Author. Cosplayer. Voice Actor. Lapsed Academic. Lived in France and Japan. Wrote my MA thesis on Mary Sues. Have a great affinity for scarves and tea.  Bisexual | Cane-wielder | She/Her If you would like a review copy of one of my books, please message me.
Hob Gadling is a clingy bastard, and heâs not ashamed to admit it. He clings to life. He clings to hope. He clings to his love of humanity. He clings to his Stranger. He also, unfortunately, has a habit of clinging to his name.
Which means that when the BBC is looking for a new pet history expert to appear in their educational docudrama series âElizabethan Manor,â theyâre overjoyed to find a professor who (according to their meticulous research) is actually descended from the Master of the National Trust building theyâre filming in - Gadlen House.
Only Hob knows how right they are.
Cling Fast
Carpe Diem
Hold TightÂ
Keepsakes
The F-Words Series (the Rovai-verse)
(Loki, MCU; based on the art of @alicerovai)
Loki has fallen for false promises, fallen for Odin's lies, fallen off of a bridge, fallen into the wrong hands... can he let himself fall into the arms of a potential rescuer? Or will he just end up falling for another trick?
Fall
FoldÂ
Fight
FlirtÂ
ForgiveÂ
To A Stranger
(Sherlock, Performance in a Leading Role by @madlori)
Here - for the first time - is the screenplay for the unexpected and sizzling hit which swept awards shows; was lauded in Time, Variety, and major publications the world over; snagged a Best Actor Oscar for first-time nominee John Watson; heralded a revolution in LQBTQA+ cinema; and was the catalyst for the incredible romantic journey of two of the greatest actors of our generation.
The Heart of the TARDIS
Rose: Feels to me like a temper tantrum because it can't get it's own way.
The Doctor: It's scared. Come on, you were a kid once.
Rose: Yes, and I know what kids can be like. Right little terrors. I've got cousins. Kids can't have it all their own way. That's part of being a family.
The Doctor: What about trying to understand them?
Rose: Easy for you to say. You don't have kids.
The Doctor: I was a Dad once.
Rose: What did you say?
--"Fear Her"
Respected
(Stargate: Atlantis, Torchwood)
Ianto Jones only wanted a nice, quiet beer. And maybe some damned respect, already.
Tobogganing Series
(Stargate: Atlantis, Casper)
When Johnny Sheppard was ten years old, he begged his father for a toboggan for Christmas.
He Kissed Me FirstÂ
(Stargate: Atlantis, The Farm in Iowa-verse by @sheafrotherdon)
"Rodnies? Rodneys? Rodni? How do you conjugate the plural?" John wondered.
The Once And Future KingdomÂ
(Stargate: Atlantis, Merlin)
"I am Prince Arthur of Camelot!" the boy in the chainmail said. For a small, infinitesimal moment, Rodney considered losing it.
"Right, Prince Arthur, the Prince Arthur," Rodney scoffed instead. "And I'm Merlin."
The dark haired boy that stood a few paces behind his golden Prince cleared his throat. "Uh, no," he said, shifting uneasily from foot to foot, "Actually, I am."
Right, of course. Because this totally was Rodney's LIFE.
The DriverÂ
(Agent Carter, Captain America, British Royalty RPF)
âWhat?â Dum Dum asked, prodding his seatmate in the ribs with his meaty elbow for the umpteenth time. âSeriously, Falsy, what?â
âSquirfle,â the Brit said, or something like it. His face, under the mustache, had turned an amusing shade of puce that was rapidly verging on the alarming.
âYeah, buddy, I know sheâs pretty, but sheâs just a dame, ainât she?â Dum Dum said. He jerked his head at their driver. She was just a short brown-blonde coif from the back, though from his position against the side of the transportation jeep, Dum Dum could make out a smooth, pale cheek, an archly-painted eyebrow, and impeccable red lips.
The Nihongo Series
(Stargate: Atlantis)
In Japan, it is not too much to say that a great deal is about appearances. It is a habit cultivated over a life-time, and not one easy to break.
*
This is just a partial list of my most popular fics. Please visit my A03 and FF.NET profiles for the full list of fics.
You can also find a master post of my original fiction here.
I keep trying to like red wine like a grown-up but like ⌠itâs rotten grapes, guys. You can drink things that donât taste like rotten grapes. Why
Okay I donât know when this post is from (I came across it stalking multiple blogs). But in case this might help, here is a brief science/wine lesson.
To start off, some facts:
-White wine is made from sweet pulp inside of the grape (minus the seeds).
-Red wine is made from both the skin and the grape (and the seeds and stemsâŚsometimes? Canât remember).
-Tannin is the substance found in red wines, coffee, dark chocolate. Tannins are responsible for the bitter taste in those foods.
-Tannins are found in the skin of the grape, as well as the seeds and the stems. Therefore, most red wines will have tannins, versus most whites will not have tannins.
-Red wines vary in level of tannins, depending on variety of grape, climate, and fermentation process. Pinot noir tends to be very low tannin. Shiraz/Syrah, choice of poison for our beloved brunette surgeon, is very heavy on the tannins.
-Some white wines (most commonly Chardonnay) are aged in oak barrels instead of metal containers. Oak barrels have tannins, which seeps into the wine during the fermentation process. Thatâs why Chardonnays tend to be âdrierâ aka it has tannins.
-White wines like Sauvingnon Blancs are usually fermented in steel barrels (aka no tannins. Aka usually very fruity and light and sweet).
Your ability to taste tannins is genetic.
There is a genetic marker determining whether your taste cells are sensitive to tannins.
