Britannia, NY

Between her bad dreams, her father's smothering, and the car accident, Molly's life over the past year has qualified (for her) as a disaster. And as a result of that disaster, she is trying to get control back, however crazily--she just has to be in control of something, she has to make choices, and she's still trying to figure everything out.

She doesn't work at the library any more; as far as her dad knows, she still does, but she usually just goes down to the corner drug store and hangs out with the boys there, most of whom have bicycles, but one has a car. They're the type who wear sunglasses and muscle shirts and give off (not incorrectly) the air of being jerkasses, but they buy her things and the fact that she's a year or two older than most of them make her feel more like an adult, more like she's the one who knows things.

It doesn't really help, admittedly. Nothing really helps. And she doesn't feel like herself, and she doesn't feel like the person in her dreams, and she doesn't see James any more, but she feels less like she's going crazy when they're going thirty over the speed limit on some back country road.

Afterwards they end up back on the corner, where they stand around looking vaguely thuggish and trying to impress her by saying stupid things.

James is, of course, not sleeping well, which turns out to be a problem. After waking up in a cold sweat for three nights running, he decides to cut out the middleman and just not go to bed.

Which explains what he's doing signed into assorted messaging services at this hour, while he makes a half-hearted attempt at writing a paper in between fruitless Google searches. He's a multitasker.

James is ensconced in the corner of The Round Table (a nice trick if you can manage it), leafing through the D&D rulebook his mother sent for Christmas -- his interest has waned in the past year in favor of other pursuits, but she doesn't know that -- while he waits to see if Molly will show up. They were more or less agreed, on the phone, but lately Molly is skittish and distracted even with him.

The bakery wasn't here when he left for college -- another fact that has him vaguely unsettled. He keeps glancing out the window, trying to get used to the angle.

( I'll draw three figures on your heart... )

It's Molly's dad who brings her home, after all. The school didn't recommend a medical leave, but her father insisted on it--after all, he said, if she's going to be wheelchair bound it would be best to have her in a familiar environment. Actually he just worries about her, and the way she swings between being an utterly normal girl, the daughter he's lived with for eighteen years, and someone who's lonely and quiet and acts scared of him when he can't see any reason he's ever given her to be afraid of her own father.

She can still get out of the wheelchair sometimes and use crutches and leg braces, and that's what she does inside the house. But she'll have the chair for the next three months, and she tends to rely on it.

It just seems so futile. She was so happy to go to college, to get out of this place and away from everything and start fresh somewhere where she could make friends who loved the same things she does--and there was Stephen, who was a great boyfriend except that he drove drunk--and she wants it all back, but Stephen's in the hospital in a coma and she's back in Britannia in her chair. Never mind the dreams she keeps having, the ones that make her scared of her dad, the ones that aren't formed enough to tell her anything concrete except that her father doesn't love her, he isn't proud of her, he's ashamed, he's angry, and if she provokes him he'll hit her, and she should stay out of his way and hide, and she's so lonely because she can't find her brother and none of that makes sense--

None of this makes sense.

Thursday morning finds her wheeling herself through town, looking at all the new shops that have sprung up since she left. It makes her feel like she's lost in her own home, and after a while she brakes on a less well-trodden part of the sidewalk and buries her face in her hands and cries.

There are things you do when you get into a car accident. You call 911, or you try to get out of the car, or you try to hail down someone by the side of the road.

You don't usually call your high school English teacher.

You could argue that Molly doesn't want to call the cops, since her boyfriend was driving, and he's incredibly high and not a little drunk. You could probably argue that it's not wise to hail down strangers, especially if you have even basic familiarity with the premises of horror films. That still doesn't really justify the fact that she manages to fall out of the car onto her hands and knees, scrabbling in the wet grass and fallen leaves for her cell phone, and when she gets hold of it she shakily dials his number.

"Mr. Madison? Oh God oh God oh God please pick up. Please pick up. Mr. Madison?"

Molly, rather than spend absolutely all her summer moping, is out walking the dogs to-day: Charlie, Jhudora, and the three puppies that haven't sold yet (they're golden retrievers, and still in the fuzzy, round stage where they bob around when they walk) on pink leashes from the office shop.

All five dogs are eager and pulling at her, and she has to half-jog to keep up with them, the soles of her tennis shoes slapping on the ground.

She still looks subtly unhappy, but it's easy to overlook.

It's been a while since Fizz commandeered this stretch of wall. She's not been avoiding it exactly - the damn dreams won't let her forget about it, for one thing - but... well, it's been a while; last time she'd made a few fumbling excuses and baulked once Arthur started talking about dreaming he turned into animals, because she had those same dreams herself and that was just plain weird because you don't share dreams with anyone, least of all random strangers you've only just met, even if you can't get them out of your head.

And then they'd started reading that damn book.

(Pulling herself back up on to the wall, with a careful glance back at the house to make sure neither Ken nor his wife are peeping through the curtains, Enfys settles back into her seat as if she'd never been away)

It had been a favourite, once. She could recite it almost by rote. But back then it had been familiar, like an old friend; it hadn't felt like it was haunting her, dogging her footsteps, teasing her with a mystery she couldn't quite get her head around.

There were no coincidences. Everything had cause and effect, nothing was random. This was the law of the Universe.

