Britannia, NY

Summer was ending.

It had been a long summer, but a quiet one. Jim had been a wonder, giving her space, but not too much space, and they'd settled into something like quiet normalcy. Or the Britannia equivalent anyway.

She would be lying if she didn't confess a small part of her was still waiting for Agravain to come and smash it all to bits. But she ignored that worry as best she could, as often as she could.

She'd even told her mother she was seeing someone, which she hadn't bothered to do in years, which she supposed meant she was somewhat serious about him.

The dreams, though, were still bad. A lot of the more mundane ones had faded, and the fleeting happy ones were all but gone. Now it was shouting and abuse and him a corpse in Camelot with it being the first time she'd seen him in more than a year.

If she could be rid of them, she would be. Instead, she worked. It had gotten to the point where she was working nearly every minute she wasn't with Jim. She said she was extending the store hours to get the tourist season, now that people were coming up for the leaves and the apples. But that wasn't all of it, and Jim, at least would be able to see. She and Ivy hadn't spoken in more than passing in weeks, and no one else probably knew her well enough to see, but she was beginning to fray, a little.

She made a small arrangement with some leftovers to take over to Jim's. It'd look nice in the window.

After ringing up Gary's purchase, Laurel closes the shop early. She's really not in any state to be running it, even if she's calmer now.

This is the second time talking to Gary has opened something in her mind, but this time, it won't shut. Things feel weirdly out of focus, and at first she suspects she just needs to lie down for a bit.

But it turns out she's too restless for that. And she really doesn't want to fall asleep, just at the moment.

So, an hour or so later, she turns up at Jim's, unannounced, which isn't like her at all. There's a bit of a sour taste in her mouth, but she tries to make herself calm as she knocks.

It is time yet again for Gary to venture out of the house for art supplies and groceries and a pretense at normality, which isn't easy right now. His nightmares are getting bad again, a kind of searing white-hot slicing that rips him out of sleep and leaves him lying awake sure that he's covered in blood--he has to lie in bed breathing slow, in out in out, until he can convince himself that he's fine, it's fine, and her blood washed off a long time ago.

He looks exhausted. The nightmares have come with their usual side effect, and he wakes up in the night trying to shove his fist in his mouth to muffle the screams, whimpering into the pillow at the memory of her empty eyes staring at him from the floor. It's making him lose weight again, and his clothes are too loose for his body, his eyes red-rimmed and sleepless.

On his errand run, he stops at the coffee shop, the grocery, the art store, and Laurel's shop to buy flowers for Mike; it's their fifth-year anniversary, and he's not feeling so bad that he doesn't remember that and set a lot of store by it. Gary still isn't sure some days why Mike's let him stay so long, or how it's continued to work out, when he's so crazy (and he knows Mike is up at night sometimes watching him, he knows that). But he can be bothered at any of those locations, before he finally returns home.

It's a really good day--he hasn't had nightmares in a week, he's managing to keep things cool with Mike (it involves effort, certainly, but he's making that effort, and he's been able to be friendly but not more than that for quite some time), and his intermittent dates with Laurel have been going really well.

So when school lets out for the afternoon he grabs his things, wraps Sheila's lead around his hand, and is out the door almost as quickly as the kids, heading back towards Laurel's shop.

Spring is coming, truly now, and Cecilia finds her mood improving. Warmer weather is always welcome, and soon enough things will cease to be terminally grey and bland. And it's not just the weather; things have gotten a little easier since she managed to tell Larry exactly how she felt, and though she misses him now, she's content.

Her dreams are still heart-twisting, still waking her up at strange hours, and some days she feels more like Morgause caught up in the wrong time then she feels like herself. But by and large, she goes to work, and helps out patrons, and takes long walks after her shift is over, and tries not to dwell on it.

Most days, she succeeds. But today is not one of those days. Today started out all right, and her workday went by quickly. Now, though, she doesn't want to go home and so she's walking down the main drag, without her jacket, trying to decide between a cocktail or coffee.

Jim is trying to put things back together after these last few months, and while his relationship with Mike is crashing down, at least the one with Laurel hasn't completely fallen apart yet. And he's trying very hard to do things right.

Which is the short explanation for why he shows up at her shop at closing time, holding a small bouquet of flowers--which makes him feel like an idiot, honestly, but there you are--Sheila at home, because he feels steady enough to do this, and he wants to look normal, like any other worthy man. He feels guilty about leaving her, but this is important.

He's also wearing his nicest suit jacket and the blue silk tie that he got at Nathan's urging. He wishes he didn't feel so nervous about this; it would be nice to be suave.