Basically two people can drink the exact same wine and have wildly different reactions because:
1. Person A canât taste tannins, so they taste the actual wine flavor.
2. Person B can taste tannins, and that tends to overpower ALL the other flavors in the wine. Basically all they taste is tannins and none of the wine.
I am super tannin sensitive, so if I drink a wine like Cabernet Sauvignon (very tannin heavy, aka âvery dryâ, it tastes like bitter ethanol alcohol to me, whereas my best friend canât taste tannins so the same wine is maybe a little bitter but they can actually taste the grape and different flavors. To her, a wine like Sauv Blanc is too sweet, tastes like sugar water. But to me it tastes good.
So unless itâs the taste of the alcohol or all wines you hate, chances are you might hate the taste of red wine, especially the heavier red wines, because taste the tannin overpowers everything else. And all you taste is bitter bitter ethanol bitter more ethanol.Â
More tannin info:
-Tannins bind to fat.
-This is why tannin heavy wines are recommended with fatty foods (Shiraz and steak). Whenever you eat food with high fat content, the fat builds up on your tongue. A sip of red wine will bind with the fat on your tongue and clear it away. Thatâs why the sip of wine between bites of fat heavy foods is considered a palate cleanser.
-By that logic, this is why white wines are recommended with low fat foods, like fish. Salmon is fattier than most fish, which is why Chardonnay (tannin heavy white wine) or Pinot Noir (low tannin red wine) is recommended with salmon.
-People who are sensitive to tannins can drink tannin heavy red wines with fatty food and generally the wine wonât taste gross. The fat on your tongue (from that steak) will bind with the tannin and neutralize the tannin taste. Aka the only time I ever drink Cabernet Sauvignon or Shiraz is with a steak or heavy, creamy pasta. Aka never bc I donât often eat either.
-The reason dairy helps coffee taste better is because the fat in milk/creams binds with the tannins in coffee and neutralizes the bitter taste. This is why people who canât taste tannins can generally drink coffee black without milk (sugar is a different story). Itâs also why almond milk in coffee is the worst idea (almond milk is already bitter and has no fat).
More wine facts:
-90% of the âaromasâ of wine are marketing BS
-You know the labels that say like âcherry with a hint of blackberry?â Thereâs no real way to infuse cherry or blackberry into grape wine without screwing with the fermentation process. Itâs all created by the wine marketing industry to sell you win. Sometimes if you smell cherry before you drink the wine, you might taste it in the wine (because majority of flavor comes from smell). Or if you think there is cherry flavor in the wine, your brain can trick your taste buds into tasting it.
-The only true flavors found in real grape wine are grapes (obviously), oak/earthy flavor (the barrels), vanilla (barrels, oak sticks), tannins. (There are a few others but canât remember. I think maybe cinnamon?).
-Peopleâs perception of wine often affect how good it tastes to them. Social psychology studies show that people will rate the exact same wine differently if theyâre told the wines are different in price. (They rated the more expensive wine as tastier).
tl;dr
Whether you can taste tannins is genetic. Exact same wines taste different for different people depending on your genetic makeup. If youâre sensitive to tannins, red wines wonât taste like anything other than bitter alcohol. Genetics/tannins are why people generally have preferences for red or whites.
this is extremely informative and i have learned a thing about myself, which is that i CLEARLY inherited the tannin-tasting genes from my teatotaling mother and not from my dad who subsists entirely on espresso and cabernet sauvignon.
Black tea also has tannins, so if you - like me - need to drink it with cream and donât brew it nearly as long as tea aficionados say in scandalized tones you ought to, because otherwise itâs too bitter, you uh. might be sensitive to tannins.
I think that dark roast coffee has more tannins than light roast; I know for certain it requires a good deal more cream/milk to balance out the bitter/burnt taste.
ID: A youtube comment with 11 likes by Niceone, it says "I've lived 46 years without knowing this. How nice of life to save some of the best bites for later." End ID.
Normally, people tend to get frustrated, even jokingly, if they miss out on something. This comment was on a song from 1974 and it made me smile quite much. Simply appreciative. Like a dessert after dinner.
It is genuinely mind blowing to me just how many Tumblr posts have changed my life for the better and taught me to be happier. Not all of the thoughts originate on Tumblr, but the way people collect and frame them has literally changed my brain chemistry.
That âcomment on your a03 workâ email hits like a line of cocaine every time. unmatched dopamine increase. shoutout to everyone who leaves a comment on fics. you deserve the world
it amazes me how people still think fiction doesnât affect reality when about 90% of us ran like naruto without a second thought just because we saw him do it and thought it was cool
for a more pertinent example- the creators of the original 70s âstar trekâ created wrist communicators for plot purposes so crew on the ground could still communicate with crew on the spaceship because writing
sometime in the early 80s a lot of actual scientists realized that sounded really cool and actually doable so lets create cellphones
then later people who read âhitchhikers guideâ realized we had 80% of what the hitchhikers guide was and made a kindle
Agatha Christie wrote mystery novels so precice she accurately predicted methods of poisoning that had not even happened yet, and her works are still used today to teach people how to diagnose poisonings bot malign and accidental. heck her understanding of toxicology was so on point she proposed antidotes for poisons made from poisons with opposite effects, allowing patients to be stabilized after otherwise fatal doses
lets not forget the OG himself HG Welles who pulled stuff out of his ass like submarines, cross-continent flight, space travel, eccetera and later people realized that his fever dreams were something you could actually do with enough math and engineering
in the late 40s Frances Glessner Lee started making dollhouses that contained crime scenes, only partially a hobby she was creating fantasy mysteries to puzzle people as there was no specific solution to the crime scenes she created. these dollhouses are still used to train detectives today and are considered to be the birth of modern forensics, solving thousands of crimes
hell, someone read the 1911 story â Tom Swift and His Electric Rifleâ, which was largely schlock and realized a gun that shoots electricity sounds pretty awesome so made the TAZER, and the E and R still stand for âelectric rifleâ
and thats not counting the uncounted human moments when someone decided to do or not do something based on childhood memories of movies that shaped their personality, decided to do something based on a song that inspired them, got the courage by remembering a well written superhero moment, or some part of their soul that asked what their favorite muppet would think about their actions
Someone who experiences romantic attraction, but doesnât wish to act upon it or for it to be reciprocated.
