milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Owen Davies has prayer meeting tonight, so it is a good night for Bran to come to Milliways. Bran sits on his bed, harp on his lap, and plays the high strange song that has always opened the Milliways door for him. When he reaches the bar, Bran finds a table where he can sit and observe the crowd, his back to the wall.

A little while later, Bran is surprised to hear the same high music beginning to play near the front door. Owen, still dressed for chapel in his second-best suit, his hair neatly combed back, walks into the bar.

[One mun, two characters, one entry post; address either or both.]

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There's an empty table one over, and as Adam goes to sit there (cider in hand), he nods lightly at the stranger.

Bran nods back, positioning his harp on his lap. "Bran Davies."

"Adam Young."

A sip, and he pauses by the table, nodding at the harp.

"You always bring an instrument with you?"

"Usually." Bran does not elaborate. Adam is a stranger, and Milliways is more dangerous than usual this week. "And I have forgotten the full introduction. I am from Clwyd Farm in Wales, in the year nineteen-seventy-eight."

Strangers can be dangerous any week, Bran, but he smiles nonetheless.

"Wales? Can't say as I've heard of Clwyd Farm, but I was there for Uni."

Bran grins. "Really? Usually it is the other way, people go to England for uni and never come back. Where did you go?"

"Cardiff. Didn't finish up, but I've some friends still there. Though you're from a bit before my time by twenty some years."

"Cardiff! That is where I am going. Welsh National College of Medicine, actually."

"What're the chances of that?"

Adam looks quite honestly floored.

"D'you mind?"

He points at the empty seat across from Bran.

"Not at all," Bran smiles. "You can tell me about it. I have not been to Cardiff since I was a little boy."

He flushes a little, the somewhat embarrassed look of someone who spent the majority of his time at uni not studying.

"S'nothing like where I grew up. All the buildings, and the castle. I mean, s'not like London, but compared to Tadfield, it was great."

"I am not used to big cities either. Although there is a ruined castle in the hills, not far off. Is Tadfield a small town?"

"Small enough. Not a farming village or anything like that. But just about the best place for a boy to grow up."

And if Adam had something to do with that? Well, it's not something Bran needs to know right at the moment, after all.

"Kind of place where you know everybody."

"Lovely, it sounds." Bran tilts his head, curious. "Did you go back, after uni?"

A light shrug, there, and a distracted smile.

"A handful of times, I guess. Did a bit of a better job making this my home, for a while."

Bran decides not to ask further questions about Tadfield. "Not a bad place for a home, this one."

Wise boy, that Bran. Though I'd bet he and Adam could have some interesting conversations about fathers.

"It's quite a good one, I've found. And most of my friends come here, as well as some of my family."

His face says that this second one is, perhaps, not always for the best.

"I've not been around quite as often lately, but I don't remember seeing you before."

Bran is having quite enough conversations about fathers tonight.

"My brother lives here, and my mother. I have been visiting for a year and a half, now.

"That must be nice. Have they been here that long, as well? I've been coming almost two years now, but, as I said, not nearly so often lately."

"It was a surprise, at first, but yes, it is nice." Bran leans back in his chair. "Mordred was here when I came the first time. I did not know who he was, then... no, that is not right. I knew who he was but I did not know who I was in relation to him. Mother came a year ago May."

"In relation to him? So, what, he's your great great great great grandfather or something?"

Bran laughs. "Half-brother, actually. In a way. They play games with Time in my universe."

. . . right. Adam raises an eyebrow.

"How do you mean, games?"

"It is all very complicated, and there were reasons for it that I am not going to go into. But the twentieth century is my home, now, and I am happy there."

Bran raises an eyebrow, although the motion of white hair against white skin is hard to see.

"You knew he was of a different century than I am. Have you met Mordred?"

"I know him fairly well, and his mother, too."

Just thinking about grown Mordred and the baby Mordred, here at the bar, makes his head hurt.

"We're... friends. Of a sort."

Of the type that sometimes like to try and beat each other to death.

Mary starts to head in Bran's direction when she sees him - but she hesitates halfway when she sees the older man with him.

Bran waves. "Mary! It is all right. Da, this is Mary Lennox. Very brave, she is. Mary, this is my da, Owen Davies."

"Very pleased to meet you." Owen attempts a kind smile, but all the lines on his face go nowhere.

Mary flushes a little at the 'very brave', and marches the rest of the way over to Bran and Owen.

"You are Bran's father?" she repeats; eyeing Owen with a good deal of curiosity, now.

Mary does not know very many fathers.

"You do not look much like Bran. He is all white."

Owen shifts awkwardly in his seat.

When Bran answers, he looks at Owen rather than at Mary. "He is my da, who raised me in love and in goodness since I was a baby."

Mary looks Wise.

"I do not know much about fathers," she informs Bran and Owen, "but I have talked to Mr. Tam several times. He is River and Simon's father. So I know a little more than I did."

Mary is only a child, and one who may not ever have had a father. Owen says gently, "A father does not have to look like his son. But he should raise his child to be a good person, to do what is right, to live in a good way."

"No," Mary agrees, sagely, "but fathers often think their sons are going to look like them. That is why my uncle thought Colin was going to be a hunchback - because he is a hunchback himself."

...

Owen, at a loss for words for a moment, eventually manages, "I have never expected that."

Bran laughs. "I do not look like anyone, really. Funny, that."

"Well, of course you did not," Mary says, patiently, to Owen. "You are not a hunchback."

She considers Bran carefully.

"You look," she decides, eventually, "a little like a picture in a book I saw once - but I cannot remember which. Anyways I have read lots of books with lots of pictures in them, so most people look like one of them."

Bran laughs. "If you find it, bring it here to show me."

Even Owen almost smiles.

"I would," Mary says, "only it is still in India - I could not bring my books with me. I only can read Colin's books now, and the ones I get from here."

"I look like a book in India, then? Funny, I do not think anyone in my family has ever come from there."

Owen answers, "You should not make jokes about these things," but his voice is missing some of the force it used to have.

Mary is very patient.

"All my books are from England. They came with my governesses. Only the governesses left, and the books stayed."

A little scornfully: "The natives do not write books."

"Then you might find the same books in England," Bran points out.

"There are many many books in the world," Mary says, wisely.

"It is not likely that there would be the same books in my uncle's house as in my parent's house. Anyways, Colin never had a governess. He was too ill."

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