a tiny kingdom at the bottom of the trees

[scinlae]

ᴡʜᴏ: Morgana & open!?
ᴡʜᴀᴛ: Because clearly after having your mind messed with for a week you go and take your frustrates out on a helpless wall. With magic.
ᴡʜᴇɴ: After the plot!
ᴡʜᴇʀᴇ: In a less crowded part of the city.




[ It thrums in her fingers, through her palms, and up her arms. Familiar friend. Her ears barely registers the words that leave her mouth, but her eyes see the wall crack loudly. Dust stirs around hem of her dress.

The memories are too raw, too real, she claws at them uselessly. Trying to get them out of her head.

Crack.

Was this a punishment? Some sort of cruel joke? To remind her of how things had been. Of how she used to be.

(she is dead and gone)

(please stop bringing her back)

Flames surge through the crack, splitting it wider with a deafening sound. It echoes in her head, in the air around her. She laughs and the flames roar only to die, withering as they try to escape the crack. As if the air itself smothered them until they turned to embers.

This fixes nothing but ease the pressure in her chest. ]

Comments

[impetuous]

[ Uncaring of who might see, he pulls her toward him and rests his cheek atop her head. ]

Give it time. Time can do a lot, especially in a place like this. Could you have imagined us when we met?

[ He kisses her hair. ]

I know you're true. He will too.

[scinlae]

[ He's so hopeful. Or perhaps he is blind. He has not known Arthur as long as she has, he has not been through this song and dance before. (but this time it is different, this time it is more violent) Morgana wants to laugh at him, touch his cheek and tell him of their realty.

It leaves her with the impossible choice of crushing what little hope he has or not. ]

I am not sure you would think that if you knew what he said about you.

[impetuous]

[ Or offering comfort he knows to be empty for lack of any other kind.

At her words, he pulls back. He doesn't yet let go of her shoulders, but he keeps her at arm's length. ]

You were speaking of me?

[scinlae]

The subject of you did come up.

[ It was, in part, why she asked to speak to Arthur in the first place. Even if he hadn't been apart of the reason, he would have come up eventually. It was inevitable. ]

[impetuous]

What did you say?

[scinlae]

[ Where to start? How to start? The conversation she had within him still feels like a festering wound; pulsing with anger, pain, and sadness. ]

You need to understand that Arthur is a fool, he is almost as bad as Uther in matters like this. He sees enemies when there are none. He hears lies when truth is spoken to him. [ In her case it is understandable, she spent so long spinning lies into her words. So long fooling him into thinking she was still the same woman that he lost.

She is still in there, the Lady Morgana, somewhere underneath the surface still clinging to life. ] This is not the first time I have walked down this road with him.

I told him what he did was unreasonable. I told him the truth, that your loyalties remained with him and that never did you give information on him to me. [ A beat. ] Of course, he didn't believe me.

[impetuous]

It's not the first time you've tried speaking to him after betraying him?

[ The question is out before he can stop it. He cannot take it back. It hangs in the air between them, pulsing with unvoiced recriminations. ]

[scinlae]

Yes. [ No point in hiding it, she thinks, in comparison that little event is nothing to the other things she has done. ] It was some years ago, before you come to Camelot. There was a crystal of great power, I was asked by a renegade called Alvaar and the druid boy Mordred who I had once helped escape Uther and who helped me in return when I went to the druids, to take it.

And I did. I stole into Camelot's vaults and took the crystal for them. [ For Mordred, she tells herself. It angers her now to think of Alvaar, knowing how well he played her. Skills he in turn taught her. ]