Esse Aut Non Esse?

Gaheris often disappears from the castle for hours at a time; it's not as though any of them are unused to it. Agravain's loud opinion has always been good riddance, though Gawain will clip him on the ear if he overhears, and Gareth doesn't really know what to make of it. But it's a common enough experience.

He's always been the quiet one, too thin and dark-haired like Mordred and Clarissant, like his mother. He's always been the last to learn anything when it comes to swordplay and weaponry and sports, but clever with reading and Latin, at least. And he's always been miserable in the castle, so it's no surprise to anyone when he leaves without warning and vanishes for days at a time.

Of course, the attentive observer would know easily enough that he goes down to the shore, and watches the tides go in and out and the selkies that ride them, that's no mystery. It's where he is to-day, with his sleeves and the legs of his trousers rolled up so he can wade in a little, his hair blowing in the fine misty spray off the sea.

Gaheris has a connexion in the city, at one of the corner newsstands surrounded on one side by a (genuine, ethic) pizza shop and on the other by a (chain, Panara-style) bakery. The guy at the newsstand tapes his pictures up mixed in with the papers, sells them for five bucks apiece and keeps two, and Gaheris usually spends two of the remaining three dollars on cigarettes (the rest he saves for his weekly Friday-night drunk, which is the only thing that can knock him out enough to sleep through his dreams).

At night he sleeps in a room rented in the back of a Salvation Army, which is cheap because it's completely unfurnished and has no running water or electricity--just as well, he doesn't know how to use either one very well, and public bathrooms still give him trouble. He has a crate to draw on, and he gets the paper and charcoal pencils by stealing and rifling through trash. His jeans and ratty cableknit sweater are from the Salvation Army itself.

Eating has never been much of a concern, which serves to explain his rail-thin body. He's not someone people notice anyway, so he never has to make up excuses. All he's ever had to lie about is his name, the false one that he's been carrying around with him since thirteen-hundred and twelve, long enough that it shouldn't slip his mind but sometimes still does on the bad days.

On Thursday afternoon he always walks down to the newsstand, his new stack of drawings under his jacket, to deliver them and to collect his money for Friday.

( but you just watch as your life goes by )

Who: Gaheris
Where: Penn Station
When: About 10:00, December 15

( I put my heavy coat on for a while: it's freezing in the corner of my mind )

( I went out to the hazel wood to find the place where I lay dead )