Skin Like Stars

Friday, 25th of November, 2016.

Falling into life in Marama had been like coming up from beneath the water after almost drowning. It left her gasping, stuttering, and breathing like it was the first time her lips had ever parted. It was different to Cornwall or London, hotter, the air clearer and maybe most importantly, almost no one in this tiny little city pretended magic wasn't real.

She had come here, run here really, almost two years ago with a suitcase, a laptop and some boxes sent in the mail and put some of her inheritance to good use. For a while she had worked at a small bookstore, for something to do more than for want of money. She spent her afternoons recommending books and smiling kindly and the evenings she mostly spent exploring the city, every club, every corner of it that touched on magic she followed.

The only magical thing she had avoided were the portals. God only knew no one needed her around portals. She had done enough damage with those... long ago. She didn't need to risk doing something terrible again.

For the most part, that first year had been wonderful, and Uther had only sent Arthur after her twice. Not that he was trying very hard to bring her home, each time he seemed more and more like he wanted to stay but each time he had been packed off back to the airport dutifully when his week, or two, was up.

The last thing she needed was more Pendragons. She had come here to escape her past, not do a modern adaptation of it in all it's Shakespearean glory.

But the second year came and she finally opened her own shop, it was small and came with an apartment overhead which she promptly moved into, a little black shop with bright open windows named The Golden Apple, which she felt might have been tempting fate but it was the name that came to her, the name that fit and so she took it. Arthur hadn't visted her, and wouldn't unless he was planning to escape for a summer Christmas... and things were going alright.

But really, this time.

No one she was "destined" to hurt lived down here, no one who had laid hands on her lived here, and that she hoped would be enough.

It was coming on evening as Morgana walked through the main street, a pile of boxes of candles and herbs and various bits and bobs tucked between her arms and her chin. Any other witch might float them in front of herself, or teleport home but last time she had tried she had somehow set fire to a box of stones. As in, the stones themselves so she wasn't willing to risk it. Just because she could afford to break her things didn't mean she should do it when there were safer ways to get around.

But fate had a fondness for Morgana like a cat might have a fondness for a mouse right before it bites it's head off, because then she saw him. At least, she thought it was him, the stride was all too familiar for a person she had barely known, his frame, his hair, his...

Crack! the glass holders for the candles shattered as her boxes fell to the ground, her hands shaking as she stared at a man who was either Lancelot, or so much like him that the Gods had him come this way just to punish her.

Even if Lancelot was alive he couldn't be here. Shouldn't he have been back home in England? Or be literally anywhere else?!

She stood there staring at this man, wondering if he was a ghost for far too long before she remembered her merchandise and bent down to pick it all up. It would be okay. If Lancelot was here she didn't need a shop anyway, she needed to be as far away from him as possible, not in place so thick with magic she could feel it hum on the back of her neck, a place that generated portals on it's own...

Even if he didn't remember, she did, and she wasn't going to ruin his life again. Not this time.

Maybe a nunnery was still an option...