye with disdain.
"You do a good impression of your Lady." He said walking behind her. He traced the knife down her arm slowly skimming over her skin and she could feel the threat in the action. Abruptly, he started cutting through the ropes that bound her hands. "She's not one to suffer fools lightly." She said, getting the dig in while she could, when she knew she was worth more alive and cooperating.
He cuffed her and then tossed her a water skin. "Don't run off, don't even walk from his spot." He left her alone to rest from the ride and the ropes. She rubbed the feeling back into her wrists and hands. Men all around her were working and watching - two of them explicitly guarding her. She took a drink before sitting down on a log. Her ankle was sore and the muscles in her legs were so exhausted they collapsed down the last few inches to the log. She winced at the thought of the mud she was sure she was getting on the dress, thinking of the hours of work it would take to remove the stains. But then again this dress would never be worn again by Morgana, and would probably never make it back to Camelot, so why should she care now about a bit of mud.
She could feel the thought threatening to break her resolve. She wouldn't cry; she couldn't give these men the sight of her tears and fear. Pretending to be Morgana was only prolonging her life but it was no way to save it. The only way she could see herself safe was to be rescued, like some damsel in a bard's tale. But unlike the princesses in those tales no one would be looking for her. She was an orphaned maidservant.
She watched the men moving around the impromptu camp and she felt removed from the scene, her life, as if she were watching a tableau from one of the high castle windows. If she were to die, perhaps, then it would be better to do it as Morgana, brave and unyielding, then as Gwen, a scared and tired maid from Camelot. She took another sip of water and she thought of her father. She was the last of her family and she couldn't turn her back on them to die as Morgana. She owed her family and herself that at least. She could be her lady now, stare her kidnappers in their eyes, and make them quake with the power of her hate, but when her time came, her lies were exposed, and they tried to take her away her last choice she would do it as Gwen and no one else.
#8. Well Traveled, G
The wildflowers have just begun to bloom - sprigs and sprouts, thistles and thorns. She sits amongst the thickest patch, her simple skirts in a ring of pale linen around her, and cuts each stem with the practiced, steady fingers of a seamstress.
Or a nursemaid.
Or a blacksmith’s daughter.
Through that hazy arch of traveled days, she’s been many things: daughter, friend, wife, mother. Servant. Then Queen. Always in busy steps . . . her tread, however light, burdened by some form of work or duty - unwashed bed linens. Torn shirtsleeves. Unsharpened swords. Scraped elbows and childish whimpers. Petitioners with problems, both real and imagined, always at their doorstep on supplicant knees. Tongues, wagging and slippery with conjecture and rumor, whispering things, invidious and sickening. War, and battle, clawing at the ramparts and threatening to uproot them all.
It is not a wonder how her posture has turned a bit bowed.
But only a bit. Because today she’ll just be an old woman, fighting the cramping of the arthritis that lingers and cracks at her knuckles and fingers, as she enjoys the warmth of the sun on her cragged face. She can look about and see the rooftops of the city, the streaming grey smoke from the chimneys and the people, little and perfect, milling about on their way. She can turn her head and see the castle, its banners and turrets haloed by the orange glow of the afternoon and its own grand majesty.
And she listens - to the faint murmurs and babbles of the city below her . . . the laughter of her grandchildren, playing with their grandfather . . . and to her thoughts of distant days, hard-fought and well-endured, for this present peace.
#9. Rewritten, G
There are caves; there is Camlann; this is a convent. There is still the sting of fire in her eyes, and a window that oversees the path leading from the Cornwall hills down to the road that goes eventually to Camelot. Gwen waits where she stands for a familiar face -- for Arthur, who said he'd return, for Lancelot, who promised the same, for Morgana, who no longer takes sides on the battlefield but stays true to those she loves -- but there are no riders to bring her relief. There is no news, only a slow, unbreathing still of air that keeps her watching, scratching the walls, uncertain. She has been kept here - safe from the boy who wants the blood of all who lead Camelot - safe from battle, and death.
A sister brings her some nourishment, and stares at her with speculative eyes. Gwen thinks, she will fade if she stays here. She will be someone in the pages of history that she will not recognise, and she thinks of her father, whose reputation was sullied by another in his final moments. She thinks of the relationships between them all that will be rewritten, and of a boy she knew who is not on the field only because magic binds him to his confines.
These walls are only stone. She thinks if she stays here, she will die alone.
Yes, there are caves, Camlann, convents. There are complications, for she has kissed many, loved all. But she is Camelot's queen, and has escaped death by fire and sorcery and intrigue, and she cannot remain here while her people (and while her friends, her lovers) fall on the field. She buckles her sword and fastens her cloak, and breaks free from the sisters to stand strong and break steel in the final battle.
#10. That Our Feet May Leave, G
They start the tour heading north and west, riding away from Camelot to the kingdom of Gwynedd and its overgrown forests and wild hills.
