The Violet Hour

Percy is sitting quietly on the steps of the house he fixed up three or four years ago, his hand on his knee. The cut in his leg is throbbing, but it's still wrapped up, Cimorene's work is still in place, if a little scratched from when he was talking to Lamorak. He's wearing his own clothes, but the length of his hair, the youth of his face, and the newness of every scar is very telling. He's waiting for the woman from God, but he doesn't know when she'll come back.

--

Or, if you're Guenever, he's a little less traumatised and a little more himself, sitting out on that front step so he can slice up wax beans for supper.

unless Guenever wants trauma, but we suspect she would much rather Percy was his usual happy self.

Percy was up at the Mansion the other day, bringing a delivery, and he managed to get caught in a certain crackplot. And when Cimorene sees her husband upon his return, he may not be exactly as she remembers.

He's wearing jeans, true, that he found in the house, and is in the process of trying to find a shirt, but he looks younger, younger and stronger and harder-muscled, and the hundreds of old tiny scars he has ordinarily are fresher than before, and some of them are missing. His hair is longer, and he looks uncertain and a little wild around the eyes. There is blood seeping heavily through the right leg of his jeans.

He's not sure why he came here. Something about it seemed faraway familiar, as if he knew the path, but it's not the house that he lost a few hours ago.

It's sausage-making time in the Peredur household! Percy has obtained casings--for the love of everything, please don't ask where--and a great deal of thoroughly ground rabbit meat, and he is stuffing the latter into the former, tying the ends off neatly.

The apron tied around his middle is grimy and slightly bloody and utterly disgusting, but he's working very cheerfully, and seems to be enjoying himself.

So Percy's big brother is in the spare bed in the kitchen.

And Percy is trying not to worry but failing a little, and trying to go about his business as though there is no problem at all, which at the moment means peeling the last of last years potatoes and not glancing over his shoulder every three seconds. Having never been drunk himself, he has no clear idea of what a hangover feels like, and he's certainly never been in the market for remedies, so he is partly fretting about what can be done to make Lamorak feel better later.

At least the animals have decided not to sit on top of Lamorak. Yet.

Well, with the onion frost come and gone and the spring here in somewhat cold and rainy earnest, Percy's purple house is full of started seeds that need transplanted. Ever since February, every available surface has been covered with pots of baby tomatoes, basil, artichokes, and peppers. Now to-day he's outside on his knees in the dirt, gingerly, lovingly placing them into the beds. The lettuce that's been growing happily on the windowsill of the room he shares with Cimorene doesn't need to be transplanted, but he is putting new lettuces into the raised bed.

With the warmer weather, the pain is his game leg has almost entirely gone away.

Well, it's Easter Day--it's Easter Day. Percy's house is full of the most beautiful smells--hot cross buns, doubtless the result of Heli's hard work, two chickens, to feed all of the housemates and the handful of guests who are present; as well as fresh, cold water to drink and almost certainly the fruits of Cimorene's dessertful labour. There is also wine to drink, consecrated for the sort-of Eucharist cobbled together owing to half the people attending being non-religious-really. Percy himself is bounding around in his best white tunic, dressed up like a knight instead of wearing his usual jeans and dirty t-shirt. After fasting on Good Friday and Holy Saturday, the wine is making him extremely giddy, but really Percy is giddy enough anyway without it.

It's Easter Day! The house is decorated with white flowers and white candles, and Dinadan is totally going to get begged into playing Jesus Christ is Risen To-day on his lute.

Percy, like any good Christian boy, is properly observing the Lent fast. He's been eating in the dark of the morning, and something at night after the sun's down, as is right, but most only a moosh of beans and water, plain food being the rule. Because there's less to do in this season outside, he's also been spending a great deal more time inside doing fixing projects that don't require much standing or exertion, and his limp has become much less pronounced.

At the moment, he's sitting cross-legged on the floor oiling the hinges of the main door, and yawning a little.

