Jenny: Romps

"He has run off with his tail between his legs," the Guttersnipe replied vaguely. In truth she could not imagine what he was doing at this present moment. Lying up some place, perhaps, nursing his wounds in the dark. She could hardly imagine Mordred being much of a nurse.

Or could she... Her fingers slowed on the fabric as she thought about the boy's face, enigmatic and always half hiding some secret smile, as though he knew more than one did oneself. The boy filled her with as much fear as her Lord Ambrosius filled her with delight. They were like opposites, the sun's realm and the moon's, Ambrosius and Vortigern and their people circling about, vying for the power of the air. But she fell back on her own stories of the Wind and the Sun and took comfort in the fact that the Sun had won the conquest by warm and honest constancy.

"Look at you! You are all brown and - what? Freckles? You have freckles, my dear. Have you been at romps? And are these grass-stains on your dress? What am I to do with you?"

"Oh give me the sun, please. And a pony. I don't mind the freckles."

"Then the sun you will have. And a pony. I can think of no two better things for a child to play with."

"Anyway, I don't think we need to worry about him," she concluded.