Gwen turns in her saddle to look behind at the white walls of the castle, the banners sailing bright over the rooftops, over the walls of the city. It will be many months before she sees it again.
Their first stop is Cenred's court, before heading north, through Northumbria's moors to the highlands of Caledon. They'll celebrate midsummer in Alined's court, then head south to Mercia as the days grow colder, returning home in time for the first of winter's storms.
In larger towns, the crowds are expected. Royalty of any kind puts on a show, and the opportunity to gawk at the High King of Albion and his knights is always of interest to the people.
But it's not just the High King they come to see.
Gwen has come to expect the whispers and stares, to let them pass by without comment or retort - even when they're murmured behind her back, even when they sting.
"Pendragon dismissed the fairest nobility of the realm for that?"
"She's just so...common. That skin - so brown! Why, there's no breeding in her at all It's a wonder she can even use a fork!"
"If one desires the servantry, one should bed them, not wed them."
She knew what marriage to Arthur entailed when she said yes. And if she can't silence the sneerers where they stand, Gwen can still act the lady, with all the arrogance Morgana used to use for those she particularly disliked.
It's different outside the royal courts. When the royal procession passes through the countryside, the commoners gather to watch, leaving their fields and their chores, ignoring the shining steel of the knights, or the coloured silks of the ladies, and instead peering through the melee of horses and humans, seeking Gwen.
"There! There's the queen - do you see her? In the scarlet gown. Isn't she lovely?"
"They say she was once a servant at the castle. Just a girl like you, my dear."
"She knows about how things are for us - they say she had words with Lord Childers over his taxing."
Gwen tries not to disappoint them, although she's not sure she succeeds. She's just a woman like their mothers, like their sisters, like their daughters - one who saw the worth in a spoiled princeling, and one whose worth was seen by the king he became.
It's not easy, being everything to everyone: High Queen and blacksmith's daughter, nobility by marriage yet commoner by blood, aware of the price of protection while still conscious of the pain of production.
She thinks that most of the time she succeeds.
All that summer, Gwen rides and smiles, socialises and greets, speaks of sorcery and harvests and politics in the kingdoms beyond Camelot.
Still, as the months draw on, a part of her longs for home.
*
"Where we love is home,
Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts."
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., 'Homesick in Heaven'
#11. She Walked This Far, G
So she runs away and she feels like a coward, but there are only so many years she can sit quietly while her husband drifts further away and it’s quiet away from the walls of Camelot where all she can hear are the sounds of the forest around her and her own breathing. She’s breathing heavily, but it’s been a long time since she’s walked this far and she’s older now than she once was, wrinkles carved around her eyes and her mouth.
She hadn’t wanted to leave. (At least, that’s what she told herself.) When she was younger, when she was still just a regular servant girl and Arthur seemed as distant as the sun, she used to dream about being queen. About wearing dresses dripping in intricate embroidery and tiny little jewels, about attending banquets and being able to sit down and eat her fill, about climbing into a bed made up of downy pillows and soft, clean sheets at night. And being queen was all that and more.
It wasn’t the duty she minded; in fact it was the duty she treasured, in the end. Sitting next to Arthur, itching in her uncomfortable, regal clothes and listening to the complaints and worries and desires of the people. Refusing to be excluded from the war council, when it met, tying her hair up and working alongside the other women dressing wounds during battle. Holding the hand of a man as he died or talking to a young woman on her wedding day. Feeling like she had a purpose, like she made a difference throughout Albion.
And then she didn’t anymore. Then Arthur started holding court without her, passing her off to her ladies-in-waiting when he went to battle, sleeping in the next bedchamber more nights than not. Then all she had were the ridiculous dresses, the banquets, the cold bed sheets, not even an explanation. “This is what the queen should do,” Arthur would tell her over dinner and she would wonder what happened to him. And one day she couldn’t take it anymore.
So she left and she knows she shouldn’t have. She’s taking a craven’s way out, sneaking out before the sun is up and putting as many miles as she can between herself and the only home she’s ever imagined. It’s been too long since she’s been on her own and she’s relishing it; she feels young again, that rush of adventure she used to get just before a battle or an adventure. The way she used to feel when she kissed Arthur.
It’s a beautiful day, one of those days that only come along once in a while when everything in nature seems to be smiling. She’s walking in the sunlight with the wind at her back, with the rustle of the trees and the calls of the birds in her ears. She’s leaving behind everything she’s ever known, not just one life but two, the serving girl and the queen. She’s starting over.
#12. Out There, G
They seemed to get younger every year.
“Have you even been outside the city?”
Or perhaps she was getting older. It is surprising that the unanimous answer she overhears is “No.”
“What do you think is out there?” one of them asks her peers, hushed, so that the head maid would not hear.
She hears.
And she knows what’s out there. She’s been outside the city.
