Bits and Pieces: Works in Progress

He didn’t know what to do. The princess would not be budged, and his knighthood had essentially depended on him being able to bring Beatrice, to her father. And in this foreign land he was nothing but an out of work squire with a horse. And so, after a while he was employed by the stable where he had previously been stabling his horse. They needed somebody to look after the horse and clean up after him. He was quite good at this, so he settled quickly. Sometimes he saw Beatrice around town doing errands. Looking at the town with new eyes, he realised why they’d been wary. Other knights and princesses had wandered this way before. But they liked Beatrice and the dragon well enough and came to accept that Richard also belonged after a fashion, all were outsiders. The armour that he’d spent so many energies sat in the corner of the room that he lived in.

Town gossip was quick and the news that there was another knight in town caused everyone to gawk at him. When Richard heard of the news, he realised that it was his old master. Sir Lewis picked him out of the crowd and demanded for him to have a drink with him.

As they sat down for beers at the tavern, Sir Lewis started immediately: Lewis roared at him, 

“What are you doing boy? You didn’t rescue the princess?” At that Richard shook his head, and Lewis continued.

“What was the point of knighting you if you couldn’t even rescue the princess? And now you are doing work not even a squire would do?”

Richard was taken aback with this outburst. He had been thinking a lot about the way that it had worked out in the long days of manual labour. And he asked Lewis why it had been him to take the princess?

Lewis’ round head almost exploded, and he turned red with a heady combination of alcohol and anger.

“No knight was stupid enough to take on the Green Dragon, but the King and I thought that you would be up to the challenge. I recommended it to you, and you couldn’t even do it. If you come back to the kingdom, you’ll never get work as a squire. You don’t show the appropriate gumption to listen to your king and your knight.”

Richard exploded in return. He’d listened and been deferential. This time was the regroup and consider, and almost then any chance that he felt that his feelings could be trusted were ripped away from him.

“You set me up to fail. If other knights couldn’t defeat the Green Dragon, why did you think that I would? I was a squire that had another year on my apprentice hood and sent me out with that in mind.”

Lewis slammed the rest of his drink into his mouth and walked out. Richard just sat there in disbelief and the barman who had never talked to Richard before this point looked at him and pursed his lips. The barman helpfully told Richard that it was probably a good time to leave as well. Richard was so steamed up from the encounter and the fact that he was the centre of attention that he complied. The brisk air outside on the quick walk home actually helped. And by the time that he made it home he never wanted to go back to the kingdom again. 

In some regards he had been given more information and he could see the silences in all his conversations. He also reconsidered if the princess had been used like him and if she had really been all that happy. If he was a pawn in the king's game to rescue Beatrice, then he realised she was treated like a pawn as well. If anything, she was more of a pawn, but he still felt helpless. Her actions were more understandable. Though empathy was activated, he was still worried about his future. He worked aimlessly, no plan. Watching the various people understand that he was around for longer helped him develop more substantive relationships.

Sometime later the green dragon in his human form was spotted walked around town and Richard was just sitting there. He walked to the stable and asked for Richard.

“You’re still here.” He leaned over the railing as sweat dripped off Richard’s face moving the soiled straw into a wheelbarrow.

“Yep”

“You’ve never talked to Beatrice since you’ve been here.”

“Yep.” I mean what could Richard say.

“Heard about your interaction with the other knight.”

“Yep.”

“It takes guts to stick around.”

At this point, Richard turned around and looked like he would walk out.

“I do not have anywhere to go. I have no knighthood; I don’t have a knight to vouch for me. I’m now without a home because my parents effectively sold me in a bid to keep their house after my father had a gambling debt. Beatrice was my ticket to something more. I was a pawn like she was.”

He sank into the remaining straw and just sat there in silence.

And the Green Dragon offered up a soft reply.

“Sounds like you were just as lost as Bea.” He paused and introduced himself. “My name is Landsbide, but you can call me Lan.”

In something that seemed to defy all rules of normalcy, Lan went through the door and was sitting there with Richard. Arm over shoulder and then all dams broke loose into sobbing. Richard tried to speak, to explain himself and Lan told him repeatedly that it wasn’t useful. And then they sat there in silence.

Finally Richard had sobered up and said without many sobs.

“I want to do great things and I want to change the world." A sob came out before he continued.

"But everything that I thought was right turned out to be the wrong way.”

Fresh sobs engulfed him,

“I don’t know what to do Lan”?

And with that Lan had a small smile and wrinkled his nose and reached out his hands and spoke

“How do you think people feel about dragons?”

