Username: 
Password:    
Remember Me

Search by :  Username E-mail Region Interest AOL IM ICQ Number Yahoo! ID MSN Username Jabber

Arthur Pendragon (a_royal_prat) wrote in colligo_threads, @ 2011-08-04 13:16:00

Who: Arthur and Morgana
What: A small downgrade with the same amount of bickering
When: Thursday morning, early
Where: Building C and outdoors
Rating: P for Pendragons
Status: Complete



Morgana woke up, groggy and with certain joints of her body aching - more well rested than she tended to be during long trips. Tintagel Castle was weeks away from the one in Camelot and Morgana was prone to positioning herself oddly while sleeping fitfully thanks to bumpy roads and the occasional “nightmare”. Her father, Lord Gorlois, would always attempt to reposition her into something more comfortable but Morgana was stubborn, yes even in her sleep, and she would find some how to stretch out her tiny, and tensed, form. Mind and body only seemed to relax whenever they reached their destination. In which her father would shoo away servants and carry her to her rooms in Camelot, allowing her to sleep in her travel clothes. Much to her nursemaid’s disconcert. Gorlois thought it was silly to wake her up just so she could change out of her nice dress into her sleeping clothes. After all, clothes were just clothes. Morgana’s own concern for them were token at best and only on the behalf of her nursemaid who she loved dearly; even if the woman was a ridiculous fretter. This was why Morgana’s immediate attention after blinking the sleepy out of her eyes and pressing away the slight ache in her neck, her head, went to attempting to smoothing out the wrinkles on her blue gown. She didn’t notice her change in location right away. What she noticed first was the bed. It was much too small. From the bed came the rest of the room. And from that? There came the panic.

Quick and sharp. It caused her heart to pound almost painfully in her chest and the breath that she drew in was almost gasping. A result of fear and immediate anger and irritation. She might be almost nine but she knew anger. She had every right to be. There were only so many times a girl could be kidnapped before anger and annoyance became the default reactions. Along with exasperation. Lots of exasperation. Morgana had been kidnapped quite a few times in her young life. The guards in Camelot left much to be desired (major understatement). A person didn’t have to follow their schedules for very long before they figured out how to get in and out of the castle without being caught. Morgana had discovered this for herself at age six.

This was, however, the first time she’d been kidnapped in her own bed. Morgana would have actually spared a moment of being impressed - no, really. Her father was the best knight in all of Camelot, if not Albion and her godfather was the king of Camelot, a known warlord; kidnapping her from her own bedroom was something else - if she wasn’t planning on using the opportunity to escape. The windows were the first thing to pop into her mind and that made sense. They were as odd as everything else in this room. And apparently sealed shut. The little squares on glass set up in the space were far too small for her to fit into, even if somehow breaking the glass didn’t alert her captures. She was trying to figure out how to go about it when she noticed that the door was open. In this odd situation, her young mind had gone straight to the window. It had been the first thing that her eyes had fell upon. She hadn’t even thought to check the door. The fact that she was in an inn or a home was odd in the first place. Morgana was doing her best to react to an unknown situation. If she had been the forest, as per usual, she would have ran. Waiting for her father to get her would likely have been the smartest plan but Morgana had never been terribly good at waiting. Waiting only occurred when waiting for the most opportune moment to escape.

She didn’t know what quite to do in an inn. In the eight years she had been alive - and some months (those months were very important) - Morgana had been kidnapped five times. Never once had they ever stopped in an inn. They never wanted to risk it. Finding herself indoors filled her with suspicion. An open door had to be a trap, wouldn’t it? She slid away from the window and sat back on the bed, pale green eyes staring warily at the open door. There didn’t seem to be anyone in the other room. Morgana knew from overhearing her other kidnappers that an inn Camelot was much to dangerous, sleeping outside was preferable. Meaning one of two things. Her kidnapper was either really stupid or that she was out of Camelot. In those five times she’d been taken, never once had they actually gotten that far before her father descended upon them with knights. This must meant that the person was very stupid!