e.g., âI had a huge crush on her, but as soon as we got into a relationship, doing romantic things with her felt uncomfortable. I think I might be akoiromantic.ââ
Aaah!! It makes me happy that this seems to be going around again, and it makes me even more so happy to see people in the tags realizing they might be akoiro/lith!! Iâm going to reblog this one with the definition, so everyone if you would, please spread this one around!! Spread awareness for Akoiromantic/Lithromantic!!!!
P. s. Those who have never heard of this but identifyâ if you experience something similar with your sexuality (ie you are aroused by erotic stories or media but have no interest in personal participation), you might look into autochorissexual/aegosexual.
Omg I love this piece. Grace the hanging man, content with his life but cannot avoid the changes coming; the ship his noose, the rope that binds him to his fate; the blood red stars beside him, Olesya and YĂĄo the angels haunting him in the background. Eva Stratt, the one who holds it all on her back, the world is literally on her shoulders, the Petrova line on her neck. She will not falter, cannot afford to move, and yet still she glares at us. Eva challenges us, daring us to ask if we could do better, if we could hold her burden for even a fraction of the time.
Eve, the mother of sin, who held the world in her hands and was cursed for not knowing.
Eva, director of the task force, who now holds the world, and still must curse man to save it.
In the end, it always falls on a woman. I could never hate you Eva Stratt
I got to bind @valeriianz's Bolt in the Blue: a Sandman/Dreamling fic where the Endless are a rock band and Hob is a stage manager that impulsively becomes Dream's tech when they go on tour. The chapter art was done by @five-and-dimes, and many more artists contributed to the mini posters in the back cover pocket.
This bind was a challenge for me, as I had the idea from the start to try and make it evoke Dream's guitar. That led to the raised bands on the spine (painted to look like guitar strings) and painted wood veneer on top of the leather covers.
For the typeset, I wanted to distinguish the singing from the speaking, and so went with both a different font and color. Since the chapters didn't have titles, I called them "Tracks" and the table of contents ended up as the "Setlist" to be part of the theme.
It was a lot of fun (if stressful at times) to experiment with so many different new techniques in one bind. I'm not sure if I'd repeat some of these techniques in the future, but for this, they worked out really well and I'm happy with how they came out.
if hiphop weren't real its existence would sound like an exceptionally heavy-handed metaphor about racism from a really cringe didactic fantasy novel. yeah the racialized underclass in this society, the one that's constantly derided by the ethnic majority as stupid and anti-intellectual, they have a complex artistic tradition based around improvisational poetry which is sometimes enacted on a competitive basis for dispute resolution. you get judged based on the subtlety of your wordplay and the complexity of your internal rhyme schemes. the dominant group periodically gets mad about how this doesn't count as real art like their own objectively more simplistic music and poetry because sometimes it has swears in it
thank you ao3 for being an archive and not an algorithm. thank you for letting me like things without consequences, thank you for being free with no ads, thank you for having lawyers to defend our freedom of speech. thank you tag wranglers. thank you to all authors and thank you ao3
I'm rereading The Untold Tale, and honestly had forgotten how well you do the "reader inserted into a book" trope. What inspired you to frame the story in that way?
Thank you so much! I hope you're really enjoying the reread of the series! đ¤Š
The intellectual answer is that I've always been fascinated by Mary Sue fanfiction and the desire to participate in and place oneself within the stories that we enjoy. It's why we align ourselves with fictional houses and factions within the worlds we enjoy--we sort ourselves into districts and bending nations, choose Pokemon teams, prefer to play with a certain color of suspicious astronaut, and wear jerseys and hats for sports teams that we don't play for.
We like pretending we belong.
And retelling stories to include ourselves is a pretty universal form of make-believe, something we often grow out of when we leave playground childhood behind. I wish people embraced inserting themselves into their favorite worlds with less cringe. It's how we learn to empathize with others and navigate experiences that we might not have in real life, teaching ourselves resilience and plasticity through play.
The not so intellectual answer is: magical girls.
I was just the right age for Sailor Moon when it first premiered in North America and I desperately wanted to be a Sailor Scout. But that's the whole premise in point of magical girl stories: that normal, plain, everyday girls can rise to the occasion with the right information and tools, and with your best friends at your back. I have always loved fish-out-of-water, Portal Fantasy stories like that.
And then I wondered, what if I wrote that sort of Chosen One, Portal Fantasy, but not make it from the point of view of the protagonist? At first I thought about writing it from Kintyre or Bevel's point of view, and then I thought, no let's make it even more removed than that. The POV is not the chosen one who falls through the portal, not the hero power-fantasy dude who by rights should be her romantic interest, but a secondary character.
Forsyth is the kind of character that might not even get a name if I was telling this story from the traditional POV. He would appear in three chapters tops, and never be referenced again. Which makes him sort of a fish-out-of-water character in his own world.
And that was fascinating to me.
