bitchprince | Y Stabal, Llanuwchllyn, United Kingdom, Saturday

Entry tags:

Y Stabal, Llanuwchllyn, United Kingdom, Saturday

They'd gotten in an hour or so before sundown last night, and Arthur had spent rather a lot of time hanging out in front of windows, staring at the countryside. He couldn't help it-- being here both helped and hindered his homesickness.

It was a good thing they'd only scheduled a week, or he might have chosen to stay rather than return to Fandom. If they couldn't get home after graduation...

Anyway. It was a new day now, and there were various Plans for both the inside and the outside of the house he'd rented. Such was life.

[[ await the ocd! ]]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's a lovely old cottage with six bedrooms and all the food you'll need; entertain yourselves in or outside your rooms.

Later on into the evening, the boys might have excused themselves.

Not at all for activities. Of course.

Nope.

[[ linked post for the boy, s'il vous plait ]]

Okay so there was that kitchen? And it was a crying, possibly illegal shame not to use it. So, sometime after lunch, Francine may have, er. Stole the car. For the ten minute walk to the grocery shop, yes.

Since no one arrested her on the way there or back (and no cats, birds, or sheep were harmed in the making of this trip) she felt the ingredients she'd returned with were well worth the risk of criminal prosecution. Or, you know, Arthur yelling at her.

Which was why, a few hours later, there was now homemade bread in the oven.

"...What am I smelling?"

It was a sensible question, considering that Arthur had only just wandered back into the house after a brisk walk.

Of two hours.

Big brothers and little sisters had an answer for that question that Francine, while utterly familiar with it, was not going to give.

"Bread? It's not burning, is it?" She jumped up from her comfy chair to go sniff the kitchen doorway. "No, thank God." Burning stuff after a conversation about Other People's cooking would be totally humiliating. "But it's probably done."

"You made bread?"

Yes, Arthur, she made bread.

"Excellent. I'm starving."

Just don't eat everything in the house, Arthur.

Francine grabbed oven mitts to pull out the pan, and dumped it onto a cutting board. "You might want to wait until it won't burn your lips off."

Arthur waved a hand in her general direction. "What else have we got for food?"

And could she bring it to him? Now?

"Mmm." She checked in the fridge like she didn't already know. "Cheese? Grapes? Sliced chicken?" They weren't really questions so much as a list of what she was already piling on a plate, yes.

"Sounds good," he said, pulling up a chair. He leaned back, mainly to let a few joints pop. As it were. "Have you been outside at all?" You know. Beyond the shopping.

Francine being herself and also not privy to his narration, was going to answer in the obvious way. "I went go to the store to get bread dough..." There was homemade and there was homemade.

"Yes, you went shopping," Arthur said, with a wave of his hand that implied carry on, carry on.

He was trying that whole thing where you asked people what they did with their day, and... such.

"And then I...made bread?" Francine carried the plate over. "And stayed around to make sure the house didn't burn down. It's kind of a basic cooking rule."

"Shame," he decided. "Not about the house not burning down, mind, but you should really see the countryside."

He was in fact planning on dragging Katchoo out into it again tomorrow. Kicking and screaming, if need be.

"Tomorrow," said she, ~~and okay, maybe she could read his narrative after all taking a seat herself. "Or maybe after supper if it's light enough still."~~

"I think Sir Ector's estate is only a short walk away from here," he mused. "Or at least where it used to be."

That name rang a bell in Francine's mostly-Disney level of Arthurian legend, but it didn't match up with what she actually knew about Arthur. "That's the knight who most of the stories say raised you."

"He's a close ally of my father's," Arthur explained, leaning forward to take a poke through that plate. "We used to come here during summer when I was younger."

"With Morgana?" she asked, reaching for some cheese herself and trying to imagine the girl with the gorgeous dresses and impeccable ~~breasts~~ manners ~~breasts~~ playing around in the fields.

"Once or twice," he said, amicably, "We mostly went before Father took her in."

If Francine was really curious, Arthur had several 'that time Morgana and I mudwrestled' stories to distort some of her images of Morgana.

Perhaps not in a direction he'd thank them for going, though.

"It's a little hard to picture you taking summer vacations with your dad, somehow. Was he different when you were little?" She wasn't trying to poke sore spots; if he'd asked her the same question back, she'd have to say yes.

Arthur shrugged one shoulder. "It wasn't a vacation," he pointed out. "Sir Ector is a valuable ally, and he wanted to ensure that I met and trained with Cei, who would one day serve under me. It is important to have a bond with one's knights and a keen understanding of politics..."

"...So that would be a no, then." Between smacking Uther and hugging Arthur, one wasn't possible and the other would just get her stared at, so instead Francine just sighed and reached for a grape.

He took a slice of chicken and made quick work of it. "It wasn't too bad, being here," Arthur shared, oblivious to any undertones of the smacking or hugging variety. "Cei, for one, was complete rubbish at the sword when he was younger."

"Which was fun because...?"

Because it meant he had someone to wipe the floor with, Francine.

"Because I beat him," Arthur said, in that tone of voice that went did you really just not get that? That's adorable.

It was a gift. One of her less useful ones. "...Of course." By which she meant both 'of course you did' and 'of course that's your idea of a good time.' "We used to spend summers at my grandparents' place in Tennessee. It wasn't so different from here. More fields and less trees, though."

"What did you do out there?" he asked, taking the moment to steal more chicken off that plate.

"I don't know. Climbed trees. Fished." Sort of. "Went swimming in the pond." Sort of. "After I made sure there were no fish around."

"Sounds... picturesque."

He sounded very enthused. Yes.

Francine shrugged. "It was quiet. Slow. It wasn't the city. I liked it." She grinned a bit. "Also my brother's room was at the other end of the house so I didn't have to throw shoes at the wall to get him to turn down his music." Or at his head.

"Have you ever gone back there?"

It was better than voicing his opinion about how that all of that sounded to him.

"Not in a while. Not since my grandma's been gone." Francine toyed with another grape. "My mom's moving back there, though. After she and Dad... when they get paperwork taken care of, or whatever"

"Right," Arthur said, a bit uselessly, "The whole divorce... thing."

"Mmn," said Francine, no more usefully. What was there to say about it that mattered now? "You don't have that, do you. In your time. People just... what, stay together forever, even if they hate each other?"

Arthur shrugged. "That's the idea," he said.

Although, you know, there were a whole bunch of ways to get out of it.

Ways that didn't involve poisoning your spouse or having them executed? Oh, convents. Right.

"That's the idea here too. Well, not the hating each other. You know what I mean." It's a grape, not your father's head, Francine. Eat it.

"You can't just cut it off like that, anyway," said Arthur, who was trying to avoid letting this go towards anything he'd have to worry about in the future.

~~Sure you can cut it off. Just ask Peter Abelard. Ahem. We now return you to your non-snarky third person narration.~~

"It might be..." Better if you could, Francine was going to say, but yeah. The weather was good, the place was beautiful the house smelled like bread, and enough of that. "Whatever. I guess it'll be nice to see the place again, but it's not home."

Llanuwchllyn itself is within walking distance, and Bala Lake isn't too far away. There's plenty of places to go.

Into the morning, Arthur shut the door of the cottage behind him and took a deep (deep) breath of air.

He could... really go for a walk right now.

Freedoooom.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Y Stabal, Llanuwchllyn, United Kingdom, Saturday

The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

Re: The House

The Outside

Re: The Outside

OOC