Forgetting thoughts about traps, Morgana was half way to the door when she remembered something. She had no money. Biting on her bottom lip, she considered if searching for some was worth getting caught. The rumbling of her stomach made her decision for her. She turned back quickly and was opening drawers left and right before she happened upon a lot of strange looking coins. They were unlike anything she had ever seen and sharp fear went through Morgana once again. Had they really taken her outside of Camelot. Her eyes hesitantly went to the bed she had woken up in - it was strange looking - and her thoughts went back to her much previous ones. How impressive it had been that they had actually managed to kidnap her from her bedroom in Camelot. She looked back toward the door, then the window, and squeezed her eyes shut very, very tightly. Her father told her it was okay to cry. Nevertheless, if she wanted to regain her balance (this was advice he gave her should Arthur hit her too hard while they were fighting) all she had to do was hold her breath, let it go, and think of something else. Morgana thought that advice was fitting so she tried it. She still wanted to cry.

But at least the tears didn’t fall being held by the stubborn will of a child. Something caught her attention. Luckily. A little box that beeped and blinked. A light showing through the glass when she had accidentally pressed something in her panic. Trepidation and fascination caught up fear and tears. Brushed them aside. Magic. All the age old tales went racing through her brain but it had her attention. Small fingers went to reach for it, before her fingers curled back uncertain. Her decision was made for her when she heard a loud slamming sound coming from the outdoors. Grabbing the money and impulsively grabbing the strange box, Morgana skidded out the open door and soon out of the rooms.

Arthur couldn’t say he’d been kidnapped very often, though there had been plenty of attempts. Unfortunately, he wasn’t allowed to be kidnapped as his father had stationed guards evenly throughout the entire corridor beyond his chambers. It was really unfair. He never got to do much of anything. He barely got to ride out with his father and he’d never been taken out beyond the walls of the city. So waking to an odd bed, with an odd smell, in an odd bedroom, next to an unfamiliar lady who smelled like spices and to the sound of a caterwauling infant was as close to an adventure as Arthur ever got.

He didn’t understand how he got here, or who tried to take him, but he did know he would need to be extra quiet and extra careful getting out of here. Especially because the nice smelling lady seemed close to waking up. He edged out of the bed and hit the floor in a tangle of sheets that had him pausing to make certain the lady hadn’t woken up with him. Once reassured, Arthur crept from the room and peeked out beyond it. Everything looked weird. And clean. And made from something that wasn’t wood or iron. He wasn’t quite sure what it was, but even that didn’t deter him from spotting the door. If he made it outside, maybe he could find out where he was.

Or maybe his kidnappers would be waiting for him and the lady and baby were also prisoners too. Arthur edged back into the bed chamber, which was awfully small and noticed the sword hanging on the wall. He scrambled for the chair that was pushed under the window and tried to lift it as best he could so it wouldn’t scrape along the floor. It was slow work and he was panting and sweating by the time he got the chair to the far wall, but he made quick work of hopping up onto it and grasping the sword by the hilt.

He grinned, giving it a small swish before climbing back off the chair with extra care. Arthur clutched the sword tightly in his fist as he left the bedroom, creeping past the open door where a baby was screaming and made a beeline for the only shut door, which he had to assume led out. Wherever that was.

Arthur hefted the sword higher and reached for the odd looking handle and twisted it, peeking out into a brightly lit hall. When he saw no one, he hurried out and shut the door behind him.

He barely made it halfway down the hall when he heard the sound of feet thumping behind him. Arthur turned just in time to see Morgana barreling down at him so he could drop his sword and hopefully not hurt her. He could just hear that lecture now.