Just last week, Gaius had sent her and Merlin along to the Grove, in the forest just east of the castle, to fetch the bark of Aldar - it would be used in a salve for the burn victims. (But there were not many trees left, and the only other area where such trees could be found grew in the Kingdom of Caerleon, too far to the west. They were well equipped now, but in the event of the return of the dragon, or perhaps another threat that unleashed flames upon the people…they would have no choice but to depend on their neighbouring kingdom).
(The Kingdom of Caerleon was, at present, in peace with Camelot, thanks to the recent Peace Treaty signed by the Five Kings. But that was not always the case. It was easier to bury old kings than to bury their mistakes).
And too many times to count, she had been through the Dackling Woods, accompanying her Lady as she visited her father’s grave. (The road was well maintained. It was one of the better-kept areas of the surrounding forests, free of beasts, and of snakes; and the trees sparse and sunlight pouring down generously.)
(But they had been intercepted there, once; every guard around them, killed. The trees were wider apart than in the thick forests to the south, but that meant that enemy archers had a much better range of attack. Camouflage was not suited here, and hiding was not an option, as Gwen herself had personally experienced. The Dackling Woods was the place to be wary of archers.)
Gwen had been taken to Mercia, to the north, against her will. (The plains were barren here; too cold for crops to grow. And the plains then gave away to caves, colder still, and barren of crops and life alike, but for the band of brutes that made home there in a stone fortress. There were towns and cities past this, Gwen knew, but the group had control of the entire border. Gwen suspected that they might be terrorizing their own people too. The king of Mercia had always been too far out of the reach of Camelot, but whether it was on purpose, or if he himself was held captive in there by this unofficial army, she did not know.)
(But one thing she knew: if Camelot had a constant enemy, it was Mercia.)
And of course, she had once been to Ealdor, in the Kingdom of Cenred, to help a friend save his home. (She had been much younger then…almost surprised to have witnessed such a different way of living: the people of Ealdor did not know how to hurry to places and how to push to get there. They were not luring passers-by into their markets, nor scheming to throw out their competition. They walked on earth, and not stone.)
(But for all the hard work that the good people of Ealdor did, ultimately it was a village that depended far too much on good fortune. Daily bread was not a guarantee, and this was even without raiders who came to steal their harvests. Ealdor simply had no means of storing, as Camelot did. No plan in the event of a famine; nowhere to line up with the knowledge that their king would provide. It frightened Gwen more than she liked to admit. Ealdor was so close…if only Camelot would reach, it could swallow them whole.)
(However, one advantage she did note of such a small place was that all of Ealdor could gather into a single shed when they needed to be addressed. If that were possible at all in her city, hundreds of the innocents could be saved from the attack of enemies. If there was just a place big enough to fit them all…)
Yes, Gwen knew what was out there. Outside the city there were allies and enemies, cures and diseases (but also, so much hope). It was a land torn into pieces; kingdoms that had long forgotten how to listen to each other, to its people, to live in peace. (Gwen could almost envision a Kingdom vaster than any that’d been: one that could govern and care for a child in the farthest island).
“Right. Enough chatter you three, the windows aren’t going to clean themselves.”
(But who was she but a simple maid, to have such dreams for her land?)
#13. 'Til There Was Day, G
Once upon a time, she had never thought about leaving. Camelot was her home, had been her home, since she was born. She had toddled through the market with her mother as she learned to walk, she had scraped her knees as she ran up and down the stone steps, and she had had her first kiss behind a horse's stall. She'd also lost her mother, been kidnapped, and had her heart broken. All in Camelot, the place that had helped shaped who she was. But once upon a time only existed in fairy tales, a place she didn't belong.
Things changed, people changed, and life changed. Merlin was gone, smuggled out of the castle, she and Arthur being his accomplices, though Uther was never to know that. Ever. The looks that Morgana gave her made her shiver, her eyes skittering away, guilt tugging at her heart of the lie that she was now living, the lie that she didn't do anything wrong, the lie that she didn't care, the lie that she was alright with all of this. Uther's rage was not one Arthur could soothe, one Morgana did not soothe, and one that roared, a fire who's fuel was unending. Wizards were the ones who had taken his beloved wife, and he would repay them in kind.
To her eyes, the sky stayed black, scarred and scared of what the kingdom had become. Whispers could be heard around corners, but no one was ever around the blocks of stone. Winter had stayed longer, and she shivered through her days, never being able to get warm enough to stop.
She couldn't look at Arthur anymore, couldn't meet his eyes. They had taken away the person he loved the most and there was nothing she could do to make it better. She didn't know which words to use to try and soothe his pain.
Finally, finally, she could take no more of it. Her heart hurt to much and sleep eluded too often for her to continue to live in such a fashion. So she packed what little she had and left. She left as the sun rose and the darkness started slipping back. She left and resisted the urge to look back, to linger in the moment of pulling away, to stay within the pain. So she walked on, her bag on her back and her back straight, and her face to the rising sun.
Eta: Er, comments are now screened. Sorry about that *sheepish*