chevalier mal fet

what the hell does cool mean?

I didn't want it

“I don’t love her.” He said. His glare fixed on the flower in his hand. Squeezing it’s stem and letting the thorns bite. He doesn’t love her. He loves her. Not her. He presses his thumb into one rather intentionally, deeply, pricking the flesh pad. It feels good to bleed. It was a legitimate medical practice to balance the humors after all. Just as the earth was flat. God above. With a giant dragon below. “It wasn’t.” He starts. He can’t tell the story exactly how he did to the queen. And even then she didn’t seem to believe it. It was dumb. It made him distraught. Was it his fault? Or was it the girl’s? Was it both of them? He ought to have known better. He should have refused the butler’s wine. Was it the butler’s fault? Over and over it went on in his head who’s fault it was. It wasn’t thought of in the same way the heinous acts of violence in war were carried out by men. The things he’s killed men for. That was that. This was not that. It was kinda that. He was going to kill her for that. He blinks. He had been staring now silently for nearly fifteen minutes. Wide-eyed. As one looks while deep in the trenches of memory. The thickness of the air. The darkness. The smell. Her scent. Disgusting scent. He could taste it. He’s glaring again. Snarling a little even. Little wrinkles in his tiny, scarred muzzle with the long, wet, black nose. Dripping with the memory of a scent. Struggling to breathe though that thick, humid air. He could feel it. Fur sticky with that wretched scent. Her hands… on…

“Huh?” Said the king. He had been doing his own sort of silent retreat into his mind. His simple mind. Perhaps even simpler so than the man beside him who struggled to explain how he was raped by a woman. It wasn’t always brute violence. It wasn’t always men. A thing he pushed to the back of his mind will make its way to the surface again. Swimming. Just like a fish. Up and down and hiding and stalking. Then to the surface to bite. He looked his friend over, looking more heinous than usual and the blood dripping from his hands, staining the petals he plucked at. “Ah-“ he looks around frantically as if for a cloth or something helpful. He’s got nothing. He places his hands atop them instead as if touching them would stop the bleeding. It just stained his gloves. His kingly white gloves. 

Dark, mournful eyes make contact with ones soft and innocent and full of love. It breaks his heart. He drops the flower and takes his friend’s gloved hands in return. His best friend. The king. His blood ought to be on his hands instead. That’s what he was doing. Driving a deceitful blade into his heart. Here another would come. He kisses it. Holding it much more gently than the mangled flower on the ground now. Its petals ripped away. Taken from it. “It wasn’t a miracle.” He finally says. “That child… m—my…” he feels parched trying to say it. “My chi-child.” He finally says like getting a bad taste out of his mouth. “I didn’t want it… and I don’t want to marry her. I don’t love her… She…” He doesn’t want to speak ill of a woman in front of his king, either. He has rescued plenty of maidens and he was not one for disrespecting even the most fowl of witches. He without sin cast the first stone…. He looks away and forgets he’s holding onto the king's hands and begins fiddling with his fingers like the petals of the flower. Not ripping them away. Just gently pinching at the bloodstained fabric of the gloves. Squeezing his thumbs. Nervous picking. He’s got his eyes fixed on it. The flower.

“Oh…” he doesn’t take his hands away. He forgets they were being held. He smoothes his thumbs over bare black fur. Oh yeah. He looks over his friend’s bloody thumb. “Well…” He doesn’t know what to say. He never thought much of having children of his own. People talked about heirs. He would need an heir. He’s an heir. He would be pressed on it occasionally but really it made him irritable. Thankfully his wife never pressed on it. She seemed uninterested too. Unconventional perhaps. A lot of this is. 

“She took it from me.” He squeezed the hands in his now. Burying his head against them and shaking it as the short fur bristles. He feels he could be sick any second. His claws dig in, biting like the thorns on that flower. Through the soft knitted fabric. Through fur. Into flesh. His blood on his hands. Here comes that blade to run it through. A lie. He had to think very carefully about how to word this as to not include the part about him thinking he was going to see the queen. He wretches. “I didn’t want to do it… I—ah…” He also didn’t want to name anyone in the story. For the king had high authority. Say he decide to have them all killed? The queen said she’d kill that girl when she got the truthful version. He breathes in deep and stands up straight as if programmed and suddenly no longer on the verge of tears or the verge of insanity in his voice. Just stern seriousness. Point blank. Staring forward with that stern, dark, slanted look. Eyes narrow and nose turned slightly upward. In a sort of air of highness. Righteousness. “I drank too much… I was unwise and belligerent. She is not a terrible girl. I just do not love her. I can’t. I can not love another.” He bows his head. Two deep final plunges into his chest. Blood spurting from his still beating heart. “I have already devoted myself…” He takes both the king’s hands in his so the knuckles were facing towards him and his thumb lied over his fingers. A kiss. “To god.” Another kiss. “And to you.”

He watches it all. He’s got an innocent mind but he understands enough at what his dear friend was getting at and he lowers his eyes. That thing would come swimming to the surface now. The woman who stood before him and something felt strange. Like a dream. He never thought about it much. He would see her sometimes in nightmares. Maybe that’s all she is. He places his hands upon his friend’s in a friendlier way. None of this chivalric knuckle kissing. He pats him on the top of his head. “Come on now.” Blushing. They’re just guys. “Then there is no reason to marry her if you don’t love her?”

The queen had joined them now in the garden. She was looking for her lover.

“No. There is not.” Said her beloved. Still looking at their king. He was dead. Bleeding out. 

'She turned the cradle towards him, and moved back so that he could see. “My son.”

They stood looking down at the fresh thing, helpless and only half alive. They were strong, as the poet sings, and it was weak —one day they would be weak, and it strong.

"Galahad," said Elaine, and she leaned over the wrappings, making the foolish gestures and meaningless sounds which mothers delight to use when their babies are beginning to pay attention.

Galahad clenched his fist and hit himself in the eye with it, an achievement which seemed to give pleasure to the women. Lancelot watched them in amazement. "My son," he thought, “It is a part of me, yet it is fair. It does not seem to be ugly. How can you tell with babies?" He held out his right finger to Galahad, putting it inside the fat palm of his hand, which clutched it. The hand looked as if it had been fitted to the arm by a cunning doll maker. There was a deep crease round the wrist.

"Oh, Lancelot!" cried Elaine.

She tried to throw herself into his arms, but he pushed her off.

He looked at Brisen over her shoulder with fear and exasperation.

He made a wild, senseless sound—and rushed out of the room.

Elaine, unsupported, sank down beside the bed and began to sob more than ever. Brisen, standing rigid, as she had stood to bear Sir Lancelot's glare, looked at the closed door with an inscrutable expression.'

from the once and future king T.H. white