Britannia, NY

Andrea's wandering down main street, trying to decide whether to eat out or cook at home. She just finished up at the bakery, flour still dusting her clothes and under her fingernails. While she loves to cook, she still has unpacking to do, and she really should get to that, even if she just wants to curl up on her mattress and go to sleep.

On the other hand, she has no idea where, or even if, there's any place to eat here, aside from Cup o' Tom, but she just left there after working since nine. So, Andrea supposes that she has to cook for herself tonight, which means locating the supermarket. Or general store. Or whatever the equivalent was here in Britannia.

Adia gets back into town late in the afternoon, and parks her car a few blocks away from the apartment. She's not totally sure she feels like going in just yet. Leaving her suitcases in the backseat, she walks the three blocks down to the park and finds a bench by the small, man-made lake to sit for a while.

After a few hours, just as the sun is going down, she comes back to the apartment. She gave the lease to Arthur, along with her keys, with the intention of severing all ties; the result is that she has to ring the buzzer to get in.

Arthur is taking a walk, while Adia is still at work. For the first time in a long while, he has some sense of what he's supposed to do. Or at least what he's supposed to do next. But, as ever, it's directly at odds with what's best for someone he loves.

Part of him wants to fight someone. To yell at the sky that it isn't fair. But he's older than that. He should know better than to expect fairness. From anything.

But he's hoping something will come to him. What to say to Adia would be helpful. But so far, nothing's occurred to him.

He'll have to go home eventually.

Adia is still having dreams, since they got back from the Florida vacation, but this is the worst one she's ever remembered. She's not sure why, just that it is, that it intensely fills her head and her eyes in a way none of them ever have.

She doesn't even know the particulars of it. She remembers the fire, her hands and feet bound to the stake while the brush beneath her burns, and she remembers Lancelot, his sword cutting down the Orkney princes, their bright blood staining the grass dark brown, and somewhere in the middle of it all she remembers Arthur, stern-faced and solemn. She remembers him in his brown cloak, standing against the cold wind, his teeth clenched against his jaw to keep his resolve strong, and his fine sword gleaming in his hand.

His sword. The sword. She can't remember the name of it, only the winter sun shining off the blade. Then the fire is burning her feet away, Lancelot's horse is charging through the grounds, the men are falling like water tumbling over a cliff.

She wakes up screaming.

The dreams have only intensified since her fight with Lexi. The last few nights have been unbearable, but when she wakes up she just lies in bed, concentrating on being as still as possible in the darkness, noting the cold in the air--she can't stand sleeping without the window open--anchoring herself in time. She's here. She's here and nowhere else.

Around three o'clock in the morning she jerks awake, her skin burning, sitting bolt upright, then carefully untenses her body and lies back down.

"I'm here," she tells the ceiling. "I'm me. I'm just me."

( live your life the way you wanted to... )

There's been no letup in the nightmares for Adia--the night before was the worst in a long time, and she woke feeling as though her whole body was burning, and had to take an ice-cold shower to get the heat out of her skin. She can't even look at Arthur afterwards, not because he's responsible, but because he feels the responsibility.

She's trying to get away from the house to-day, to distance herself from it. The cold air helps, the grounding smells of snow and bread from the bakery anchor her in this place. She doesn't have to admit anything here. She doesn't have to be Guenever, or even know the name.

Ken was the type of guy who made lists. He wasn't married to them (for one, no one married to Ivy could have stayed so very long without at least a modicum of flexibility), but making them seemed to cut the world into manageable chunks.

Today it was a list of errands. Monday was typically one of the two days he took for himself a week, but that didn't mean he would waste it. He needed to go pick up something at the post office, stop by the library to get something he'd put on hold, and he'd thought he might grab something at the bakery on the way home to surprise his wife.

And while Ken has never been one to strike up conversations with strangers, really, he's not in a poor enough mood to shut down attempts to talk to him. At least, from most people.

The fact of the matter is, his dreams aren't very fun anymore.

They're still about knights, and in them he still wanders around doing knightly things, but the wandering feels more like just that-- wandering aimlessly-- than the adventuring feel it had before. And that's the best of the new feelings. He tries just not to think about them, but that hasn't been working as well as he'd like.

Looking uncharacteristically quiet, he makes his way down his usual walk to school, armed with a coffee one size larger than the usual.

Since she confessed to Arthur what she remembers, Adia has gone back to denying it staunchly, going about her life as ordinarily as possible (everything is fine; the only person I am is myself). During the day she goes to work and tries not to think outside the box; at night she lies next to Arthur and doesn't have many dreams.

Until to-night.

To-night she has the old dream of fire and smoke and burning, and wakes up soaked with sweat, sobbing, her body achingly hot to touch.

It's Friday afternoon, and Mike is cautiously optimistic. The kids haven't been giving much trouble lately; Gary's been to the doctor and back again, and begun to loosen up a little on the subject; and any week in which Nathan minds his own business, he feels, can be counted as a net gain. So he's reasonably cheerful as he heads back to the apartment building, ankle deep in dead leaves. It's good walking weather.

There are, perhaps, some reasons that Arthur hasn't heard that the table has been destroyed, or that Nathan's been shot. No one's sought him out, certainly, nor has he been very visible.

