#bors: elyan os the elephant in the room / me: the real elephant in the room is that i went to include melehan here lol

[kashilascorner]

New entry for @queer-ragnelle May Day Parade!

Prompt: May 10-16 Month of May {Free Space/Flower Festival}

Behold --my attept at a comedy! You can read it here if you prefer. This is probably the last short story I write for this challenge. Enjoy ^^

He was meant to be someone's uncle, maybe. Definitely not someone's father at any rate. As the hot midday sun shone above his head, Sir Bors wondered what it was about him that he had ended up surrounded by kids. No, not kids. Kids were cute, with their chubby cheeks and their untamed opinions. What he had attracted was far worse: teenagers.

It was a beautiful day in mid-May. Flowers were blooming, birds were singing, horses were happy, and he was not being paid enough for this job. Actually, he was not being paid at all! In fact, by not being in his lands, he was losing money by the minute –but alas, he was not good at accounting anyways, that was work for his brother and his sister-in-law. It's not that Bors didn't like the lads, but he was beginning to understand Sir Kay's irritation towards the world at large given how much he dealt with youngsters all day, every day.

Galahad was a quiet boy. He thought of him as good nephew although he was a second cousin. That was good, with that he could deal. Perceval, on the other hand talked too much. He talked all the time. But there was someone who talked even more: his sister Dindrane. Good lord how much she spoke! Why was she even there in the first place? he wondered. And then there was the elephant inside the room. An enormous elephant all the way from India that definitely had no business in Britain’s forests: Elyan. His son. His actual, real, blood-of-his-blood son. Bors had never had much of an idea of how he should speak to him, so at some point he had decided to talk to him as a fellow comrade. It was his brother's advice: become friends with the lad, he said, get him to trust you, he said, all will be fine and follow the natural course, he said. Well, probably not the best idea to take advice from a man who had not yet been a father and had lost his own at a tender age. But alas, he didn't have much better opinions to go by. Who else was he going to ask for fatherly advice? Arthur? Lancelot? So Bors took the advice at face value. If Elyan had been a child maybe he could have worked out something, but no, of course none of the Lord's designs could ever be that easy. He was (almost) fully grown by the time they met. He even had a shadow of a shadow of something that kind of resembled a beard.

Elyan seemed content enough by the treatment, Bors thought with some relief. A good lad he was. His mother had made a good job, Bors nodded to himself, she should be proud. But Galahad visibly cringed every time they interacted. This angered Bors. Was he doing it so wrong? He felt very judged, negatively, by Galahad's gaze. And who was Galahad, of all people, to judge? And why did Bors even care about his opinion? Bors thought of himself as a competent enough father, even if not a good one. Sure, he had not provided for his son, but only because he didn't know he existed at all! Come think of it, maybe only God was a good enough Father, and still his main fathering method was throwing His children into the world without warning and with only thin skin as their protection. Not even scales or a thick poisonous tooth or two to defend themselves. Bors did better than that: he’d given his lad an armor, and a seat in the most prestigious knight order of the age. So, actually, he had done fairly well by comparison, had he not? Even if the reasoning was a bit sacrilegious in nature.

“Say, Uncle,” spoke Dindrane. Bors, at the head of the party, had to fight his innermost demons not to roll his eyes and let out a long, long sigh. Her excessive familiarity annoyed him. Lads he could deal with, but how in Heaven was one even supposed to deal with a fifteen-year-old girl? “Who would win a fist fight, Sir Gawain or Sir Lancelot?”

“Obviously Gawain!” retorted young Melehan, with a tone that informed Bors the kids had been, no doubt, arguing about this one thing all morning. Obviously Melehan was going to defend his uncle. Bors had not intended to travel with a band of teenagers, but least of all had he planned to borrow Sir Mordred's eldest son, a boy of twelve, as a squire while they went to meet with the rest of the knights. How much he missed his loyal Achilles! Should have never knighted him, honestly, but it was too late to regret it now. Bors had never realized how hard it was to get a good squire until he lost a great one –which Melehan, certainly, was not.