Ivy is tired, but on the plus side it's also getting nice, the weather turning warm and windy, and the trees putting out green shoots. That's enough to be getting her blood warm and swift-flowing, turning over in her body, and it makes her feel energetic and cheerful and ardent.

The latter of which Ken's been feeling the results of, but the rest of it is more than shared with the rest of the community; her clients are seeing even better results than usual, and she has a lot more patience with people being stupid.

She's on her way home from work. The fact that the sun is still out at five-thirty is thrilling, and she's swinging her tote bag of files cheerfully, her long hair blown out of her professional ponytail, and she looks beautiful in the yelloworange sundress under her working blazer.

It's been a while since anything interesting happened to Jim. He's been living solitary, and very quiet, doing his teaching as usual (few As, as always, are ever awarded in his class). Sheila is comfortable with the town, and he's getting more comfortable with her, hardly noticing now that she comes with him, hovering under his hand.

That changes when he starts to dream again. He's thrown off-balance by it, by the feeling that he's hovering between two worlds and the battle in the heat of summer, his body fallen among a hundred other fallen bodies, his blood leaking out under the burnished sun.

Suddenly he's taking more aspirin than he should, and skipping his meds without noticing it. The real evidence of a problem comes Friday afternoon, when his head is splitting and the smell of blood is dizzying, and he lets the class out twenty minutes early, sitting in the classroom with his face in his hands until he can regain his composure.

His walk is almost staggering as he goes to his office to put his things away and start the trip home. Sheila whines unhappily at his side.

Clara, walking with great purpose, is going to the library. She's keeping an eye out as she does so. For what, she's not exactly sure.

(She had a dream last night-- because that seems to be the only thing that can force her to make decisions lately, but she doesn't want to think about that. She had a dream.

It's a dream about coming home.

It's the end of that quest-- the one she's dreamed about since the beginning with Lynet and Lyonors and all that nonsense. But in this dream it's finally over and he's coming home. And his brothers are with him and he rides in the midst of them, not a pace behind like with Lancelot. And they come home, to Camelot, and King Arthur is there and even though Gareth has seen him before, it was like seeing him for the first time. He looked then, more than ever, the way Gareth had imagined him from the stories, his famous sword at his hip and his Queen at his side.

And his brothers are there. They don't care that he ran away, that he did not come to them, that he lied. They're there.

It's the first time she wakes up and doesn't feel alone.)

So she's going to the library, because she feels like she has to do something and it's the only lead she really has. And she's keeping an eye out. True, she's been more or less an utter failure at recognizing anyone thus far. But today, maybe, she thinks she could do it.

Now that the holidays are over, Laurel doesn't have much of an excuse to be working constantly anymore - at least not as constantly as she has been. And she's started to feel a little bit guilty about shutting everyone out so thoroughly, though "everyone" is not an extensive list.

So she's off today, the shop closed. She plans to spend the morning around town, getting some errands done, and perhaps in the afternoon she'll figure out how to say what's been on her mind to those who need to hear it.

Well. Part of what's been on her mind at least.

It's a risk she's taking, walking downtown in the broad daylight with no safeguard but her evident youth. But Morgan has never been noted for her caution, when she's on the trail of something she wants. She has a secure line on Morvydd, and she's feeling confident. If she can make headway with her daughter, then Accolon, Ywain, even Mordred, ought to pose no difficulty.

So she wanders down the street, leisurely, peering into the windows of shops, pausing to read the Historical Interest plaques posted here and there. When she reaches the bakery she lingers, slim and elegant in her black wool coat, to study Of The Lake's unprepossessing façade.

Florence wakes in the middle of the night, shaking uncontrollably. It's been years since she had nightmares like this -- standing in the stone passageway, side by side with his brother, scared and heartsick; watching helplessly as Agravain went down in a fountain of blood; Mordred screaming at him and at Lovel to go, get to their father, they should never have come --

And then she always wakes up, struggling to breathe around the blade in her ribs.

She climbs out of bed, fumbling for her slippers -- her eyesight, thank goodness, is still perfectly good, but her hands won't stop trembling -- pads slowly through the house, past Janie snoring on her bed, and out onto the porch, shrugging on her coat.

For a minute the cold fresh air steadies her. She stands there, a small shaken old lady in an overstuffed parka, staring out at the dark with the eyes of a terrified boy.

Ivy hasn't felt right since her encounter with Elaine, and to top it off, yesterday she and Ken went to see a new gynecologist in Manhattan. This one has even better credentials than the last one, and he did lots of tests, and he's going to call them with the results by Monday but she hasn't got any more faith in him than she had for any of the ones before--he's going to call back and say that all of her tests came up perfectly fine and there's no reason she shouldn't be able to conceive. They all say that.