If she had collided into anyone else, Morgana might have given into the grunt and whimper that came from smacking right into a bony body whose sharp angles pressed into you in all the more uncomfortable ways. However, Morgana had been determined to show that she was better than Arthur since they were toddlers and one of his previous nurse had dared to give him a better helping of dessert simply ‘because he’s the prince’ and he’d stuck his tongue out at her. As she was she bit her bottom lip around a wince as she attempted to climb back up to her feat, pleased with herself that she hadn’t dropped the money and the magic box. Once she stood up, concern came - albeit a bit belated but it flooded through when it did - and Morgana forwent the lecture that was just burning on her tongue for bending slightly and tugging Arthur up to his feet. Morgana was easier to kidnap than Arthur. Not because his guards were better, well they might have been slightly better ‘because he’s the prince’, but because Morgana wasn’t as stringently under lock and key. Gorlois refused to allow Morgana to roam around even the castle on her own and after that one time she was taken because she’d lost both her guard and her nurse - she made sure to be much more careful when and how she snuck out. Arthur, however, could barely take a step without two guards trailing him. She was at least allowed to go riding with her father. Morgana had heard many an arguments between Uther and Gorlois over the fact that Arthur was also a young boy on top of being the future king of a kingdom won by war. Every single new information that Morgana came up against, every new occasion, only served to make this situation worse in her eyes. Yet make even less sense. Why would someone smart enough to kidnap the daughter of a duke from her own bed, undetected, and also be the first person to make away with the Prince of Camelot not better guard his captives?

Her thoughts weren’t the only thing distracting Morgana from snapping at Arthur. Worry was as well. Not that she’d ever say it. However, she knew what she was doing. She was an expert at this. Arthur couldn’t even run away to the training field before the alarm was sounded. Since she had, yes, long ago mentally ticked this off as something else she had done more often and better than Arthur, Morgana could put her focus on checking if he was alright.

“Morgana!” Arthur yelped when he wound up on the floor with a hard thump and the wind knocked from him. He hadn’t been aware girls could do that, but Morgana wasn’t really a girl anyway. She refused to act like one. He struggled to his feet, tugging down his tunic, which was huge and oddly knit and had nearly come up over his head. Morgana was breathing like a horse and looked panicked and more than a little upset. He’d never seen Morgana flustered like this.

He didn’t really want to again.

“Where are we?” he blurted out. Which, he supposed, was a whole lot better than telling her she looked funny when she made that face.

Morgana pursed her lips only to keep from biting her bottom lip and giving into emotions that weren’t calm and determination, and now that Arthur was here protection (and yes, protection was very much an emotion; a compilation of feelings that deserved it’s own term). Morgana might make it her duty to belittle Arthur at every. single. TURN but he was her only true friend, only friend that she liked. She had to make sure that he was safe because Morgana always took good care of what was hers, that was what those of Cornwall did. Arthur also had the benefit of being a responsibility. Pendragons needed looking after. The King would have been an utter mess without her father; she may be barely nine but she had the sense to see this. Her father had told her once that she was meant to look after Arthur. Not because he was the Prince, he had hundreds of people looking after him in that way, but because he was her Pendragon. All right. Perhaps Gorlois hadn’t said that in so many words but that was what Morgana got out of it. And either way, the results were the same to her: Keep Arthur from being a total fool and whack anyone who would do either of them harm. To do this meant that she had to pretend to know what she was doing. Had to swallow down her fear, even further than she had been intending to do for her own self, for her own peace of mind. Morgana noticed rather early on that when she did that - when she pretended to know what she was doing - in situations where they were both uncertain Arthur complained less, and actually listened to what she said.

“I don’t know. However, I was going to look for a library and find out. They aren’t usually very far from inns, you know.” Which wasn’t a complete and utter lie. She had been about to look for something, any place with a map. And libraries were usually in castles and manors and those weren’t all that far from inns. Once she’d met an innkeeper who had had his own small library of books right in his inn. However, it wasn’t as if Arthur would know. For all that he knew places on maps through his studies. Morgana was the one with the travel experiance.

“Do all inns look like this?” Arthur asked, bending to pick up his sword. Fine it might have been big for him, but it was a weapon and he felt better just holding it. It was as big as his father’s was, and looked like it might be able to hurt someone if he pointed it right, or even wrong. Sometimes doing a wrong move did more damage. He lugged it alongside them as they headed down the hall, but even the added weight didn’t distract him from the very wrong feeling this building was giving him. “Are they this clean?”

