Thursday, February 10, 1977

[theravenboy]

Bran comes home, carrying his knapsack and a fresh box of biscuits. Lluchddu sniffs curiously at him, and then nuzzles Bran's leg in a kind of doggish relief as Bran fills the kettle and sets it on the stove.

Bran lays the biscuits neatly on a plate, brews a pot of tea, and sits down at the kitchen table, scratching behind Lluchddu's ears as he waits.

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[owendavies.livejournal.com]

Owen opens the low door and walks in. There is more grey in his hair than there was last week, and a new line over his eyebrows.

"Bran." Owen's voice is its usual earnest, precise baritone, but something in Owen's attitude conveys recognition, relief and an indefinable fear.

[theravenboy]

"Prynhawn da. There is tea in the pot." Bran is matter-of-fact.

His hands shake when he pours.

[owendavies.livejournal.com]

"Diolch." Owen seats himself and accepts a cup, sipping slowly. He takes a biscuit, too, but does not eat it.

[theravenboy]

Bran gulps from his own cup and sets it down. He reaches down and holds Lluchddu's neck, for courage, and then he sits up again, looking directly at Owen.

"Mae'n flin 'da fi. I'm sorry. What I said the other day, it was beyond anything you could forgive."

[owendavies.livejournal.com]

Owen, caught while lifting his teacup, sets it down suddenly, spilling a little on the table.

"Don't be sorry, boy." Owen's voice is rough and scratchy now. "It was true. Too much of it was true."

[theravenboy]

"It was not true."

Bran's eyes blaze with a merely human anger, directed not towards Owen but towards someone or something far away.

"It was a dream, sent by the Mari Llwyd, the dream king gone mad."

[owendavies.livejournal.com]

Owen stares emptily into the past. "Dream or no dream, it is true that I could not keep her safe enough, your mother.

I have not protected you either, Bran. Not nearly well enough."

[theravenboy]

Bran stands and paces through the kitchen, as Lluchddu lifts his head and growls quietly.

"Diawl. Will you stop blaming yourself? It is not your fault I am foolish enough to go angering mad beings of Wild Magic.

It is not your fault that I forgot everything that mattered."

[owendavies.livejournal.com]

Owen stands, too, and watches Bran walk back and forth. Quietly, he asks, "Mad beings of Wild Magic?"

Then he checks himself, bowing his thin shoulders. "You do not have to tell me what it is that is going on in your life. If you wish to tell me, I will listen, but I do not need to know."

[theravenboy]

Bran stops his pacing and sits, shakily pouring more tea.

He drinks the whole cup and eats a biscuit, not really tasting it, before he speaks again.

"I suppose I must start... months ago, it was. No, even before that.

You know that my friend Will is a dewin, that his master, my lord Merlion, brought her here sixteen years ago.

"Their work, Will's people's work, ended for the most part three years ago last summer. My lord Merlion, and the Lady of the Light, and Will too, decided that those humans who had helped them in their quest would live better in the world if all memory of Light and Darkness and magic itself was taken from them. From us."

Bran takes a biscuit into his hand and breaks it, scattering the pieces onto his plate.

"The mortals had no choice in the matter, most of them. I had a choice."

Bran looks directly and unhappily at Owen.

"I could forget, and lose...everything else, everything that was not ordinary, and come back to you, here. Or I could go on the ship Pridwen--"

(and across from Bran, Owen sits bolt upright)

"--to the back of the North Wind. With my lord Arthur. I could remember everything, that way, and keep the other side of myself, and never see you again."

Bran blinks rapidly, white eyelashes glistening. "I chose to come home."

[owendavies.livejournal.com]

Owen reaches for Bran, abortively, and pulls his arm back.

Wonderingly, "You made that choice."

[theravenboy]

Bran puts his arm out, too, but drops it wistfully before it touches Owen's hand. He wipes his eyes defiantly and continues.

"For more than three years, then, I knew nothing, except that this was my home, and that you were my father, and that --I am sorry-- that there was something of myself I had lost somewhere.

"Then, you see, last fall, there was a verse that I read in school, that was part of the other half of my heritage. When I read it I remembered everything, all at once.

"Also, there was a place, a gathering place far away called Milliways, where Will goes, and his master Merlion, and many others both mortal and immortal, alive and dead. I found my way there first by accident, and then on purpose.

"I learned how to travel there and back. I learned there was a magic I inherited from my lord Arthur that I had not wholly lost. I am your son, I am a good Methodist, and yet... There is also in me the Wild Hunter of the Wild Magic, who does not know Christ, who does not care about good and evil. When I learned this, I felt whole at last, but sometimes I was frightened. I do not always understand what I do, when I am that being."

[owendavies.livejournal.com]

Owen's face is lined with fear, concern, and a little awe as he listens.

[theravenboy]

Bran is crying now, openly, but he is near the end of his story and it is time to finish it. His voice shakes only slightly as he takes up the tale again.

"A little more than a week ago, at Milliways, a force was loosed that should not have been loosed. The king of dreams, who is of the Wild Magic and beyond it, beyond all forces and powers of Light and Dark, went mad. We defied him, Will and I and our friends, and we earned his anger. In revenge... he sent us nightmares and waking dreams, so that we did not always know what was real and what was not real.

"I will not tell you what I dreamed.

"When I woke, on Sunday morning, I was as you saw, mad and sick with visions, and I said...what I said...with those images burning in my mind. For days I was not myself, until at last, yesterday, Will and I, and our friends, and beings with far more power than any of us have, defeated the mad king and brought him back to himself."

Bran bows his head.

"That battle is over now, thank God. I do not ask you to forgive me, and I beg of you not to blame yourself, but I am sorry, more sorry than I can say."

[owendavies.livejournal.com]

Owen sits, shaken and silent, for a few minutes. At last he rises, slowly and painfully. He walks over to Bran's side of the table and sets his hand on Bran's shoulder.

[theravenboy]

Bran puts his arm around Owen's waist and leans his head against Owen's side.

[owendavies.livejournal.com]

Owen looks down at Bran in surprise and open tenderness. They stay there, in that pose, while Lluchddu dozes on the floor, until the sun sets and Owen goes to turn on the light.