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Dec. 22nd, 2005 03:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theravenboyThe Bar has given Bran Davies a plain room with a single bed, a desk, a small chest of drawers and a window facing the lake. It is still too large and empty for him. Lluchddu is not curled up at the foot of his bed, and Owen Davies is not sleeping in a room across the way. Guinevere lives in the bar, a hallway or two away, but Bran cannot go to her for this.
He crosses the room, four paces forward and four paces back again, over and over. After an hour of the same thoughts running through his mind --if I had protected it, if I had been ready, if I had known, then the harp could not have been stolen-- he climbs into bed and tries to sleep.
Bran dreams of a great white skeleton of a horse, horned, dancing, ribbons dangling behind it in the winter wind. The empty blind eye-sockets stare at him and through and past him, as the white leg-bones parade in a terrible merry jig. The horse prances closer, grinning, until the cold, spittle-laced breath from its open jaw falls on Bran's face and neck. It moves nearer still, and spins its head, high on its spine of a neck, fast enough to knock Bran backwards onto the damp dirt of the path. The mari llwyd stamps on Bran's chest, once, twice, four times. Bran can hardly breathe any more. He turns his head aside to cough blood into the grass, and when he turns back, instead of the mari llwyd he sees only Blodwen Rowlands' kind, sweet face, pressing an oddly cold kiss on Bran's forehead.
He crosses the room, four paces forward and four paces back again, over and over. After an hour of the same thoughts running through his mind --if I had protected it, if I had been ready, if I had known, then the harp could not have been stolen-- he climbs into bed and tries to sleep.
Bran dreams of a great white skeleton of a horse, horned, dancing, ribbons dangling behind it in the winter wind. The empty blind eye-sockets stare at him and through and past him, as the white leg-bones parade in a terrible merry jig. The horse prances closer, grinning, until the cold, spittle-laced breath from its open jaw falls on Bran's face and neck. It moves nearer still, and spins its head, high on its spine of a neck, fast enough to knock Bran backwards onto the damp dirt of the path. The mari llwyd stamps on Bran's chest, once, twice, four times. Bran can hardly breathe any more. He turns his head aside to cough blood into the grass, and when he turns back, instead of the mari llwyd he sees only Blodwen Rowlands' kind, sweet face, pressing an oddly cold kiss on Bran's forehead.