Even the castle wasn’t always this clean and that was the castle. Arthur might not be able to go very many places, but he knew that his home was not like everyone else and he knew what happened in inns thank you and he knew that wouldn’t make everything so...shiny. Even the lights were oddly encased and weren’t flickering like candles ought to. And the floors. They were made from the oddest sort of stone Arthur had ever seen in his small existence. That Morgana was trying to remain calm, despite some more than obvious signs she wasn’t, didn’t help Arthur much. Her voice could be as calm and still as a pond, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t lying to him to keep him from running around and trying to hack people up to bits.

Arthur frowned up at the glowing sign. “Is this magic?”

“No.” Morgana managed to hide her mild surprise at the intelligent question. It wasn’t that she thought stupid, just that he was a big-headed idiot. It was rare for Arthur to consider, demanding was more to his preference. “Most of them are small, however, the basic shape is the same.” She watched him as he lugged the sword. She bit back the desire to offer help. He would only end up arguing with her. When they reached stairs or something she would do so without asking, for now they were moving well enough. “Some of them can be very clean.” Morgana frowned at him, as if he had said something very politically incorrect. Which was something, as such a term didn’t exist when they were from. Although her frown turned to something else, as she looked back carefully down the corridor to ensure that no one was following them. No. They were never this clean. Tintagel certainly wasn’t this clean. However, Morgana didn’t add more to her answer.

Morgana’s eyes took in the Exit sign, glowing quite similarly to the box that she had in her hand but not as brightly. Her small lips worked slightly in uncertainty and her mouth seemed to waver. Magic. Yet another sign of magic. One she could bare, especially in a rush, but two? Her entire life she had heard horror stories about those with magic. While she thought many of them were ridiculous, dealing with it up close and personal in the present situation was more than a bit disconcerting. No matter what her young opinion on the topic might have been. “Don’t be ridiculous, Arthur.” She scoffed. “It’s clearly a candle through stained glass.”

Arthur glanced at Morgana for a curiously silent moment as he debated whether or not to point out that he wasn’t an idiot and that even with four separate candle stubs the letters would not be that bright. He might be seven, but he knew the difference between an illusion with candles and glass and...whatever that was. Morgana’s expression stilled his tongue and hostile opinions. He hadn’t thought she would be scared. She was barely ever scared, but her expression reminded him of the one time his father shouted at a maid for dropping a platter of food before him and Arthur could no more shake that imagine and the lesson of being fair and even with punishment than he could remove the way Morgana’s mouth had trembled before answering. He was hyper vigi-vegel-he was aware of what was going on around him. His lessons did not all come from the musty pages of books Geoffrey tried to make him read. He’d been sneaking from his chambers for years now, and he only got away with it through planning and being very very aware of people and what they were feeling before he got to them. He needed to know who was distracted and who was taking their job seriously.

He needed to change the subject before Morgana began to rant at him for jumping too (probably true) assumptions.

“You go first,” he said and pushed open the door to hold it for her.

If Arthur had pushed the topic, as Morgana had fully expected him to, she would have countered with light and enclosed space - she did listen when Gaius went on about science almost as often as she was causing trouble in his rooms - and in fact, she had her response ready before he had finished speaking. However, he didn’t and that was enough to surprise Morgana into not snapping at him with how he was looking at her. Soon enough, she was returning the expression and it was a few moments of measured looks between two children under ten who were smarter than others and each other gave them credit for. Apparently. Morgana didn’t even blink when Arthur opened the door for her, but to know him was to be surprised by the action. And she was very much surprised. “Thank you.” She murmured. Sparing him one last glance before walking through the door and then holding it open for him and the sword.

It might have been too early to pass judgment and Morgana was remaining quietly skeptical and uncertain of this well-behaved Arthur; nevertheless, her father’s words echoed in her mind. Words that she had dismissed in relation to Arthur. People surprised you and you never knew what a person was capable of until they were put in a situation to be capable.