It was the Sabbath and I knew that it was getting ready for meeting. The freshly laid out suit, complete with the lapel with my pins. It was special Sabbath today, the one where we would do the communion service, albeit a bit differently in space than on earth. Getting out of the sleeping suit was hard, and in such a small space was only achieved in the bathroom with everyone else. I had arrived late to the communal bathrooms and was greeted by a long line of women who had appeared to get a shower and change. Waiting in the line, I got more and more anxious about getting to church. Eventually I realised that nothing was going to make it faster and I watched as we inched closer to the front of the line. I thought about my mum and the worry started up again. I took a deep breath. And that seemed to be some relief from the worry. For a moment it was okay. Then my I went back to the thought that it wouldn’t be enough time to get my hair done. This was the only time that my mum made sure that it was brushed. It was thick and wavy and it always took a long time. I started breathing really heavily and I couldn’t control anything.

The line isn’t moving. My hair needs to be brushed and put up. The line isn’t moving. My hair needs to be brushed and put up and I can’t be late. I can’t be late.

The woman in front of me has a purple coloured loofah. Up ahead there is a woman with a multicoloured loofah. Some women were already in their curlers.

They had already prepped and I wasn’t prepped and it didn’t matter that the line wasn’t moving. The line isn’t moving. My hair needs to be brushed and put up. Mum isn’t going to be happy. She’s going to yell at me. Gammon doesn’t need to do their hair.

The thoughts were tumbling in a row and I couldn’t stop them. I could see Rebecca further down, at the front of the line and I was just about to see if I could get her attention but then she had spied an open stall and had taken herself off into. The thoughts continued to tumble forward. I was rocking back and forth until I noticed and I made myself stop that. Because even though I had these thoughts I had to make sure that nobody could see how much stress it was making me. In a fit of desperation I took a longer, deeper breath and I finally could stop the thoughts. And then the woman behind me tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I was okay.

“I’m okay. Just a bit frustrated that the line is moving so slowly.” “I think a lot of just were a bit lazy this morning sleeping in. You reap what you sow.”

So I was just supposed to get up far earlier to account for other women having long showers?

Trying to make this point delicately I responded.

“Its really hard to get up early when you have such a late finish to the vespers.”

“I reckon that because of laziness I think. I slept in and I’m going to be just as late you are. Maybe even later.”

And at this I almost lost my shit. This woman didn’t have a mother that insisted on doing my thick hair. Her hair was already in the shower cap and didn’t need to be washed and mine definitely did. Everything was working against me this morning. Mum had told me that when I didn’t have anything nice to say, that I shouldn’t say anything at all. And this would be seen as back talking. I was working on not back talking as a sin of youth and impertinence, and so I nodded my head and said nothing. I hoped that she would get the hint and not continue the conversation. She mercifully took the hint and some relief was had.

I could see that there were two, now three people coming out the shower. Having mentally taken the time that they had gone it, it must of been the real reason that the line was so backed up. Moving up the line was faster now because other women were more considerate and I got back to the pod, with my hair washed only ten minutes later than I thought I was going to be.

Mum was annoyed. She had to brush and it would mean that it wouldn’t get put up.

“But at least it’s washed and brushed. People wouldn’t think that I’ve raised a complete heathen. How you look reflects on the rest of the family and especially on me.”

Gammon was watching this whole exchange, having already gotten their Sabbath best on. Their hair looked like it needed to be brushed but didn’t need to be in the same way as mine. The reason that mum wanted to do my hair today because it was communion, and that happened only once a quarter. And it was special, it was when we used some of our precious resources and made tasteless bread which we at with little vials of grape juice and thought about the death of Christ.

Prompt: Your characters are in nature:

He entered the king's throne room, and he approached him. The herald announced him in a dramatic fashion, which was his cue to stagger into the room, with careful notice to show the dent in his armour. Here, he was far away from the truth of the matter, and he hoped that this wouldn’t end his adventuring career. He was fighting all the men that he had squired with for this opportunity.

“The dragon destroyed me, O King. I was unable to reason with him and he forced me out.”

The king said nothing. He waited a little longer until he added.

“I can still do it; I was almost able to defeat him. I just need another go. Your daughter, the princess, my betrothed, is still there in great distress. And I just need to go back and finish the job. She is starving and cold. You wouldn’t let your daughter be left there. I know that I can do it.” Here the knight raised his sword and held it there and it felt like invisible strings were playing.

He stooks once more at the tower, where the dragon and girl had bested him. In quiet moments along the ride, he would think about the way that the dragon and the princess had humiliated him and made him feel like he wasn’t good enough and at the first test of honour he’d failed but he also knew that he was going back, and he knew that he was ready this time. The dents were gone from the armour, pounded smooth and the scratches buffed out so that it looked almost as clean and bright as it had been except from a slight crumple. She had been correct in a way that he felt the shame rise. It has been a rapid rise from squire to Lewis to knight in his own right. And in his heart of hearts, he knew that he probably had maybe a year to go. And that maybe he hadn’t been ready for the responsibility of rescuing the princess. But then he remembered that he had to live up to expectations that had been placed upon him.