The last thing that inspired it was the real world repercussions of the kind of trauma that Chosen One portal fantasy characters often suffer in these stories. You don't see a lot of magical girls or child adventurers returning through a wardrobe with complex PTSD, anxiety attacks, and physical deformities and disabilities as a result of what happened to them.
As someone who's had several life-altering accidents that have left me with chronic pain and limited mobility, I wanted to explore the idea of just how traumatic and horrifying and changing these sorts of narratives would be to an actual person. I hadn't seen a lot of people really delving into that, Beyond Sarah Rees Brennan, Cornelia Funke, and Lev Grossman.
I wanted to take a serious look at what would happen to a real person in a fictional world, going through what we put fictional characters through.
I hope that answers your question! Thank you again for picking up my books.
There's an awful trend in reading that's this CinemaSins kind of rejection of abstract concepts and suspension of disbelief, that makes people say it's bad writing when authors use descriptions that aren't immediately one to one with physical reality.
Like it's bad when a "tattoo is undulating" (as opposed to... "drawn in a wave like pattern on the skin"?), or when hair is "wet wheat from a late Summer field" (as opposed to "sort of brownish light yellow that dries lighter, but is not actual wheat stalks growing on someone's head but kind of reminiscent of the color and texture"?), or when when ice cream tastes like midnight at the fair" (as opposed to "ice cream flavour bringing back memories of undefined ice cream flavours that are individually popular but always tied to a memory of late evening at the fair ground and probably smelling vaguely like popcorn and sugar"?).
Please. We have to get back to understanding abstract descriptions that evoke feelings and memories and mental images or things we haven't experienced yet. This hyper utilitarian way of reading and judging text is killing fiction. it's robbing you of experiencing things you haven't actually personally experienced.
âItâs digestibleâ is pertinent!! Okay, for those of you who havenât researched Crisco for writing fic about gay sex in the mid-late 60s:
The first-edition of The Joy of Gay Sex, published in 1977, declared, âVegetable shortening may be the best lubricant, since it is not only greasy but also digestibleâ[4] Such a statement perhaps gives new meaning to the companies boastful declarations that âIts digestibleâ and âCrisco has been making life in the kitchen more delicious for years.â Similarly, in the 1978 sex manual The Advocate Guide to Gay Health, Crisco even earned an entry in the bookâs index. Discussions of the shorteningâs use as an anal lubricant indicate its popularity, with statements such as: âThe lubricant, typically the cultic Crisco, must be copious.â[5] In fact, Crisco was so synonomus with gay sex that discos and bars around the world took on the name, such as Crisco Disco in New York City, which was one of the premiere clubs during the 1970s and early 1980s. Other clubs or bathhouses, such as Club Z in Seattle, even featured murals with Crisco. Thus, Crisco was conversely also one of many things that led to the formation of gay identities during the 20th century.
from this essay: http://www.columbia.edu/~sf2220/TT2007/web-content/Pages/drew2.html
Love this post for so many reasons but most especially because this is from all the way back in 2012 and and yet not a single blog in this thread is deactivated
Love the gay history, but i just wanna correct that the âitâs digestibleâ in the gay stuff was a reference to criscoâs tagline it had been using since 1911, the actual meaning of its digestible is because itâs main competition came from âenhancedâ lards which were rendered pig fat mixed with non food thickeners that literally did not digest and caused people to basically just shit out pig cream, since crisco was veggie based the body digested it along with the food
This post is the opposite of net zero information. Not only did I learn several new facts about gay history but also we rounded our way back to the original question of the tag line and the mini obelisks.
In honour of the return of FIFA and the worldâs current Footy-mania, I am reposting one of my favourite short stories!
đ§Prefer an audiobook? Listen here.đ§
The first thing that Arthur Pendragon, the Once and Future (well, Now-ish) King did upon his rebirth into the world at the moment of Albionâs greatest need, was to open his shrivelled red mouth and squall out: âOh hell, no.â
Which startled his Mother quite badly, youâll understand, as she had just put him to her breast for his first little feeding. She shook her head and glared balefully at the IV needle in the bend of her elbow, ignored her new sonâs outburst, and went about her task.
The second thing that Arthur Pendragon, the Once and Now-ish King did upon his rebirth into the world at the moment of Albionâs greatest need, was to consume his body weight in breast milk. After which, he soiled his nappy, burped quite dramatically, and took a wee bit of a nap.
Getting born was hard work, you know.
The next thing that Arthur Pendragon, the Once and Now-ish King, did upon his rebirth was to wake up and ask to where that good for nothing senile git of a wizard had gotten. Nobody else was in the hospital room with Arthur and his new mother, so he had to repeat it a few times to convince her that she was not, in fact, hearing things. âGreat ancient sorcerer with the beard?â
âWhat, Gandalf?â his mother asked, trying to make her eyes the size of regular eyes again, rather than saucers. She wasnât quite succeeding. âOr, um, Merlin?â
âYes, Merlin!â Arthur shrilled, then frowned because his voice hadnât been that high since, well, since the last time he was a baby. In a more sedate, and what he hoped was a more kingly tone, he went on to clarify: âWho the hell else would I mean?â
âI, uh, Iâm sure I donât know, dearest,â his mother said, and started to cry.
Arthur felt quite bad about that, because she seemed a nice lady, especially since she had just put up with him in her womb for nine months. He resolved to be a bit gentler with her thereafter.
Were Guinevere here, she would surely have clipped him round his ears already.
Arthur was quiet on the way home, watching with utter fascination as his new father manhandled the strange metal carriage in which they rode. The motion of the vehicle made him nod off, soothing and quite like being tucked up safe and sound in a caring personâs arms. His only grievance with this was that he had hoped to see more of the strange and wonderful world outside of the vehicleâs windows. There were tall buildings and everything was covered in glass. Some great king must have been very wealthy to afford to give his subjects a whole city of glass.
