Sitting by the apple tree with Gareth

You like to think yourself as nimble as a squirrel. Though unlike the furry critters, who climb by dint of their claws, sharp and smart, you must make strategic use of branches and hollows. You know well by now how to do it, quickly and safely – the latter of which Morgana and Accolon put great emphasis on, though you don’t entirely get their concern – know how to test the sturdiness of boughs, how to swing your weight around.

So when you see the apples, hanging red and ripe and higher than either yours or Gareth’s arms can reach, you waste no time clambering up. You straddle a branch – strong and sturdy, a perfect perch – and pluck an apple, which yields at the gentlest of tugs. Then, firmly hooking the back of your knees round the bough, you let yourself drape over the edge like a cloth hung out to dry and gracefully hand the bounty over to your brother, who offers back a thankful, upside-down smile. This is the best way to go about it; last time you tried tossing the apple and it caught him squarely in the chest, leaving him wheezing for a good few moments. You let yourself hang there a bit longer, observing this topsy-turvy world, where the sky is green and grassy and the ground is dappled-white blue and ethereal. What else could be changed, could be turned on its head in this inverted world? And perhaps still wondering that as you swing back in place on your branch, you ask:

“Don’t you want to join me up, Gareth?” You reach out for a second apple, just as easily surrendered, for yourself to hungrily sink your teeth into. “It’s fun! I have an amazing view, too!” you add, talking round the crunchy, sweet bites. “I think this branch is sturdy enough for the both of us.”

He doesn’t look very confident at your I think, so you say: “Or there’s this one next to me.” You extend a hand to pat said bough as if it were a well-trained dog.

Still Gareth shakes his head. “No thanks. I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Father says I shouldn’t climb trees.”

“Yeah, but Lot doesn’t know what fun is,” you say. You bet the Duke has never climbed a tree, unlike Accolon, who climbed almost all the trees around the castle ground and taught you how to do it, too.

Gareth smiles, a wry little smile. “No, he doesn’t. I know what fun is, but I also know myself, and my body and muscles and how utterly pathetic they are. So I don’t trust myself to try the same stunts you do. I rather prefer feeling the ground beneath my firmly planted soles than underneath my broken bones.”

You consider his words as you lean against the trunk. Gareth’s always so concerned over bruising skin, broken bones and bleeding wounds; as a squire, you’ve grown used to the possibility of it all. And even before that, back on Avalon, you’d gamely enact your various derring-dos – under Morgana’s watchful eye – with your peers. It’s not that Gareth doesn’t love games. He has plenty of them, the sort that come in wooden boxes, with painted boards and maps and little booklets, with carved pawns and detailed figurines, with all kinds of rules neatly written down to learn and abide to. He could spend an entire day playing those with you, and so could you, and so you have, on those lucky days when neither of you had any other duties.

Yet Gareth is so reluctant to indulge half of your own ideas of games!

“That’s alright,” you finally say, beaming down at him. “I can get you all the apples you want, anyway.”

You eat in silence and so eat quickly. Once done, you fling your apple core into the grass, stretch your back then slink down to a lower bough, closer to Gareth, who’s leant against the trunk. You lay face-down on the branch, cheek pillowed by the rough, scratchy bark, limbs sprawling loosely over the edge. You’re lounging like you’ve seen some dragons do – as big cats do in pictograms of places far away. Cats much bigger than those who roam the castle and city streets, bigger even than the largest dogs you’ve seen, who fend the sheep from wolves. Big cats with great jaws that could rip out your throat, with baleful claws that could eviscerate in one awful, brutal sweep. And yet you could almost forget it, seeing those sketches of them with their furry, sleepy faces scrunched up against the bark, with their perpetual feline smiles, their grand, round paws and tails draping lazily over the edge. You’d love to see those big cats – those predators, so dangerously adorable – in person, at least once.

You share your thoughts with Gareth, who’s still munching on his apple, and dangle your feet near his face so that he has to playfully swat them away. The thread of conversation easily unspools from there, widening to include other strange and fascinating creatures you’ve read only from books, to then move on to the places they inhabit, with climates and landscapes unlike anything you’ve seen yourself: the deserts of endless dunes, stretching as much as the eye can see, the jungles where leaves grow as big as you are, the barren, bleak, hoar-frost covered lands in the north. Gareth passionately talks of various stories he’s read from authors all over the world, describing their homelands in vivid, fond detail – and veers only a little bit into a tangent about translations and what is lost, what is gained, what is changed – and you listen intently, sprawled like a big cat, piping in with awed ‘oohs’ or comments of your own whenever it’s a story you’re familiar with.

“You like reading about adventures,” you remark, following a brief lull in the conversation.

“Among other things, yes.”

“But you’re always so reluctant about doing anything remotely similar yourself! You don’t want to go too deep in the forest, or climb trees, or go dragon-riding with me.”

Gareth tilts back his head to angle a wry smile up at you. “I did relent to the last one, didn’t I? Quite enough times, actually.”

“Yeah, but you never want to do any of the fun stuff, like loops, or flying upside down, or even going too speedy.”

He chuckles. “Well, I think it’s for the best – I would have most likely puked on both you and [dragon_name], otherwise.”

You scrunch up your nose. Gareth goes on, more contemplatively now: “I like reading about those kind of stories sometimes especially because I’ll never be like those protagonists. It’s fun on page, you know? Well, you’ll probably argue otherwise.” At your vehement nodding, he laughs. “But for me, it is more fun on page. I have to make my way on an entirely different battlefield than you, Mordred.”

Your brow furrows. Your brother has never had to pick up an actual sword, or run laps around the grounds (that’s why he gets so short-breathed after a couple flights of stairs). “And what’s that?”

Paper-dry, he says: “Court politics.”

Court politics. It’s something Morgana talks about, too, though she does so in varying different ways and tones. She raises the topic when she speaks of the retribution your family deserves, when she curses Merlin’s machinations that led to your ruin; she also decries them when it comes to long hours spent in council rooms discussing policies and administrative issues which sound, to you, frankly boring.

Mind made up, you swing off your branch down onto the grass. “Enough sitting around! Let’s go play something fun.” You give Gareth a grin. “You don’t want real adventures, but what about some pretend action?”

Gareth dusts himself off and matches your expression. “Let’s.”