Sometimes the laws of the Universe suck.

Elaine is half asleep at her lunch table. She hasn't slept properly in more than a week, and it shows; at least school's practically over for seniors, so she can sleepwalk through the few remaining classes. Most of her friends have been avoiding her, more or less, which would upset her except that it gives her more time to read. She's reread The Ill-Made Knight three times this week. It hasn't made any more sense any of the three times. It's open on the table in front of her, though her eyes aren't focusing on it with much consistency.

She can't have dreamed this when she didn't know it. It's impossible. And White got some details wrong. She's certain of this, and she's scared to death of how certain she is.

And she misses him. On top of going crazy, she misses someone who she objectively knows doesn't even exist.

Molly got sent home early with a fever the day the class was assigned Once and Future King. She's back now, wholly recovered according to the school nurse, the doctor, and her father.

She's leaning against the wall of the school during recess. James is sitting under one of the trees on the playground edge, shuffling through his Magic: The Gathering cards. When he sees her he waves, grinning, and she waves back, but instead of running over to him she edges back along the wall towards the door. She hasn't really talked to Mr. Madison since she went running from his classroom sobbing, and a part of her feels an apology is in order at very least.

It takes a little while, once she's back inside the building, but she takes a deep breath and heads over to the classroom, her fingers teasing nervously with the hem of her shirt.

"...and King Arthur almost makes it with a goose."

Opinion is divided, among the student body, on Mr. Madison, but he is rarely accused of being boring.

"That's the first part, which is all we're going to have time for, this sucker is long. But if you wind up reading the rest over the summer, I won't breathe a word." He leans on the desk, sharp-eyed as ever, if a little worn of late. "Questions. Hit me."

[Group scene, threadjacking encouraged, talk amongst yourselves!]

Molly doesn't get angry very often, but she and her father had another fight, over much the same thing as usual, and this time she snapped and yelled something about it being what he taught her to do, and if he didn't want it he shouldn't have taught her and Melehan to do it, and then clapped both hands over her mouth and fled out the screen door in tears.

Now she's halfway through town, still crying, but in smaller gasping little breaths of tears now, the air coming out of her throat shaky. She's wishing she hadn't run, she's wishing she hadn't shouted, and she slows down and picks a handful of hyacinth out of someone's garden, guiltily, twisting the stems in her fingers. The knees of her skirt are muddy and her eyes are puffy. She shouldn't have shouted and she doesn't know what the name Melehan means or means to her and she wishes she were in somebody's arms (somebody gentle). And James is still in Chicago with his relatives, there's nobody to talk to.

Molly sniffles and wipes her arm across her eyes.

One thing a good journalist needs, of course, is an eye for a good story (and that phrase always puzzles Enfys, because stories are told, not seen - flash of log fires and great, booming voices and raucous laughter - so in her mind it should be an ear for a good story... but she digresses). Britannia being what it is – a small town, with a small town mentality – news travels fast, and rumour even faster, and while anyone else would wonder whether it was too soon to be pushing, whether it was intruding on the mysterious visitor, or indeed on Miss Connor, Enfys... doesn't think like that.

Not that she's quite got the confidence to stride up to the door and demand an interview either. Instead she finds herself a nice spot opposite the blue house on Mill-and-Spruce, perched on the wall at the bottom of someone else's garden with her knees hugged up to her chest, camera around her neck, dog-eared notebook in her pocket, and waits. She's good at waiting.

It's an odd feeling, being at once compelled to come here and hesitant to commit to doing so. Her mother would probably chalk it up to destiny playing her hand, but Enfys doesn't believe in that sort of thing.

Larry's tuning his guitar, frowning a bit absently. The coffee house isn't exactly full, but there aren't that many places to go in Britannia on a Friday night. People are filtering in, so at least it won't be utterly pathetic. He hopes. Even so, there's no reason his new song should make him nervous. Not like anyone will take notice anyway. Even so...

He shoved that line of thought away. It was probably just because he hadn't been sleeping well. It was making him paranoid. Just relax, he told himself. You'll be moving on soon, anyway.

But he could probably stand some conversation, either before or after his set.

It's been raining since early morning, more or less constantly; the courtyard in front of the school building is a mass of puddles, the field out back is a sea of mud, and Michael has been successively more snappish with several successively surlier classes. Now it's ten of three on a Friday afternoon, the rain has dwindled to a grey trickle down the windows, and he's sitting in the empty classroom with his head buried in his arms.

Britannia is small enough that the brick school and its open, unfenced playground is only a block from Molly's house. Her father took the dogs for a walk while she was still sleeping, which always makes her mad--she's told him before not to, that she'll want to walk them when she gets up, but he never listens on Saturdays, when she sleeps until noon. James is at an all-day D&D session in the basement of the bookstore on Third and Chestnut, and she's having twisty dreams again, not to mention when she told her father she was going out she called him Sir again; and this time he snapped and told her if she didn't start treating him like her father and not some army sergeant he was going to ground her--

so now she's wandering down the block towards the playground with her head down, watching her tenners and the sidewalk, with her English assignment in one hand. Things just seem so unfair sometimes, and her mother says that's normal when you're seventeen, but it's the kind of thing that makes her want to sit on the swings and cry until her head hurts.