Gwenhwyfach

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 01:46:25 GMT

Picture: unicorn
Words: 216

She works over the embroidery time and time again, picking out the thick thread, weaving it in again, but it's never right, never precisely what she hopes for; nothing ever is. Embroidery she isn't good at, but it gives her something to do with her hands and that passes the time, because Mordred is away.

Every night she holds herself tightly in her own arms, and imagines him home. The child in her is getting bigger. The promise of it enchants her, the very idea, something given her by him almost by accident, and it will be so beautiful. So beautiful. But if he were with her--

Does every lady wish so? she thinks, picking at the thread again. Does every lady think every skirmish is just a bitter excuse to take her knight from her? Does every lady secretly blame the king for thinking up battles to leave her alone?

Just as like not. But things will be better when Mordred is home again, to worry, to sulk, to watch her dress in the morning, half as if he's afraid of her and half with wonder, and she knows in her heart he loves her.

And someday the embroidery will truly look like a unicorn. And someday their child will be born. Gwenhwyfach accidentally smiles.

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 07:31:33 GMT

Question: Who do you dislike?
Words: 470

We are not well-suited, we two, my husband and I. They threw us together because at first glance there are any number of similarities between us--both bastard elder half-siblings to heirs, both awkward and umarriagable. Because I was the Queen's sister, the King deemed it an honour to his nephew to marry him to me. He had a say in the matter, but he said nothing, he must have said nothing, because we were wed a little while later.

So it has been one year, one terrible year, that I have been his wife. Guenever tells me ever I have everything to fear, that he's dark, cruel, bad-tempered, that he won't ever be here, that he has lovers, that he won't speak to me but it might almost be a blessing; that I'll have to rely on the kindness of his brother Gawain to live well at all.

Thus far he only seems shy and sullen, and I am almost grown tired of waiting for the beatings to start. Heaven knows, the months before the wedding it was every hour a new story I was hearing of his evils, how he would drink, and fight with me, and grant me no allowance for clothes, and demand me every night in bed--all manner of things, everything Guenever could conceive of, I think. But in truth he hardly dared touch me in our marriage bed. I was just as glad, then, because I truly was afraid of him, but now I think it might have been different if I had known.

It is true that he has a lover, a handsome foreigner called Sagramore; and it is true that he's not often here. Sometimes I think it's part because he doesn't know how to treat me. Sometimes I think it's he who's afraid.

And all the same it is terrible to be married to him, because I'm lonely, because every woman in court looks askance at me, searching, no doubt, for hidden bruises or the favouring a little of some limb over the other. Guenever is always asking whether it is as bad as she told me it would be. We seem to me in no way alike. When he does come for supper, we eat in silence. He lies beside me unmoving at night.

Truly I swear to you I'm lonely. I might have married more willingly, but now that I am married, I would as lief love my husband.

Sometimes I think, in spite of him, in spite of all his trying, as if my hatred might somehow ease his conscience of something--yet I think I do love him. I wish he loved me, if it can't be helped; but we are not well-suited, he and I, and he knows it.

DesperatePrompts.

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 05:27:40 GMT

Word: Rose.
Words: 156

---

Her sister loves roses.

Gwenhwyfach loves them, too, the wild ones, whiter and thinner than the full blooms of the castle gardens. They twist themselves around everything possible, wind themselves up the trees and through the bushes, swallowing up forgotten headstones in the cemeteries. They have a power, a true and wild power, to overcome.

Sometimes, when she's been with her sister too long, it does her good to think of them. Guenever is a garden rose, a garden girl, a garden queen, full and beautiful, tall and fine. Her voice is as rich as their colour, especially now that she's grown older.

Gwenhwyfach is no wild rose, but sometimes it does her good to pretend--Guenever, she tells herself, must keep to the gardens, but she can cover the stone ruins of the old villages where the forest has grown up, she can spread herself out across the world. She can overcome anything she chooses.