The truth is, he knows something is coming, soon and big. Lexi coming was wonderful, but also disorienting, and drove something home to him.

He very well might lose Adia, once whatever it is happens. For a dozen different reasons, but he isn't sure they're all things he can stop, try as he might. And he's not sure how he can bear that. Because as much as he loved his queen... he's falling harder and harder for Adia, here and now.

So. If their time is short, he's going to make the most of it.

Which is why, when Adia comes home, there will be a candelit dinner, with wine, all set out. He managed a roast, with some potatoes, but bought the dessert, because he didn't trust himself to bake. Still. It looks very nice.

As things go this meeting is not only inevitable but almost necessary--Adia would like to live in her little world where everything is fine as long as Arthur's there and no one pushes on her dreams, but there are so many new arrivals to this town in so short a time and even she, out on the fringes of all of it, can't avoid them.

Besides, it's a new bakery, and it smells fantastic.

The morning paper, tucked under her arm, is the Albany paper--which Britannia gets for anybody who wants to know what's actually going on in the world, because the weekly Britannia periodical is a very this-small-town oriented paper. The Albany paper and the people who edit it have never appeared even to know of Britannia's existence, but this morning is a little different; it's not on the front page, but there is a feature story on B2 headlined SMALL-TOWN CARPENTER SHOT IN UNSUCCESSFUL ROBBERY; Thief fired and ran, according to man's roommate.

Adia stops just in inside the Round Table and looks around, closes her eyes briefly and breathes in. Something here is reminiscent of something else. She just doesn't know what or why.

Daniel is making the rounds, a little stack of posters advertising his services as a private teacher of voice or any of a number of instruments (with little taggy bits at the bottom that you can tear off, which are by far his favorite part) under his arm. He hasn't made much of an effort to advertise in a while, figuring that most people in the small town who wanted to know about where to get music lessons already did. But as someone who makes it his business to try and know every single person in town, he has noticed more than a few new faces lately, and has therefore deemed it worth the effort. Who knows? Maybe one of them has a kid who wants to learn piano.

He limits himself mostly to locations that actually make some degree of sense: the library, cafes where musicians usually play, bookstores, the message board in the post office. But, being Daniel, he also can't resist putting up a few in slightly more illogical places-- the new carpentry shop, the car garage-- just for fun.

Adia is working in the store as usual--it's the last few weeks of tourist season. The kids are all going back to school, the first of the leaves are turning, but people are still trickling through looking for kitsch to remind them of how beautiful it is here.

She's humming Daniel's song again. She looks bored, the way she usually does when she's working, but part of her also seems happier, and her clothes are brighter.

Adia is finally starting to put her big fight with Arthur behind her. It doesn't mean everything is all right, but at least she isn't angry any more, and she's starting to cope, albeit slowly.

Maybe there's some truth mixed in with this rockslide of memories and familiar unfamiliar people. Anyway she has to think there is.

It's Sunday morning, and she slept in. Now she's cooking eggs in the kitchen, her hair tied up in a bright scarf, wearing a cute flirty dress she ordinarily wouldn't be caught dead in. It's worth starting over now. It's worth trying a second time.

Ken is out in his garden, on his cell phone. He's not agitated, not exactly, but he is animated, gesturing with his free hand, his voice rising and falling.

Finally, when the call is done, he leans against the low stone wall that substitutes for a fence in his yard, his face in his hands, as he tries to lower his blood pressure and calm down.

Arthur's taken up Adia's suggestion, and he's actually managed to gather a few jobs doing yard work. He likes getting out and doing physical things; it reminds him pleasantly of his childhood, and he's found he has an aptitude for gardening. He's finally earning steadily enough to help with the rent.

This evening, he arrives with roses, both yellow and red in a lovely, unusual arrangement. "Adia? Are you home yet?" he calls as he lets himself in; with all the hours he's been working, it only made sense for him to get his own key.

Adia is working at the store as usual, but, unusually, she has been in a really good mood for the last few weeks. Ordinarily she's fairly sullen with her customers, resentful in a way she can't quite stifle, but lately she's been prone to smiling, cheerful, even good-willed for the most part.

Right now she's humming as she puts things in order behind the counter, her long dark hair loose down her back in ringlets, her slim cool fingers busy with receipt paper. The song isn't one she learned in his lifetime, although she doesn't know that; it's an old one that Dinadan used to play on May Day, when the court celebrated and she went out before dawn with her ladies to gather flowers, fighting to keep her skirts pulled out of her way, her hair the colour of gold in wild braids and violets tucked in. Dinadan wrote the song for her; at least, Arthur asked for it, and it was played every year, and it's in the back of Adia's mind even though she can never remember where she heard it.

Arthur's memory has returned in bits and pieces, or so it seems; he still acts odd sometimes, and occasionally ordinary items or practices surprise him before he can hide it. But he seems calmer, and has shared bits and pieces with his hostess. He grew up in England, which explains the slight accent, his father had been in the military, he'd moved to America as a teenager. Being bright, she can doubtless tell that he's occasionally troubled, but on the whole it's been a good first week. He's physically unharmed, and mentally settling.

He's cooking for her when she gets home today, a very aromatic stew, it appears. Like everything he does, he seems to be overly careful, as if it was the first time he'd ever done it. By smell, at least, he doesn't seem to be doing too badly.