Third Floor Common Room, Tuesday Afternoon

[bitchprince]

With the cold and his so-called 'class' being what they were, Arthur could no longer avoid spending at least some time within the dorms. So he took a broom into the common room, perched it somewhere against a wall nearby, and then cast a questioning eye over the room's contents.

At least a chair was a chair no matter where you went. He took a seat, a great, big, space-claiming seat, and leaned the elbow that wasn't contained by the sling on the arm of the chair. From that position, he took careful stock, including a wary one of the black box that rested in the room.

The locals seemed to have a thing about boxes.

[[ open post and open CR ]]

Comments

[withoutverona]

"My turn to be prince?" Romeo asked with a lift of his eyebrow, though he knew what was being demanded. "I'd turn that down, with no offense meant to you. My other name is Montague. I've been here a year as of yesterday."

[bitchprince]

"Montague," Arthur repeated, getting a feel for the name. "Right." Not nobility, then, or rather not as high in the food chain as he was. "So, Romeo, what have you done here in a year?"

[withoutverona]

Not nobility, but as close to it as one got in his time and place, really, and it showed a bit in the way he squared his shoulders. "Well, Arthur" -- and yes, Romeo knew he was pushing it on that one and quickly dropped his tone to one a bit humbler -- "I fell in love, was sent by stone angels to 1899 Paris, learned French and a bit of Japanese, and traveled around the world as the island did. It's not been bad at all. It's become much more home than I thought it would be."

[bitchprince]

The square of his shoulders and the intonation of his name was, however, enough to tell Arthur that Romeo was neither a peasant nor a servant, and he adjusted his appraisal of the man accordingly. His stories were strange, though, and reeked entirely too much of magic.

That was enough to make him wary.

"You travelled?"

[withoutverona]

"The island did. We just went with it," Romeo said. "It sounds mad, I know, but it was in many places -- France, Greece, Australia and Antarctica and I know I've forgotten half of them."

He considered leaving it there, but added, "Without the island, though, I did go to Mexico and Japan, and home to Verona."

[bitchprince]

They were names he didn't understand, and a process he understood even less of but to assign it to the realm of sorcery, what couldn't and shouldn't be known or trusted. Whatever anger he'd gathered for a response to that, however, dissipated on Romeo's last words.

With no more sense of being jocular or mocking in the slightest, he said, sharply, "You went home. How?"

[withoutverona]

"Through a portal once, and on an airplane another time," Romeo answered simply, curious about the barbed tone. "Why, are you trying to leave?"

[bitchprince]

"You could say that," he said, and the strain he kept hidden underneath his usual arrogant disposition was easily visible for a moment. "The island doesn't seem willing to allow us to leave."

[withoutverona]

"I've not heard of that happening," Romeo said, skeptical but concerned. "What happens when you go to the end of the causeway? There ought be two portals there, and a road as well."

[bitchprince]

He weighed the strategic importance of mentioning the details of his imprisonment here: but if Romeo was part of whatever force that caught him, he'd already know these things regardless of what Arthur would say. "Walking to the end of the causeway," he said, almost impatiently, "Simply brings me back where I started. You can see my trouble."

[withoutverona]

"Just a bit, yes," Romeo said. "I wouldn't even know what sort of advice to give. It's never done that to another, at least not that I've heard of."

[bitchprince]

"Oh, that's just utterly brilliant," he snapped, then inhaled deeply. The urge to lash out at something was setting in again, and he'd rather deal with it internally rather than break something. "I'm on an island that you claim has a will of its own, and it refuses to let go of me alone. Brilliant."

[withoutverona]

Romeo didn't think the island was sentient in itself, but Arthur didn't strike him as being in a mood for philosophical dissections.

"I'm sorry," he ventured. "If it helps, at all" -- and it wouldn't have helped him, but it still seemed worth saying -- "I think people come here for reasons. Maybe you can't leave because right now this is where you need to be."

[bitchprince]

"My place is with my people," Arthur said. There was no debate in that. Not an inkling of it.

[withoutverona]

No room for debate, and it wasn't something Romeo would argue with anyhow. He knew what it was to lose home.

"Then I hope you find them again," he said.

[bitchprince]

He shot Romeo a single look from his perch. "Thank you," Arthur decided on, at last. Some topics simply weren't meant for jest. "So," he said, when that business was dealt with, "You fought stone angels?"

[withoutverona]

"I hit out at one," Romeo said ruefully, because ten months later it was almost funny. "It was my better and sent me a hundred years into the past in revenge. I don't recommend that method of travel; if you ever find some odd statues in the preserve, run the other way."

[bitchprince]

"Magical statues," he summarized, taking a breath. That, too, was utterly brilliant. "I take it you found the sorcerer who caused it."

[withoutverona]

"They found a way to get us home, in any case," Romeo said thoughtfully. He wasn't sure he'd ever heard a specific person had been punished. "And a way to trap the statues so they couldn't entrap anyone else."

That was almost the same, right?

[bitchprince]

"That's something, at least." Although Arthur usually preferred the approach that involved hitting something until it stopped moving. "The island seems to attract magic like flies to a horse, by the sound of it."

[withoutverona]

"That," Romeo commented, "I cannot argue with. I didn't really believe in the stuff before I came here, but I seem to have been mistaken. Do they have it in your world?"

[bitchprince]

"In my 'world'," and he still used the word as if it was something made-up, "Sorcerers are never to be trusted. They cause only pain and famine." That, at least, was what his father said, and what private issues Arthur had with him should find no place in public.

[withoutverona]

"That sounds a bit like what my girlfriend says of her home," Romeo said thoughtfully. "People who use their powers there tend to go mad with it. Not famine, so much, but destruction and pain. They have laws against using magic for that reason."

[bitchprince]

"Likewise in my kingdom," Arthur replied. "Sorcerers are to be found and executed." Even if sometimes, it was as if the magic in question did no harm, if sometimes his father went too far, even if most of his days at home had become an unending series of arguments behind closed doors.

"They've poisoned our water supplies in the past, and sent horrible creatures to bear down on Camelot." And if that was what was happening right now-- he'd take it all back.

[withoutverona]

"Is that what a questing beast is?" Romeo asked as he thought that over. (Look, it was relevant now.)

"But I don't know, Arthur. I know in some worlds people with powers use them wrongly" -- a telekinetic in a warehouse in Italy came to mind -- "but I've also seen people here who can do magic and use it only to help or heal. I can't say they ought to all be executed."