[b]Robena[/b]

The conversation still suddenly. The dark-haired woman next to you does not rise to your claim, but she does rise. Silently, she stands and steps aside. Indeed, you realize that all conversation in the room has ceased. The diners rise and, one and all, stride out the door of the main hall in silence.

You find yourself seated alone at the table, a serving of soup still steaming in front of you, and another bowl, barely touched in the seat next to you.

They leave the door open and there, standing just beyond the hall is an apparition you cannot have thought to see here. Constance, wearing a winter dress and a fox fur, stands at the edge of the hall just beyond the threshold.

[b]Constance[/b]

Perhaps this is not what you expected. Or then again, perhaps this is what you had wanted all along. Tell us how you enter in this moment. Tell us of your ethereal stride, of the way that the world cannot quite manage to hold you. Tell us how you already know of Robena’s hunt, and what you say to her after many months.

[b]Tristan[/b]

From you, the castle does not hold secrets. Why should it? You are bringing life and joy to a place that was cold and dreary and more empty than full. There are children, but they are few in number, the children of servants and squires. There are only the handful of knights. Sir Harold, Sir Liana, and Sir Hector, the raven-haired lady who never seems to smile. It’s obvious enough that each of them is meant to be kept away from Uther for one reason or another. Harold knew Uther long ago, before he united Britain, and chose not to swear loyalty to the high king. Hector likewise and she seems to begrudge it. Liana too never swore an oath to the king, but she is younger and there is something about her that you can’t place. She seems out of place in this Britain, beautiful, sad, and filled with a wanderlust that will one day carry her past Castle Sauvage. Perhaps that’s why she’s so drawn to you, and you seem to find her always strolling in the gardens near where you were playing or singing. 

As for the lady. She is not long for this world because she is tied to Robena’s doom. It became obvious the more you looked upon her. The cold features, the empty eyes, that same set of the brow. Mort was the one who noticed it first, and his discomfort in the lady’s presence might be what made you realize it at last. That what was left of King Pellinore beneath the beast pierced by Robena’s axe would carry out the doom on her behalf. Perhaps it is reassuring that there is a cold regal air to the lady. It must be reassuring that she invited Constance, for surely it would be a cruelty just to invite her to witness an execution. That you, Mort, and Constance are here says that there is more to the matter than an execution.

For now, however, you were asked to wait outside the hall with Mort, to give Constance her space, and you are met instead by the others departing in a grim and unnatural silence. Only when they have passed beyond earshot of the hall, taking you both with them, do they speak. And it is dour Hector who breaks the silence. “She claimed that the goodness of her fox hunt today is more pure than the winter preparations we make for our welfare” Hector says to you, her tone matter of fact. “I still do not see why the lady bothers with all this. The knight will never learn true humility, and what matter her nobility without it?” 

She’s looking at you, as if you’d have the answer to such a question, Tristan.