milliways_bar | (no subject)

"...you want the book? But you're a fox," Steph points out, with a curious glance. "Well, I guess this is Milliways."

She puts it down on the floor, closed, and then watches with interest.

The little fox yips, and then leans over to read it (and if he puts his paw on the cover, so be it). It takes a while for him to read, but then he growls. Picking the book up in his jaws, the fox starts to march over to the fireplace.

With Intent, one might say. Also with a Stiff Tail and Raised Hackles.

Steph eyes him.

"...uh, that book's Bar's," she calls after the fox. Apparently it can read, so it can understand spoken language, right?

The fox pauses, one paw in the air, as he turns his head around to look back at her with golden eyes.

Apparently so. She returns the look, slightly censorious.

"I don't think she'd like it if you burned it. It's from the library."

The little grey fox's ears go flat and he puts the book down.

"Good foxy."

Steph props her chin on her knee and stares at it.

"Weird foxy, but good. Why did you want to burn that?"

"Because Malory's a wanker who can't even get my parentage right?" Mordred suggests from where he is now sitting, cross-legged, watching her with the same golden eyes as the fox.

It's possibly a measure of how long Steph's lived at Milliways that this only gets a couple of surprised blinks and a snorted, half-laughing 'should've known.'

"I've only got a few pages in," she says, curiously. "What'd he get wrong?"

"Arthur fucked Morgan, not Anna-Morguese. He got the sisters mixed up." He says flatly, eyeing the book with distaste.

"Also, you know, the whole making me a sneaking, backstabbing coward wasn't very nice either."

"What, you mean you aren't?"

She's teasing.

"Who is this Malory dude, anyway? Like, did he know you guys, or what?"

Mordred snorts, pulling his lighter out and lighting a cigarette.

"Hardly. He's an Englishman, writing in the...1400s? Something like that, lose track of time. He nicked his ideas from the French. Writing a bit less then a thousand years after everything went south."

"So ... if someone took this book as a source on history, he'd pretty much be screwed." Steph looks slightly gleeful. "And totally wrong."

"Pretty much. But, you know, that's what you get with the Arthurian legends. No facts."

"Excluding the fact that we died, of course."

Steph tilts her head. "How come? Did you guys just not leave notes or something?"

"Most of us can - couldn't - read and write. I can, just, and that's rare. Also, there have been...three successful invasions since then, and soldiers like to loot and burn. So, they get dear old Dad's name right, mine, and some of the other key players and the rest if legend."

"Oh, right, I getcha."

Curious eyeing.

"Dear old Dad?"

""And whan sir Mordred felte that he had hys dethys wounde he threste himselff with the myght that he had upp to the burre of kyng Arthurs speare, and ryght so he smote hys fadir, kynge Arthure..." Mordred quotes, lazily.

"I'm Arthur's bastard, by his half sister, Morgan le Fey."

"Oooh. That makes sense now."

Also sounds like a slightly less-than-pleasant death. Just a little.

"So when I get up to that bit in the book I'll know it's wrong."

Yeah, drowning to death in your own blood because your father had shoved a spear through your chest is slightly less-than-pleasant.

Slightly.

"The whole thing's a piece of crap. And, why are you reading it?"

Didn't the narration say not to ask that? Man, nobody listens to the narration any more. Poor emo narration.

"Just am," Steph says, a little shiftily. "Wanted to learn about history."

"So, you haven't run into my not'sons at all?"

"Your not'sons?" She tilts her head. "Melou and his twin are yours? Or, uh, not'yours?"

Confusing terminology whut.

"Could have been mine, if I married their mother and didn't get myself killed at nineteen."

"So we're talking parallel universes here, right?"

That's something she understands.