Britannia, NY

School is out for the summer, of course, but in a town as small as Britannia is hard not to know where everybody lives. Thus it provides no trouble at all for Jim to show up on Daniel's front porch with Sheila on her lead and a grocery bag in his free hand, and lean on the doorbell.

The latter part of Karen's shift was quiet -- which was both good and bad. Good because it meant she got out in time to make herself look slightly more presentable before Daniel came back to meet her for drinks; bad because it gave her way too much headspace to over-think things.

Ultimately, she's decided to just run with the fact that it's only a drink or two, and essentially meaningless, and anyway -- she needs to know more than three people in town. And so, at 4:30 she's sitting on the bench outside waiting for Daniel to show up.

For the past two days, the music students at Britannia High School have been left in the hands of a substitute-- much to their delight, Daniel is sure. He's not just playing truant, which he has admittedly been known to do. But in this case, avoiding sleep as much as possible for God knows how long does have a tendency to catch up with a person.

It's the dreams, of course. Since they've stopped being fun and a bit exciting, he's stopped mentioning them to anyone. He's reconsidering this strategy, now. Now, that is, that the first thing he does once he feels alive enough to venture outside is to immediately head to Habitat to begin caffeinating himself in preparation for mission: avoid sleep. Which is probably less than healthy, but there he is that afternoon, drinking one of those improbably large cups of coffee, a little paler than usual, the childhood Scots accent coming out stronger when he speaks because he's too tired to hide it.

Who does one go to, he wonders, if one wishes to complain about crazy dreams? He'd hardly know how to begin such a conversation, anyway; a lifetime's practice has made him perhaps too good at talking a great deal without saying anything at all.

Sagramore doesn't get out much, mostly because Jim does a good job of squashing him down and keeping him out of his life. But the recent events with Nathan and the fact that Jim's been exhausted lately have his guard down, and Sagramore is the one who woke up this morning and spent half an hour working out modern plumbing, got his body dressed and headed out into town.

It's Sagramore, and for some people it might be obvious in the way he carries himself, the way his smile is relaxed and easy and his movement has a grace about it that Jim never has, a beautiful deer-like grace. He's exploring the shops that he hasn't ever been in, grinning freely at the lovely and unlovely alike, using the full extent of his charm to make everyone feel like the most special person in the world.

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.

It's been almost twenty years since Jim's gotten stinking drunk for no good reason (good reasons, like Amanda's being born, don't count). But somewhere in between Nathan's getting shot and Mike throwing him aside like that at the school, and this damned strange person inside him who he keeps trying to press back into a memory--

He's had a few shots of Jack Daniels before he stopped at the liquor store, and now he's at the park, sitting on one of the empty swings with his bottle of Southern Comfort in the brown paper bag. At least it's Friday; and it's late enough that most decent people in Britannia are seriously considering bed. If the police do drive by, they should give him a little leeway for at least being of the legal drinking age.

Actually, he hasn't thought it out that far. He isn't really even that drunk. He's jostling the swing a little, morosely, feeling confused and sad and mostly very, very sorry for himself.

Larry's posted some fliers in public places: the grocery, of course, the library. Maybe a few others here and there. He doesn't know why he feels nervous, as this isn't the first concert he's played in Britannia, and it won't be the last. At least, he isn't planning it to be, right now.

Maybe it's just that this is the first time he's played with the full knowledge of who he was, then. With the knowledge of why he writes about the things he writes about. And the first time he's played in front of audience who he's certain will know when and if he gets things wrong.

Still. He feels like it's something he has to do.


[Feel free to approach Larry after the show, or use as a post for running into other people at the concert.]

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.

The start of school, as many in Britannia are no doubt acutely aware, is approaching. As much as Daniel likes to maintain an air of complete disorganization, the beginning of the year is close enough that he has conceded defeat and begun, reluctantly, to work on lesson plans.

Rather than at home or in the school, however, he has found a coffee shop with outside tables and set up camp there. If he's forced to do work, at least it can be in the sunlight. (As for his dreams, they've continued and he's continued not to trouble himself about them. Unlike the others, he has no look of sleeplessness or lines of care, nor does he spend a great deal of time wondering if it's normal for dreams to be so linear and logical, and to feature as players people from his daily life who are, yet aren't, themselves. Really, the only effect has been a great desire to propose Camelot to the principal as the year's musical.)

All things considered, he's in a rather good mood and, considering the way he smiles at anyone who passes, probably seems quite approachable.