Percy hasn't seen his brother in a bit, and considering recent events feels he has reason enough to be concerned. Besides, he just generally likes being around him. For which reason he is scouting the Mansion, as much as he and his wife dislike, in an attempt to bring the prodigal home for supper.

The fireplace is in excellent working condition, the house is decorated with holly and boxwood garlands and some spruce from the woods; Alma has a red ribbon tied loosely around her neck, which she is trying continually to bite off. The house almost always smells like spice and cider and warmth, and there's a little carved creche in the middle of the big wooden table--something made last year, when Percy was almost always alone and the dark left him with lots of time to do things inside with his hands. The creche isn't painted: featureless Kings kneel around a wooden lump of a manger, but it's somehow the more meaningful for being crude.

Sir Peredur himself has taken off his boots and is padding around the kitchen in socks, trying to put dinner together and bake bread without burning it, something he's never been particularly good at. He's humming Veni Veni Emmanuel and poking his ruffly red hair out of his eyes--it's gotten a bit shaggier than usual. His limp is almost completely unnoticeable. Only a trace of it is evident.

It seems like a good setting for apologising to his wife. At least assuming the pot-bellied woodstove doesn't catch fire: possibly it would be a good idea not to lay potholders down on the burners.

The trouble with goats is that they're not inclined to stay home if they don't have to, which is the short answer as to why Percy is trying to coax one off the Mansion lawn.

"C'mon, Butter. Come on. Hey, hey," wiggling his fingers. "Come on, now." Alma, who came along for the ride, is standing by and watching with something akin to amusement.

The fireplace in the kitchen has actually turned out to be an appreciable success, and so evening will find Percy poking sticks and twigs into it, and then building the cabin of logs around it, and shoving bark and dead leaves down the middle, to make a fire. The kitchen smells like spice and pie, thanks to Cimorene.

Percy is in the orchard, for once not busy--all the drop fruit was gathered back in October, before the frost, and everything after that is ruined, and's been fed to the chickens and the two horses that still inhabit the barn, as well as the goats he borrowed from Luther's herd. The farm looks good, especially in cold afternoon light--made all through the autumn well, and the only thing to do in winter is plan and take care of the livestock and tend the tiny little garden under the coldframe.

Percy is, at the moment, searching fairly energetically through the Mansion.

It's dark and probably past midnight by the time Percy is relieved by Morvydd and comes back to the house. He's walking weary, but he gets inside without making any noise and goes to their room to undress.

Percy is busy in the garden, turning over the hard frosted soil in what will hopefully be the cold frame, with a little work. His limp is better than it was before, and he's happily grubby.

Over the course of the last week, particularly with the several days of not being able to understand anybody else, Percy has gotten the chimney all but finished, and now, in celebration of this accomplishment, is sitting around back of the house with a beheaded chicken and a pot of boiling water, divesting it of feathers. This process is slightly gross, but since most of the blood is already drained it's not that messy.

It is, however, very smelly. Dead chicken and hot wet feathers are never good olfactory combinations.

Percy has gone out ostensibly to pick squashes, but after a few moments of kneeling in the soft earth he slips his hands together and folds them, closes his eyes, and starts praying. His red ruffly hair is all mixed up and falling over his eyes a bit, and his leg is so stiff and painful it's beyond all saying, and like Jacob after his fight with the Angel he's asking for a blessing.

Because somewhere there must be something. Because this can only be penance, and this is the thing about which Percy can never use logic, can only believe faithfully: that God will heal, if He sees fit.

And he prays. He prays among the fruit of the seeds he's faithfully planted, upon the earth which he's faithfully tended, in the world he's been blessed to live in--if God sees fit, He will heal.

Percy is undressing for bed--and by undressing we merely mean removing his t-shirt; pajamas are kind of a foreign concept--in the bedroom he now shares with Cimorene.

He pauses for a little moment to take off his shoes, and that is the moment when Alma (who has been considerably temperamental throughout all of the past few months, beginning with the whole eating the sheets issue) jumps up on the bed and settles into his space, closing her eyes delicately.

Yes--they have a jealous unicorn on their hands. Percy looks down at her in dismay.