The thought caused his tiny tummy to burble with foreboding, because perhaps this wealthy king was the very person he had been brought back to defeat. Shoving thoughts of his destiny aside for now â it was not as if he had Excalibur, or was yet strong enough to even lift her â he let the rocking motion lull him into a doze.
Once they arrived home, Arthur made a point of vocally admiring the shade of green on the walls of his nursery, and complimented his mother on her pretty coming-home dress. He had, after all, promised himself to be nicer.
She started crying again, and Arthur, who had never really been all that good with girls and who probably wouldnât have ever been able to attract a wife had he not had a crown weighing on his forehead, looked at his father and said, âWhat did I do?â He really wished Guinevere was here. His father only plopped down into the rocking chair and stared in horror at his little face.
âWhat?â Arthur said.
âI⌠donât think this was in the baby books, hon,â his father said, all the blood draining from his face. If the man was going to swoon, Arthur hoped to at least be set down somewhere first. But the man stayed upright. He gulped on the air for a bit, then when his colour had mostly come back, he stood and lay Arthur in the middle of the crib and grabbed his wifeâs wrist. They left. Arthur heard the footsteps pad across the carpeting, tracking them as they traversed the hallway and then descended the stairs and went out the front door.
Oh, dear.
For a long, long time, Arthur lay still, listening. There was no shouting, no noisy roar of an unhappy lynch mob or of the metal vehicles. There was only Arthur and the inadequate swaddling blanket and the boring white ceiling. There were also five fuzzy white sheep that kept going around and around above his head, hypnotic and really sort of âŚmarvellous.
Right around when his stomach started to cramp with hunger, but after the King of Albion had suffered the indignity of losing control of his own bowels and soiling his nappy, his mother came back.
She hovered in the doorway for a moment, and Arthur gummed his bottom lip and tried to decide if he should say anything. It was, after all, what had gotten him into this mess. Before he could, she darted across the floor like a war charger and scooped him close and pressed his cheek against her neck and said, âIâm sorry, Iâm sorry, Iâm so sorry. It doesnât matter, it doesnât, youâre my son and youâre perfect and I love you.â
Arthur reached up and patted her cheek gently. âI understand,â he said, and sort of thought that he did.
Then his mother offered him a bottle, and he tried not to be disappointed. He wouldnât want to nurse a baby with the thought processes and memories of an adult man either, really, but the bottle meant she was rejecting him, if only a little. Arthurâs stomach swooped in fear, and he realized it was because he didnât want to lose those tender, affectionate moments when he was wrapped in his motherâs arms, head against her breast and the sound of her heart soothing him. He supposed he couldnât blame her. It had to be weird, having a fully articulate, fully cognizant child latching to your breast.
đĄď¸
Arthur was doing his damndest to stay asleep and not let the little hunger cramps or the haunting sense that he wasnât bundled up enough wake him every few hours. It was uncomfortable and odd, but he was determined. He was absolutely capable of letting his parents get a full nightâs sleep, and perhaps to do the same himself. Having always been a man of strong will, he managed to do just that.
Somewhere in the middle of all of it, Arthur also managed to dream.
He was standing on a battlefield and he knew Mordred was behind him, but he couldnât turn around fast enough. He hadnât been fast enough in real life, either. Then there was Guinevereâs big liquid eyes, and Lancelotâs guilty frown, and something Merlin whispered in his ear about coming back one day, about the future of the kingdom resting upon his soul, about being called forth again like the pagan gods from their barrowsâŚ
And then there was a shrill screaming, the likes of which Arthur hadnât heard since once of his horses had fallen into a pit dug in the road by his enemies and snapped its foreleg. Heâd killed the stallion for pity. It wasnât until someoneâs big warm hands were on his back and he felt himself tucked protectively against his fatherâs soft, sloping chest that he realized he was awake and the shrill, plaintive sounds were coming from him. He, the Once and Now-ish King, was sobbing hysterically.
âShhhh, buddy,â his father said, and jogged him a few times, bumping him closer to wakefulness. âYouâre safe, youâre safe. Daddyâs here.â
Arthur snuffled closer and let himself cry out the rest of his residual fear, because what his father said was true. He was safe here. At least for now. There were no dragons to slay, no traitors to rout, no scheming and politics to navigate, no affair to untangle. There was only Arthur, and his fatherâs warm assurance, the sound of his motherâs soft snores in the other room, and the woolly sheep spinning in a calm, slow circle, blown by the cool breeze of the night time air slipping past the gap in the endearingly crooked windowsill.
âDaddy,â Arthur said, curling chubby fists into the collar of the manâs sleep shirt, and didnât feel ridiculous at all for using such a juvenile term. King Uther would have boxed young Arthurâs ears for daring to utter it, but here, now, it felt right. âIâm Arthur,â he breathed.
âI know,â the man said, and dropped a soft, dry kiss on his sonâs cheek. âThat is what we put on the birth certificate.â
The open affection of the gesture shocked Arthur into more tears, though these ones were soft, quiet, and grateful.
đĄď¸
A few days later, Arthurâs father was comfortable enough with his verbosity to hold complete, if distracted, conversations. Which was good, because the nightmare of his death had been subtly shifting each time Arthur fell asleep; he still stood on a field, but instead of being behind him with a sword, Mordred now stood before him on a broad grassy plain, and unlike the battlefield of his memory it was free of blood and the fallen. Instead of being alone on that knoll, he now had the vague impression of being watched on all sides, and of the tension that crackled between him and his traitorous nephew. They both wantedâcovetedâsomething, and Arthur wondered if it was a crown again, or something more vital. Something more dangerous.
