[2] WEEPING MONK║you're not what I was looking for

73| The New World

The afternoon sun did little to help dry Ari and Lancelot off as they rode in the cart at a much gentler speed back to the White Hart fields. Wrapped together beneath the lone blanket, Lancelot's arms circled her, and Ari knew that she was home.

She explained on the journey about the Dagger's vision that she'd seen at dawn and, with a lump in her throat, what had happened between Lancelot falling and rising out of the lake. The whole time he looked sadly reminiscent before he said that he already knew, but had just wanted to hear her voice.

"How?" She'd asked, twisting to look at him.

He'd taken her hand and pressed it beneath Hector's coat to where he said he could feel a piece of he Ash Stone beneath his heart. Lancelot's skin glowed, and Ari was taken far back in her vision to the first time where she had held his hand within the hollowed out old tree.

Ari didn't quite understand it. Perhaps he was connected now permanently to the Between, though he said that he didn't feel any different. There was a slight buzz in his veins that may have just been the feeling of this new life that the waters of Avalon had given him.

"You can bring back what is lost, Ari," Lancelot hushed, tipping his nose against her temple, "and I think that I can, too."

It wasn't how she expected the day to have ended at all. Yet with how it had turned out, she was glad that it did.

"If you two are going to get any closer in your snuggling, tell me now so I can turn around." Came a voice from the other end of the rattling cart.

Hector didn't give the impression that he was going to stray too far from Lancelot's side in the foreseeable future. Ari didn't mind, and knowing Lancelot, he wouldn't mind his brother's protectiveness either. The two had gone from being strangers to a brotherhood that was quite beautiful, now that she thought about it, to have seen unfold.

"How do you think I feel?" Squirrel clipped back, his little face scrunched up. But there was something there in his eyes that glinted with happiness. The less that Ari knew about how exactly he had gotten here to the battle, the better.

More people than Ari had realised had followed on behind their rush to Avalon, and when they returned to the field as the sun began its descent, cheers erupted when Arthur rolled the cart to a stop.

Squirrel hopped up onto the ledge of the cart and gave an exuberant bow, flinging his arms one at a time out wide as if the applause was all for him. With a roll of his eyes, Hector slung Squirrel over his shoulder and carried him to the ground.

Smiling, Lancelot jumped down from the cart and offered out his arms to Ari. In the hour of gentler riding than their outward journey, her muscles had cooled and seized. The water of the lake being so cold as she'd waded out to reach Lancelot hadn't helped, either. Now she ached all over and the catalogue of her injuries made itself known, compared to her love who was filled with new life and vigour.