it's a melody; it's a battle cry | childhood | for cywyllog

[cadcamlan]

Sometimes, it's just easier to play with girls.

Or, at the very least, with the particular girls he's come to know. They're strong, not silly, absolutely persons to contend with in tree-climbing and racing over rocks and arguing about the things children argue about. They smile at him. They touch his hand and his arm and his cheek and they laugh with him. They never throw rocks or words at him. He never wants to hit them. He always leaves them with a bit of a smile on his lips.

He adores them. He spends his life thankful for them. He does his best to steal away when he knows they'll be free, playing away from their nurses, making the world calm and wonderful.

Today is no exception.

The difference, today, is that he's been playing with boys all morning. He's got a cut on his lip and a bruise around his eye, is stepping only slightly more gingerly than usual as he scrambles down the rocks toward the shore. He's entirely unconscious of trying to avoid the girl closest to his own age.

He doesn't know why he dislikes the idea of Cywyllog seeing him sporting bruises. He doesn't want to think about it.

Comments

[cywyllog]

She turns her head toward him. "Mind what?"

[cadcamlan]

"That I'm just a man. Not the 'gentle' sort." If not quite a rogue. If not quite yet a knight. Staring at the sky makes it easier to worry less about her opinion.

[cywyllog]

Another face as she props herself up on one elbow to easier look at him in confusion. "What else would you be?"

[cadcamlan]

"I could be gentle." He could try, at any rate. Likely it wouldn't work. Staring at the sky remains a stubborn thing. "Or a proper brute like everyone says I am."

[cywyllog]

She ponders that for a moment or two. "I suspect most men have their moments of each."

[cadcamlan]

That got a frown as he shifted, looked finally properly over at her face. "...and that's enough?"

[cywyllog]

"I don't know." It's an honest answer. At her age, she really doesn't know all that much about men, the ones she's related to aside. "It seems there would be good reasons for both kinds of behaviour."

[cadcamlan]

It's an honest answer, but more than that, it's a reasonable answer. He nods thoughtfully as he leans back in the sand.

"I hope you stay clever."

[cywyllog]

She smiles slightly. "So do I."

[cadcamlan]

"Promise you'll guard it, then. Your mind. As jealously as you possibly can." That, really, he was coming to find, was what set some women apart from others.

[cywyllog]

"I suppose we'll have to see if my husband wants a clever wife or not." Not that she thinks she's anything particularly special in that regard. She does know, however, that she's not an idiot.

"Maybe I'll just keep it secret if he doesn't."

[cadcamlan]

"Is it very difficult, then?" He shifts slightly, lifts up onto his elbow to study her more properly. "Being a girl? Having to be a wife someday?"

[cywyllog]

Cywyllog shrugs. "I don't know anything else. That's what princesses do. We marry royal men and have royal children."

[cadcamlan]

"What makes royal men so different? You're quite like the other girls I've met." And her brother like the other boys.

[cywyllog]

Ah, that's an easy one. "Riches, power, titles. And the notion that they're more important than everyone else."

[cadcamlan]

"...and that makes them better?" He knows it does, on a cultural level. Being a bastard hasn't actually thrown him completely from society.

It just sits wrong on a visceral level.

[cywyllog]

"They make the rules, so it seems it does."

Then she leans forward a little, as though to impart a secret. "My mother, though, is a Pict. Her father was a fierce warrior who earned his position through battle and hard-won respect." Which may or may not be true, but it's the story her mother tells. and the romance of the idea clearly appeals to her.

[cadcamlan]

He can't help that the story--real or otherwise--perks his attention. His entire being is drawn to it, body curling forward and eyes sparking with actual interest. The hiraeth is strong in his gut even without a proper understanding of why.

"Why-- aren't we all like that? Doesn't it make worlds more sense?"

[cywyllog]

"I hear rumour things in the north are still much like that, though mother doesn't get word from her family often." It's nice to think that simpler ways are not completely lost, brutal as they may be.

"I think-- I think that it becomes more complicated when men become less willing to respect that in order for such ways to continue, they must eventually lose."

[cadcamlan]

"But that's how strength-- works."

His eye was blackened and his lip bloodied because he hadn't been able to win properly. Everyone loses something in combat. There's no help for it.

"We ought to be ruled by the strong and deserving. And we ought to be constantly challenging that. When a king isn't fit, why shouldn't we replace him with one who is?"

[cywyllog]

She studies him for a moment. Not his lip or the bruising, but his eyes, the tensing of his jaw. "Would you be so willing to admit defeat? To simply give up what you had worked so hard to obtain simply because others feel you no longer deserve them?"

[cadcamlan]

"We've all got-- a destiny, haven't we? A fate. A purpose. A reason we're here and living the life we've had laid for us."

He's still young. He's still got something childish and roughly adolescent in his voice and his being. But this much he knows. This much makes him look old--and something like his father, if only in the eyes.

"When it is my time to fall, I hope I have the good grace to fall knowing I've served that purpose."

It will be different, perhaps, when he finds what his own fate is. Hopefully, some of the strength of conviction he feels now will help him along in being prepared to lay down his life.

[cywyllog]

"Some say we do. Others say our lives are our own."

She reaches out, gingerly touching the skin around his eye. "But you would rather fall than yield, aye?"

[cadcamlan]

"I should hate nothing more than to yield, I think." And doesn't now, barely wincing from her touch.

[cywyllog]

She stops, drawing her hand back. "What makes you think most men are any different?"