[1] WEEPING MONK // you're not what I was looking for

22| Close Encounters {Part Two}

[TW// Threatening language]

Tensions run on high as the trio seek to rest in a nearby Fey camp. Lancelot tries his best to be there for Ari as her patience gets tested.

They dismounted the horses and handed their reins over to a couple of young Fey who led them away. The air was tense and so was the company. The camp was larger than several that Lancelot had seen before now, perhaps the same size as Ari's had been, made up of likely a hundred adult Fey plus the elderly and children. From what he could see it was mainly Sky folk here, with a few from several other clans dotted in between. He couldn't help but wonder how long they had been here in this forest. He knew how quickly camps moved around because of him and his brothers, and before all hell had broken loose they had begun to sweep their way south through the vast land once more. He bit down, it seems he could never truly escape who he had once been.

Lancelot stood quietly whilst Ari talked with her people. He had felt a shift in her, a hardening of sorts around the others. He had seen how she acted around her own people, with those that were in her camp, and this was not it. It was almost like she was keeping her guard up. He thought that perhaps she had lost some trust in them since they were betrayed, he wasn't surprised, he didn't exactly trust them either, or maybe it was something else? He kept his eyes down most of the time as the Fey around them gave him more space than necessary. He wouldn't hurt them, he wasn't even looking at them, but yet he still felt like hiding himself away beneath his hood. He had closed his eyes for a brief second and when he opened them, Squirrel was bent before him, his head twisting on his neck as he craned it to look up at his face under the hood with an inquisitive brow. Lancelot cocked an eyebrow at him, what are you doing?

"You can't hide under there forever you know," Squirrel stated lightly, his hands clasped behind his back and it made him smile just a little.

"It is easier this way," he responded. He was saving the people from having to look at his weeping face. Squirrel stood himself up straighter and shuffled around. Lancelot lifted his head slightly to follow the boy.

"Ah pfft, for them or for you?" The child remarked as he twisted on his heel, bored with all of the waiting around. Lancelot just watched him with a furrowed brow. Squirrel eventually turned back and caught his expression, moving back to stand closer.

"Perhaps they won't be so scared of you if you weren't just a shadow and actually showed them that you're Fey?" The boy sounded almost exasperated but there was something playful in the way that he spoke, as always.

Lancelot sighed quietly at the boy's remark, he's right. His face had always been hidden from the world, his hood isolated him from being recognised as anything other than a weapon. He remembers how the trinity guard drew back his hood as he knelt to the ground, exposing the man behind the monster. And in that moment he felt the shift, the Weeping Monk died and Lancelot was reborn. So perhaps yes, the boy was right, he needed to show them who he was. He picked his hands up from where they were clasped together in front of him and placed his fingers at the rim of the dark fabric framing his face. His head was still bowed but he slowly picked up the overlarge hood and set it back onto his shoulders, revealing his face to the world.