The Blue Council

CHAPTER THREE

You know how, when you are a child, names somehow feel insignificant to you. Life seems like a game and you can be a new person every day. You can be a damsel, or a knight. Sod it, you can even be a dragon if you're keen.

No one cares about your name.

In all of my childhood memories, they don't have names. She's Goldilocks and he's Arthur. Which are both quite ironic all things considered, but we'll get to that later.

Goldilocks was like my sister. In fact, we were probably some sort of distant relatives, because this is how women worked these days – sort of like the Tudors, and all the other ancient rulers, only with more style and significantly less bloodshed. Anyway, I digress. Goldy and I grew up together, exact opposites who fit together like the...what's it called? The old Asian symbol with the black and white half circle thingys. She was tall, lean and raven haired (I know what you're thinking, but that's only part of the irony), talented to a point where it became annoying and ridiculously likeable. In short, everything I wasn't.

She was also super girly and graceful, every bit the royal, and determined to get what she wants no matter what. So, naturally, when she announced she was going to play Goldilocks in our new game, that was the end of that. Somehow, the name stuck with me for the rest of our adolescence, maybe as an embodiment of how I always saw her after that – my best friend, the girl who always got her way.

Arthur was a different type of fish. When I was young, I didn't think much about how odd it was to even have him there, only boy surrounded by women of all ages. It was only recently I found out the logistics behind it all. Either way, he was always there. He was always the one who was both daring enough to come with me on all the weird missions I came up with around the mansion, and gentleman enough to grant all of Goldy's wishes.

Us three, we were intertwined, like vines which started growing together and ended up as three parts of the same thick, unbreakable plan. We bounced off each other, completed each other and pushed each other outside our comfort zones. The princess, the daring knight and I. Guinevere, Arthur and Merlin. This is how it had always been – he was my best friend and her admirer. This is how he remained the Arthur to the wild, inexplicable and reckless child that I still am in so many ways.

It's been years since we last played dress-up and chased each other down the halls.

But we're still pretending to be someone else.

Goldilocks needs to like politics, when all she wants is to be free.

Arthur needs to be paid for doing what he's always happily done for free – being by our side, looking out for us.

They need to pretend they don't need each other, because he can never go back to Camelot.

And I need to pretend I don't love them both so much it hurts to be apart from them.