 Then he thought of his recent mentor in Lewis. He was happy to sit at home and drink and eat after many years of adventuring. He wasn’t hungry for achieving any goals, and he decided that he wouldn’t have that. Even if he did become a prince by marrying the princess, he was going to not let it destroy him and give in to a woman’s domesticity. She would bear his children and provide a safe harbour to return to at intermittent periods of his life as he would quest onwards and continue to prove to the king how valuable he was. And that knighting him wasn’t a bad idea.

. But eventually he was game to try the door that had last time been open for him. This time however there was a slight problem with his plans. The door was locked this, and a new course of action was needed. A face popped out of the window, the same window that he’d been had been ungratefully ejected from. It was the princess, and the knight gave a quick wave.

“You came back,” she shouted to the knight. And to the window she yelled presumably to the dragon that she wanted him to go down and tell the knight to leave her alone. And soon after the winged green dragon appeared and flapped his wings out of the window and landed in a large rumbling and a gust of wind as the wings flapped. The dragon then shifted back into a man.

“You’re back again. Beatrice doesn't want you here.”

 And with that, he looked at him.

“You took her away and now you are preventing her from going home.”

The dragon looked at him and tilted his head. In a soft voice he answered,

“I sheltered her when she made the decision to leave. It has become my responsibility to help her, and the door is always open for her to go and come back whenever she wants. She wants to stay here.” The emphasis on the word here.

The knight stood at the bottom of the tower of the princess that he’d been told to rescue. He wasn’t even sure why he had this overwhelming urge to rescue anything because up until this point the only things that he’d saved had been the cat in the tree for the small child that was in the castle a couple of months ago. It was all the same, a height and something to rescue. She hadn’t noticed him yet, took a deep breath to calm himself down and concentrate on something different. He looked around at the grassy knoll that the tower was built on, apart from the small town below. The peasants in the town had given him wary eyes as he walked through clanking his armour.

He considered his task before him, and the fact that he’d needed to concentrate. He’d been tasked by the princess’s father to find her and take her home. Finally, he felt confident enough to bellow up. The sound echoed up the wall, there was some movement, the window opened, and a face peered out of it, presumably the lady whom he was going to rescue.

His observations so far had yielded a door. It was unlocked. He was glad of this of course, a stray thought making him consider why it was so easy, but he brushed it away like one flick an errant stray hair. He opened the door fully onto a landing with a staircase in the back corner. There was what looked to be a coat rack and the thought that he had when he opened that door came back to him. Fame and glory overrode his concerns. Fame and glory at rescuing the King’s wayward daughter. The final steps dropped him on a landing that looked approximately like the one below. The one thing that he noticed was that the round room was sparsely furnished into an apartment of sorts.

After catching his breath, the stairs were steeper than anticipated, he noticed the princess was sitting on the other side of the room in a threadbare armchair. She stood up and watched him but didn’t move any closer.

“I’ve come to rescue you from the foul dragon and take you back in the arms of your bosom father.” Although it was old fashioned, he didn’t expect to see that the princess was furrowed in her forehead in a thinking mood.

So, he forged ahead with the rest of what intended to say. He paused and said nothing else for it was his idea that he would be able to rescue the princess, maybe there would be a quick but glorious battle with the dragon and that he would be the end of it. Even as he was thinking this, another thought popped in that he might not win.

He pulled out his sword in a dramatic flourish that would have been perfect in any story of a prince saving the princess. The man who had come up the stairs just looked at him.

But the man that had asked the question repeated the question in a way that made the knight confused and made him think that the man had not just seen the previous display and was dumb. He did notice that the voice had changed, it had gone from a normal tone to a lower tone. The man had a sword on his hip but had not made any movement to get it out. The princess was in the back, the furrow in her face had disappeared. And she looked at him closer, her eyes getting slightly wider.

“It’s Richard from my father’s kingdom,” she paused a second, “but he was a squire the last time that I saw him.”  

He cut in quickly, “It is I, madam, but I have completed my training and now I am here to save you from the foul beast that has captured you.”

“Do you just speak in fairy tales? A foul beast, a bosom father…?”

When he’d seen her at the palace, she had been serene and gorgeous. Now that he reflected, she was wearing rough peasant clothing, and she was confused and scared. The contrast to him was obvious. Even if she had run off, her place was in her palace where she would be happy.  

“I am happy here, please leave and tell my father that if he wants to sell me again, he will have to come here himself. What did he promise you Richard? Did he knight you prematurely?”

Now the knight was standing there, with his sword by his leg. Imagination had not prepared him for this outcome that he would not need the sword and instead he would have to have a conversation.

He looked at the man again, considering the way that everything had gone down that in fact the dragon didn’t live here because there was no evidence of a dragon and the man that had.  Before his very eyes, the man transformed into a dragon. And from the beast came an even deeper voice.

“What are you doing here?”