“They would never fist fight in the first place.” Bors said, trying to sound very grave. “And knights don't fist fight.”

“But if they did,” insisted Dindrane, Elyan and Perceval in unison.

“He's going to say Lancelot, he's not impartial.”" complained Melehan, very softly for them to pay attention.

“Obviously Lancelot would win if he ever happened to lower himself to such standards,” commented Galahad, who, even by his standards had been astonishingly quiet.

“Are we talking midday or night fight?” Asked Perceval all of a sudden, like he had just realized it was an absolutely crucial difference.

“Gawain at midday, definitely,” said Elyan, trying to sound very serious (or had his voice really become this deep?) “But at night...”

“Still Gawain!” insisted Melehan.

“No way, not at night.” Galahad scoffed.

“Oh, so you admit he would lose in the morning?” Melehan smiled. Bors turned slightly to look at the little blond boy. Damn, did the boy look like his father.

“Knights don't fist fight.” Insisted Bors.

“I know you have fist flighted,”" said Perceval, cryptically, disconcerting Bors and forcing him to turn his body on his horse to look at him, like an owl turning its head.

“When?”

“You have a brother, sir Bors,” said Perceval, “and brothers fist fight all the time.” he added, in unison with Dindrane, like it was an obvious fact everyone knew. What kind of relationships did the offspring of Pellinore have? Bors thought with horror for a moment, what horrors went behind those walls--then he thought of how Lamorak had turned out. Ah, it made sense.

“We could say that sometimes it can happen, yes,” he conceded. "But I never in my life fist fought Lionel." He had, indeed, fist fought Lionel and broken his lip in the process multiple times, but no reason for the youngsters to know that. It seems like they had enough examples about it not to need any more.

“My cousins and I once had a very big fight, I don't see how it would not be the same between brothers.” Melehan commented.

“And who won?”

“Florence.”

“Ah.” Bors nodded. The boy was a marvel. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree –especially if the tree is Gawain. Right before breaking a smile, he remembered he was trying to give a good example. “Well, you should try to avoid those things. One day you will be knighted, so you keep your hands to yourself and use your sword and your lance honorably, as it is meant to be.”

“Ha! Tell that to the boys, I will throw punches my whole life.” Dindrane laughed, tilting her chin up petulantly. Galahad all of a sudden seemed very uncomfortable. He had grown in a monastery, had he not? He probably never saw a woman talk so shamelessly. Had he ever even seen a girl his own age at all? Probably not. Women could be terrifying, Bors had to give him that. And Dindrane, it seemed, was at least half savage. Melehan had made the horse trot a little faster so now he was on Bors' left side, blushing, instead of nearer Dindrane where he had been riding all morning. He blushed a lot when it came to Dindrane, Bors realized. Maybe he didn't like her? Only the Lord could tell, these youngsters were a mystery.

Bors stole a glance from Elyan, on his right side. Come think of it, perhaps they shouldn't be knighting boys this young. Then he thought of how Perceval was a good two years older than his Elyan and still had much less common sense, so maybe it didn't have anything to do with age after all. Bors smiled at his son, and got his horse a little closer to his. Elyan smiled back, shyly, but pulled out his chest in a show of being a great horseman.

“Who do you think won when they fought, my Lord the King or the Seneschal?” asked Perceval, breaking the silence.

“The King,” said Dindrane and Elyan.

“The Seneschal,” replied Melehan, Galahad and Bors. The lads stared at Bors, and Dindrane smirked maliciously. They had trapped him.

“So who would win, Uncle, Sir Lancelot or Sir Gawain?”

“Who would, who would?” all of them asked.

There was no escape. Bors took a deep breath.

At least this would only go on for a couple more days, then they would meet with Gawain and Lancelot's parties, switch members and begin the quest proper.

But as things were going, he wondered: was the Grail and its promise of divine redemption even worth this much effort? Maybe he should turn back to tournaments and rescuing ladies. It was certainly a more reasonable line of work.