She's just locking up the office, her tote bag of legal files under her arm as she turns the key. For someone who's usually a bundle of manic energy, it's hard to imagine her looking more subdued.

Laurel's been throwing herself into her work, almost to the point of exhaustion. The shop is open longer holiday hours, but she decided against hiring extra employees, not trusting herself to have the energy to train anyone. Even when it's closed, she's often there, tending to all the hundred and one things that needed to be done by the day before. She stays late to set up the window display for the holidays; she comes early to do the bookkeeping.

She knows the emotions will pass, eventually. She hopes the dreams will. She's blocked the conversation she had with Gary, doesn't even remember it anymore. It's the beginning of the holidays, she runs a shop, and with luck, she'll be too exhausted for anything else. At least for the time being.

Laurel's locking up the shop for the night, bundled against the now pronounced chill in the air. It's dark, but the streetlights illuminate her whole way home, and she likes that she lives close enough to walk. She tries to relax, as she heads home; when she was there so much, she really should leave work at work.

( For it's my thoughts that bind me here/It's this love that I most fear/And this child I would destroy/For I hold her pain most dear/No haven for this heart/No shelter for this child in mazes lost/Heaven keep us apart/A curse for every mile of ocean crossed )

Jim is in full-blown bad-decision-making mode right now, and, as such, he's hanging out at the local bar. He's not drinking, true, he's just fiddling with a glass of some kind of cola (possibly Coke; he doesn't like plain tonic), but that doesn't mean he isn't kind of hoping to get picked up, or at least come on to, and the fact that his shaking is all but disappeared is, in his opinion, going to help with that particular cause.

He's even left his cane at the house. Right now he just wants to escape from all the people he knows, all these damned conflicts he can't work out, and take refuge in someone else's warmth, safety in anonymity.

Laurel sometimes wished she were the sort of woman who cried. She couldn't remember the last time she had: college, probably, if she thought hard. But her entire adult life, she'd just gotten a hot, dry feeling in her chest and throat when something was wrong. She couldn't say, with certainty, why, but it wasn't something that gave much of a catharsis, even when it eventually eased.

She didn't know whether it was helping the man in the art store the other day, or the talk with the scared girl who'd bought just one flower, or nothing at all, but her dreams had gotten worse. Well, that was an understatement. Her dreams had become awful. Nothing, of course, that she could describe as a nightmare. There was nothing violent, nothing patently dangerous in them. But everything was saturated with a deep sorrow that time somehow seemed to be making worse, not better. Stupid as she knew it was, she couldn't seem to shake the mood, even when she woke up. Sleeping pills, she'd found, didn't help with the dreams at all, but at least kept her from waking from them, so at least she wasn't falling asleep at work the day after. But it was a half-hearted solution.

Her days off, her evenings... they'd become full of futile attempts to distract herself. This evening, she gives up on her book and goes on a walk. It seemed as good (or bad) as anything else, and the park will at least be pretty in the evening.

Gary has really been rocking back and forth a lot over the last few weeks--autumn does not do him any favours from a psychological angle--but he's finally roused himself enough to get out of the house and try to focus, so he's buying more art supplies (you would swear he is trying to keep that store in business single-handedly).

He looks unexpectedly fragile this afternoon, having lost weight again, wrapped in his jacket with his long-fingered artist's hands cold as snow.

He is wondering again whether he will ever be well.

Ever since her partner had retired and sold her the other half of the flower shop, Laurel has known she really should hire at least one more employee. But she's found it easier to just work herself. It's not like her hours are that insane (though perhaps she should find time for more than one day off a week, true), or like she has a great many other demands on her time.

In all honesty, working at the flower shop is one thing Laurel knows she's very good at. She has that to hang on to. Today, she's out front, arranging some seasonal displays; things that suggest harvests, pumpkins, and turning leaves.

She's considering stopping by the bakery on the way home. She could afford to treat herself, just a bit. And her small burst of extroversion seems to have passed; a quiet evening at home is more or less what she hopes for and expects these days.

It's five o'clock, and Ivy locks up her office on Sagamore Street and heads down the sidewalk towards Cup o' Tom, shouldering her tote bag full of legal work.

It's a windy day, the kind of day she loves, and she's humming to herself, her long blue skirt blowing around her ankles. It's nice to be able to get off work and go home without clocking out to anybody, nice to have picked her own hours, nice to have the kind of clients she has out here instead of the hectic inner-city cases. She likes feeling ordinary.

Maybe she'll run by the liquor store and get a bottle of wine to have with dinner. True, Ken is better at picking out wines than she is, but she knows enough, and it would be nice. Ivy taps her fingers with her pen and tries to decide whether it should be red wine or white wine, and then heads into the cafe instead.