“It has to be sorcery Morgana.”

His reasonable tone was what had her actually, visually, hesitating. She never, ever, EVER showed Arthur when he got the better of her. Not even that time, a few months ago, he had insulted her rather gravely and she had been filled with the need to cry whenever he was around. She hadn’t been about to confide in him about the box. Arthur wasn’t his father’s son. Even now Morgana could see it, anyone with eyes could see it. It was possibly why Uther was so unreasonable with him. It was one of Morgana’s many frustrations with Arthur since he was so determined to act like the spoiled, entitled Prince his father wanted him to be. Yes, he was a pillock on his own right but Morgana knew that Arthur, for all his foolish annoying tendencies, he could be … okay. The King could be … okay too at times but Arthur was more so. Nevertheless, while he was no Uther, he liked to pretend to be and magic was magic. It wasn’t something you joked around about or talked about. Arthur couldn’t do anything to and it wasn’t as if it was her box - nonetheless, it hadn’t seemed smart to show it to him. Less he step on it or impaled it with the sword before she figured out what it was or how those people were sending what seemed to be messages with their tiny portraits.

“And what if it is?” Morgana looked at him carefully. “There’s nothing that we can do about it even if it was. What matters is finding a way to leave here and back to Camelot before whoever brought us here finds us. Whether that person is a sorcerer or not.” Because the result would still be the same.

“Not that!” Well, maybe that, but that wasn’t what Arthur was looking at now that he was outside, nor was it what had his eyes stuck open and round. He’d never- “Morgana, just look. I don’t- If it is, what if they took us too far to return to Camelot? Just look.” He gestured wildly at the buildings and roads and horseless steel carriages. It was terrifying and wondrous and Arthur would rather go back to the room with the nice smelling lady and screaming baby than be out here much longer. None of it made sense.

None of it.

She hadn’t been looking. She had actually just glanced and saw trees before being distracted by Arthur. Making sure his huge tunic didn’t get stuck in the very heavy door. She did though. With the look on his face and his tone, Morgana looked. “I … I …” Morgana bit her bottom lip. Morgana looked down at her hand that was clutching onto her skirts and the device. “Then we -” Morgana looked back at the fear on Arthur’s face, and she made her decision. “Then we ask for help.”

“From who?” Arthur smacked the sword against the odd rock beneath their feet and glowered. “We don’t even know who took us, or if everyone knows they did.” He looked up at her. “Was there anyone in the room they kept you in?”

“Don’t do that, you might damage the blade.” Her tone was more absent-minded than chastising. “I didn’t stay enough to look.” Her expression was rather scathing for someone so young but it was rather good from practice. Then she frowned, “Was there someone in the room that they kept you?”

“A woman and a baby.” Arthur lifted the sword and tried to see if there was any sort of damage done, but it still looked sharp. He wasn’t about to touch it and find out. He did know some things about how to handle a sword. “They were both asleep.”

Morgana simply nodded, “I’m going to show you something but you have to promise to remain calm.” He had been doing a rather good work of it but she wasn’t about to say that.

Arthur looked askance at her, wary deep down in his stomach. Morgana rarely showed things to him in secret like this. He was more than a little worried about what he might be shown now. “Fine.”

Desperate times called for strange allies and it wasn’t as if they hadn’t worked together before. Certainly, Morgana would rather deal with the Lady Vivian than to be in this situation, however. Slowly, Morgana pulled out the box. “I think … I’m not certain but I think that this is a way for people to send messages. I don’t -” Morgana didn’t like not knowing; however,she didn’t. Never before had she been so out of her element. This was an entire different country of strangeness and discomfort. “It looks as if the small portraits are answering each other.” She showed Arthur as comments moved and each picture was different.

Arthur stared at it, watching as Morgana did, the comments and responses and all the other children who were looking for their parents. They managed to use it. “Where did you get it? Do you know how to work it? Do you think they’ve been taken too? Morgana, we have to help them.”