There was only one logical conclusion of what to do after a successful concert with seven thousand attendance: find the nearest bar, and get drunk. Coming off a three month tour, with tonight being the last concert, Jasper felt that there was only one thing left to do.

The bar that he found was relatively empty, and the rest of his band had wandered off elsewhere. Jasper, due to the fact that he'd been drinking around singing and playing, didn't seem to notice that his guitar was still slung over his back. Why should he notice that when there was alcohol to be had? Besides, he liked sticking close to this guitar, it was his favorite.

Unfortunately for the other patrons of the bar, Jasper was not a quiet person. So far he'd restrained himself from climbing up onto the bar counter and giving everybody an impromptu show, but it was a close thing. He'd managed to remain near the bar tender instead, keeping up a steady stream of drinks, happily hanging off whoever was closest.

"Free drinks for whoever wants them," he announced cheerfully to the bar at large, throwing out his arms as if it were a grand statement. Which it was, thank you very much, Jasper felt. The whisky in his left hand barely avoided being spilled. Luck was on his side tonight!

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.

By now Jim has settled in, as much as he settles at all, and most of the people are familiar with him by sight if not from actual conversation; they know him by his scissored gait, walking around Britannia like a Southern Dr. House. The women in the town's two coffee shops know him best, and they like him best: some facet of his personality, something attractive and warm and funny, shows through when he's at the little table with his mug of black coffee, shows through as it does no other place. He's still dour and sarcastic during his classes, caustic with most of the other teachers, prone to making comments in so deadpan a voice that people don't realise he's joking.

But the barristas and the waitresses and the sweet-faced thirty-something man who bakes for Cup of Tom (tagline: Hey, baby, you look like you could use a tall one; run by Tom Oldham, a thickset old Vietnam veteran with a mildly bizarre sense of humour) are always on the receiving end of his moments of friendliness, are the ones who experience him as a flirtatious man who's not really as old as he looks. The baker even has a half-acknowledged relationship with him--sometimes, when the waitresses are busy, he emerges lankily from the kitchen and lingers by Jim's table, and sometimes his coffee-coloured hands drop to Jim's smooth brown hair, and sometimes Jim waits by the door for him on his way home. So there's at least two places where he gets a warm reception, and he takes advantage of the fact by spending most of his unaccounted-for time there.

Lately, though, he's been having dreams--his dreams have started. He's always nauseous afterwards, his stomach rocking gently, and a rough pain in his abdomen, as if something is clawing unhappily inside his large intestine, lost and trying to make a way out for itself. So it's a Tuesday after school; so he's sitting at his usual table, but he hasn't been his usual self. He's correcting papers, but he pauses frequently to stare off at the distance and lose his place. His dark eyes are bruised, and the harsh edge of Tennessee in his accent is coming through plainer than usual. His body shakes more than usual.

He reaches for his coffee cup, and his hand shakes like an old man's.

Arthur's encounter with Gaheris... that is, with Gary, has left him shaken. He didn't expect anyone he knew to be alive, in any form. Maybe Merlin, if his luck was exceedingly great, but he hadn't counted on it. He'd appeared without a history, in the wrong country, and had assumed that something had gone wrong in his return.

But now he had to wonder. Perhaps it hadn't.

It was possible, of course, that poor Gaheris had been a special case, because of what happened. If someone were to believe in the idea of unfinished business for a soul, Gaheris would certainly be a reliable candidate. But then again, there were the dreams. He'd heard quite a few people mention odd dreams; he'd observed that even more people looked tired.

Perhaps, after all, he'd returned just as he was meant to.

Which, of course, raised the question of what it was that he was supposed to be doing, now that he was here. It had seemed so obvious, last time. Difficult, certainly, but clear. He wished...

But wishing never got him anywhere, then or now. But he's sitting on a bench, outside Adia's apartment, thinking. He's free for the approaching, however.

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.

Laurel knows why she's on edge. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that weeks of sleeping poorly will result in nerviness and irritability. But it's getting to the point where she's been close to losing her patience with customers, and that will simply not do. Not when her livelihood depends on a solid customer base.

So after work, she makes herself up, throws on a nice jacket, and steps out into the night. It's still cool, but getting warmer, and she takes a moment to enjoy the weather, walking slowly. But eventually, she reaches the bar she privately thinks of, ridiculously, as hers. She's not been in awhile, but she'd always been fond of it; not too loud, and the sort of cozy place tourists never appreciated.

Jack and coke in hand, she settles in to try and relax if possible. She wouldn't even mind some company, if some turned up.