He stood and stared at Mordred and Mordred stood and stared at him, hands out as if prepared to grapple, weaponless and ready to strike. Arthur wished he had Excalibur so he could wallop the whelp down before the ungrateful snake could do him in a second time.
But then the dream ended; it always ended before either of them made a move.
Arthur felt that it was perhaps a warning, a vision of the future or the battle to come, and Arthur wanted to be certain he knew what it meant when the time arrived. He needed to understand, and the only way he could do that was to ask questions, to discuss.
But he couldnât do that until his father, so far the only other person besides his mother he trusted enough with this information, understood what was at stake.
âI feel the need to clarify,â Arthur said as his father closed the bedroom door behind them. Downstairs were his motherâs parents and his fatherâs sister, all of whom had come to coo at the new baby and who, Arthurâs father had patiently explained that morning, probably didnât need to know that their shiny new grandson and nephew could speak like a functional adult. Arthur, therefore, had spent the morning making gurgling sounds and being as adorable as he could manage and was really starved for some honest adult interaction.
âClarify what?â Arthurâs father asked, holding Arthur away from his body as if to ensure that the slight smell wouldnât travel through the nappy and into his own clothes.
âMy name,â Arthur said. âIâm not just any old Arthur â though I am thrilled that the name has gained such popularity. I am Arthur, King of the Britons, Uniter and Ruler of the land of Albion. And put me down already, man, you look ridiculous. Honestly, itâs not going to explode.â
Arthurâs father chuckled and put Arthur on the change table and began the lengthy process of preparing to change his nappy.
âYou do know me, donât you?â Arthur asked worriedly, when his father hadnât immediately been shocked, or gone into raptures, or at least made a leg and called him âyour majesty.â Perhaps he was forgotten.
âHm, what?â his father asked, rooting around under the table for the wet wipes and dry powder. âRight, yes, King Arthur, quest for the Holy Grail, Sean Connery, myths to make the Welsh feel better about themselves, all that.â
Arthur furrowed his chubby brow as best he could. All of him was chubby right now and it actually was slightly annoying. It was hard to be taken seriously when one was so damnably cute. âSean who?â
âActor. Played King Arthur in the films.â
The thought that he had passed into history had been certain to Arthur; he had already been a great historical figure while he had lived. That he would pass into legend was a possibility, though he didnât enjoy the idea that he might have been forgotten as a real person. To find that he had become a myth hurt in ways that Arthur couldnât directly pinpoint, but he thought that it might have something to do with the idea that all of his bloody and hard work had been reduced to the sphere of an epithet, and all the people he had known and loved had been distilled into archetypes and clichĂŠs, ghosts of themselves.
But to find that there had been a filmâŚhorrifying.
Arthur had already seen two films in his admittedly young life â one that made his mother weep and smile as the man declared his love for the unattractively thin woman with a wide face (arms like toothpicks, sheâd never be able to raise a blade to defend herself or her children from invaders), and one filled with great balls of fire and fast chases in those metal vehicles he now knew were called âcarsâ â and wasnât sure he had any great love for this bastardization of the bardic tale-weaving he had known in his last life. Though, he had to admit, the television was a remarkable invention.
To take his mind off it, he asked, âWhat exactly is wrong with Albion, anyway?â
âPardon?â his father asked again, concentrating on his task and perhaps watching Arthurâs willy with more apprehension than was strictly polite. After all, Arthur hadnât weed on him on purpose, and he had apologised besides. âWhatâs an Albion?â
âThis land. I united it. I ruled the whole island once, you know. Donât tell me somebody let it get all split up into different kingdoms again after all the hard work I did.â
âIt was for, oh, a thousand or so years,â his father said, reaching for the fresh nappies, eyes still on Arthur. âBut then Scotland and Wales and part of Ireland got sucked back in, wars for a few centuries about all of that, too, and so itâs all mostly united again. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. We just say the âUKâ now, son. Oh, but, uh, I guess thereâs the colonies, too, only theyâre not colonies any more as weâve become a commonwealth state and ââ
Arthur coughed and his father trailed off, concentrating on getting the nappy under his son. Not a Kingdom anymore but a whole Empire; Arthur felt overwhelming responsibility pressing strangely on his little shoulders. Perhaps it would mean that he would be less prepared when the hour of need came, but right now Arthur wished that he could have had a childhood like the last one: oblivious of his destiny and happy in his innocence.
After a short silence, Arthur prompted: âSo, Albionâs greatest hour of need?â
The man shrugged. âRotter in Downing Street? War in the Middle East? Decline of social niceties in direct correlation with the rise of texting and tweens?â
âMaybe it hasnât happened yet,â Arthur ventured. Then he sighed, because baby powder? Best. Feeling. Ever.
âYouâd be born before the thing that would make you need to be born has happened?â his father said, and finally looked up.
âMagic works in strange ways; besides, Merlin lived his life backwards. He always knew what was going to happen before it did.â Arthur wanted to grin, but a wave of melancholy swept over him instead. âIt was always frustrating, though, because he never remembered the day before. It wasâŚdifficult. Having a friend who never shared the same memories, I mean. Who neverâŚshared anything you loved. Except your friendship.â Arthur swallowed. âAnd the in-jokes never worked. Anyway. Heâd know when I had to be born again. So that means whatever it is, it probably hasnât happened yet.â
âThatâs a comfort,â his father allowed. âI guess. None of us can choose his destiny.â
Arthur frowned. âNo; but some of us have it chosen for them.â Arthur let this percolate for a bit as his father tamped down the sticky tabs on the side of his new nappy and picked him up. âBy the way⌠surprisingly insightful, old man,â Arthur said, snuffling and burrowing close to his fatherâs warmth and the comfortable, safe smell of his neck.
