━━ ⦗the swan princess! ⦘
❝ you're beautiful!
thank you, but what else?
... what else is there? ... ❞
███████████ 𝙞𝙣 𝙬𝙝𝙞𝙘𝙝
the courageous odette teaches the
once and future king a less...
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chapter thirteen! 013. lancelot du lac
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DESPITE all of Morgana's fearful mutterings about all that was expected of her, there are times where Odette truly believed there would be no queen better than her. Her kindness, her morality for justice and fair play, and her courage to always speak her mind▬qualities so mature and admired in a woman her young age; and it was in times like this that Odette is reminded of her beliefs again and again. She watched her mistress crouch down before the child, tender and loving as she pressed finger fingers towards the bruise on her cheek, whispering small notions of: "It'll be okay ...", "... you're all right...", and: "... What's your mother's name...?" That held such sincerity that all fear and terror the girl had within her melted away, replacing all that with a breath of peace that Morgana blessed her with.
She was amazing at those sorts of things; children, especially. Most importantly in times such as these when Odette was reassuring the same girl's mother that her daughter was fine and that she needed to have the gash on her forehead properly dressed. It wasn't often that they had villagers flee their homes in search for safety within the citadel in such large numbers. Usually times of war and sieges caused for such matters, but this fearful blight came about from the talons of a winged monster. It had destroyed the ancestral town of Greensward; one of the first distributed lands of Camelot, leaving it to nothing except flaming ruins that would take an entire month's resource of wood, stone and cobble to rebuild.
They were frenzied within the town's square▬flocked amongst guards, knights and Gaius amongst all of them that it didn't even take one breath of persuasion for Morgana, Odette and Guinevere to offer up their help.
"She's all right," Odette reassured the frantic mother, calming her down with long, deep breaths and squeezing her hands that clutched her own so tight they hurt her fingers. "Look, she's perfectly fine. She has a few bruises, the Lady Morgana is applying a salve for her small burn▬she is in perfectly good hands, I assure you."
"She's burned?!" the mother instead gasped. Her short breaths and bleeding forehead weren't helping her light-headed, distressed mind. "What do you mean▬?! Where is she?! Where is she?!"
"She's to the right," Odette gently showed the mother, doing her best to try and move this along before she lost even more blood. "With the lady with the long raven hair▬see? She's smiling." And she was. The young girl chuckled at whatever Morgana had told her, distracted from any pain she might feel, and the sight of it calmed the frenzied mother in Odette's arms enough for her to reach a hand up to rub her shoulder.
"She needs you to be strong," she told her truthfully. "You can be strong, I believe in you." The mother slowly nodded and Odette did her best to smile, finally able to clean the wound present on her temple.