His father smiled. âThanks, kiddo. You get your brains from me.â
Arthur felt that a good gummy yawn was probably agreement enough, and proceeded to put thought into action.
đĄď¸
Arthur dreamed again. He dreamt of the great grassy plain, and of thousands of millions pairs of eyes watching him from stands erected all around him, hemming him in. But it was getting more detailed, the more he experienced it; or maybe it was just that he was familiar enough with the skeleton of the dream that he could allow his mind to take in the other, seemingly less important details.
It was a tourney field of some sort, but it was bisected at its narrowest, rather than with a rail across the length. This was not a jousting field, nor did Arthur wear any mail or armour. That it was a place for fighting, he knew, but what kind escaped him.
Mordred just crouched before him, a flapping swatch of white suspended on a metal frame behind his head, smirking and horrible and waiting.
They were both dressed in a ridiculously flimsy pair of uniforms, with thin boots and shin guards. The material was so slight that it would not block any blade, and it was in a colour so bright and garish that they would never be able to hide from their enemies. Perhaps that was the point; to prove that the knight wearing it was firm enough of mettle and strong enough of arm to not require armour.
The people in the stands around him blasted their disproval of his inaction into short, obnoxious trumpets and the sound filled the grounds with the angry buzz of disturbed hornets. They looked at him with such eager expectation, and Arthur had no idea how to give them what they wanted. He had always feared not being able to satisfy his subjects, but their now gazes were positively hungry. Arthur wondered what could be at stake should he fail this test that would make them so desperate.
A golden club sat in the middle of the tourney field. It was cup-shaped and large, with a great ball cradled between the carven swaths of its base. Arthur knew it was not the Grail. Beyond that, he had no idea why it might be significant, and his ignorance annoyed him as much as the anxiety in the audienceâs eyes ate away at his confidence.
A sharp cry woke him and he was chagrined to discover that once more it had come from him. Imagine, King Arthur, the strongest arm at the Round Table and the firmest of grip on the crown, unable to contain his own whimpers. Or bowels, for that matter. He shifted once in the darkness, but no tell-tale dampness announced its presence and he sighed. He was getting better at controlling that, at least.
When his mother came into the room a few minutes later with his bottle, Arthur peered up at her from his crib and said, âIâm sorry, Mother.â
âBabies are like ink cartridges; low capacity and need to be refilled often,â his mother said with a strained smile. There were dark smudges under her eyes and Arthur felt so guilty that he couldnât help the involuntary squirm.
âI didnât mean the night feedings, though I appreciate that, too,â Arthur admitted, waving his hands happily at the bottle as his mother held it in his direction. She didnât like to pick him up to feed him anymore. Arthur missed the feel of the beat of her heart next to his cheek, the soft warm milk-and-rose-water-smell she had, the gentleness of her long fingers on the back of his neck, but he didnât dare say as much. He felt he was imposing on the poor woman enough. âI meant for⌠well⌠everything else.â
His mother let him latch onto the plastic nipple of the bottle and stayed silent as he sucked. The formula didnât taste as wonderful as the breast milk had, but the fake bottle also wasnât giving him strangely twisted feelings of both young security and old lasciviousness.
When he was done, his mother rubbed his full belly in gentle circles until the little burp of swallowed air bubbled out of his mouth. Kaye had always outdone him at banquets, but Arthur was becoming increasingly impressed with his own manful belches.
Normally after the bottle, Arthurâs mother left his nursery immediately. She was never inattentive or neglectful, not after that first time, but she wasnât comfortable around her son, either. He left himself drift back in the direction of sleep. If she wanted to watch him do so, he was happy enough to oblige.
âWhy donât you talk to me as much as your father?â
Arthur blinked his way back towards consciousness and debated what his answer should be, or if indeed he should answer at all. But then, he never had been all that good at keeping his mouth shut when he should have â the sword in his back in the middle of a battlefield from the man who should have been his heir was proof enough of that.
âIt seemed to make you happy,â Arthur replied softly.
His mother jerked back, then leaned over the rail of the cradle and pressed her lips to his forehead. âI have a son who is healthy and content. I am happy.â
âThen why do you look so sad all the time?â Arthur asked as she pulled away. Her eyes were sparkling again, like she was about to cry, ready to prove him right.
âI didnât ask to have a son who is the reborn Rightwise King of All England,â his mother said softly.
âI didnât ask to be reborn,â Arthur replied softly. âSo I guess we both got the short end of that stick.â
âIâm scared,â she admitted. âIâm scared of what this means for the world. Iâm scared that youâre going to be hurt. That youâre going to die.â
Arthur kicked his feet for a few moments, looking up in the darkness at his motherâs sad, dark eyes, the halo of woolly sheep that circled her head obliviously.
âWhatâs your name?â Arthur asked.
âEvangeline,â she said. âMy friends call me Iggy.â
Arthur tried to smile, but all he managed was a gummy lip purse. âIggy,â he said. âIâm scared too, Iggy.â
She put down the bottle and picked up her son and sat with him in the rocking chair and cuddled him close. âIâll protect you, for as long as I can,â she whispered into the faint reddish wisps of his hair. âAnd I guess you should call me âMummy.'â
âDo you want me to?â
Iggy pulled Arthur away from her stomach and met his eyes seriously.
âYes,â she said softly, and smiled. It was tentative, but it also felt like a victory, if only a very small one.
âVery well,â Arthur sighed, content for the moment. âMummy.â
She pulled him close again and rocked him slightly. She hummed a snatch of a lullaby that Arthur was surprised to realize he remembered from his first childhood. Then she told him a soft, sad story about the Lady of the Lake. Arthur didnât have the heart to point out to her that he already knew this story with a bit more familiarity than he really would have liked, considering how it ended.
đĄď¸
Every night for the next few weeks, Arthur dreamt of the tourney grounds and the golden cup and the buzzing, expectant, hungry eyes of his audience. There were other knights with him. Though they, like him, wore new faces, he knew them for Owain, and Cai, Gwalchmai, Peredur, the golden Geraint, the frightened Trystan, bold Bedwyr, Cilhwch, Edeyrn, Cynon, and even that bastard Lancelot. They, like him, wore the flimsy white uniform quartered with red bands, the ineffectual shin armour, and the shoes with spiked bottoms. Opposite them stood other knights in fierce red, Mordred at their head with his customary, bloody smirk. Between them stood the gold cup, the new grail for which Arthur had realized across the course of his nightly dreams they fought on this flat, green battlefield.
âIf you can make this kick,â Lancelot said behind his shoulder, âitâs ours. The whole world.â
âNo pressure, then,â adult Arthur said in his dream. And then he began to run towards Mordred and the strange limp net that hung like a shredded battle flag behind him.
He could feel himself wind up for something, to make some sort of move, felt his focus narrow to a single prick of white and black that lay stark against the lush green grass.
But then he woke.
Again.
He resisted the childish urge to howl in frustration.
đĄď¸
âA babysitter?â Arthur said dubiously from his quilt on the living room floor. Those fantastic little woolly sheep were dangling above his head, suspended on a yellow plastic frame patterned with dragons. He loved those sheep â they were so entertaining. He tore his attention away to attempt to raise an eyebrow askance.
âYou forget, your majesty,â his father said kindly, âyou canât even sit up on your own yet.â
Arthur, who couldnât exactly prove the statement wrong, said grudgingly, âOkay. I guess. Enjoy your night out, Dad, Mum.â
âThanks, darling,â his mother said, and smiled. It was one of those real smiles, one of the ones where she realized that maybe everything was going to be okay and that her life hadnât turned out all strange and terrifying. She was smiling like that more often, lately, and Arthur was proud of himself to be part of why that kind of smile was ending up there.
Then the doorbell rang. His mother went to answer and his father gave him the thumbs up. Arthur tried to roll his eyes. Then he tried not to think about what they might be doing out alone tonight. And then he tried not to think about what it would be like to have a sibling.
The young girl came in ahead of his mum, blonde and probably about fourteen or so. Arthur wasnât so good at estimating peopleâs ages any more â back in his first life, this girl would have been a woman already, preparing to marry or perhaps with children of her own. In this life, kids this age seemed stuck in a strange limbo between childhood and adulthood, irresponsible and yet filled with a coltish sexuality and raging libido that had no direction, and instead exploded all over the media.
There was something different about this one, though. Something in her that Arthur had never seen in the hundreds that were splashed all over the television that he watched with his father while cuddled on his tummy, or that his mother read about from the tabloids to help Arthur get sleepy enough for his naps. Her eyes looked old. Her bearing was comfortable, as if she completely inhabited her skin, was used to being in there.
It wasnât until his mum had kissed him on the cheek and reminded him quietly that normal babies didnât speak in fully articulate sentences, his parents had left, and the girl had come to sit on the floor beside him and tweaked his toes that Arthur finally clicked.
âMerlin?â Arthur squawked.
The girl scowled, a little wrinkle forming between her eyebrows that Arthur knew quite well. âWhat the hell do you think, your majesty?â she said, and though her voice was high and sweet, the old sorcererâs tone hadnât changed at all in the few thousand years since the king had last been chastised by Merlin. It very clearly said: you are my king and I respect you and love you in a brotherly way, but by all the dragons that once roamed Albion, are you a frigging idiot. âItâs not as if I planned this. The universe and Albion chose, not me. Besides,â she said, and took a moment to pop her hideously pink bubble gum with an obnoxious snap, âYou should see Lancelot.â
âUgly?â
âVery.â
âAwesome,â Arthur said, trying out one of the new words that the people around here seemed to like so much. âI hope his vanity is wounded. About time.â Arthur, understandably, had little love for a man who poached other peopleâs queens.
Merlin snorted indelicately.
âWell,â Arthur conceded, waving his chubby toes in her direction, then put them in his mouth because, well, he could. Around his toes he added: âI guess I donât feel so cheated after all.â
Merlin looked at her wristwatch, snapped her gum again, and said, âThe football final is on. Mind if we watch?â
âFootball?â Arthur asked. âI donât know football. Is it a sport?â
Merlin snorted again, that mannish sound that was so wrong coming from lips slick with gloss. âItâs a religion. This is a nation obsessed, your majesty. Even you wonât resist for long.â
Merlin propped Arthur up on her lap and Arthur leaned back into the warmth of her stomach and the reassuring patter of her heart. He watched with interest as Merlin explained the rules, and the work and passion the various nations of the world invested in the FIFA tournament.
It wasnât until partway through the second half that Arthur realized that while he had never watched football before, he recognized the pitch and the stadium. And when the game was over and the blokes in orange were declared the tourney winners, Arthur immediately recognized the golden cup being hoisted aloft.
âThe saviour of Albion, indeed,â he murmured.
Merlin just snapped her gum.
đĄď¸
If you enjoyed this story, you can find more like it in my short story collection Hero is a Four Letter Word.
