𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖐 𝕿𝖜𝖔
𝔖𝔲𝔪𝔪𝔞𝔯𝔶: From trolls to dragons to foreign princesses, Astraea Aphelion grows stronger as she
continues to navigate medieval Britain using her wit and heart, standing unshaken beside Merlin and Arthur as they face every threa...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
📍 Camelot
⏳March, 506 AD
A small smirk tugged at my lips under the feeling of Sir Alfred's puzzled gaze on me as I loosely tied a rope around Mezcal's neck before I unbuckled his bridle and slid it off his face. I sent a reassuring grin towards the tall and slim knight before moving on towards Sir Leon to repeat my actions on his mare.
"You cannot be serious," he said in protest, holding tightly onto Faye's reins as he stared at me with widening eyes.
"You'll be surprised to hear that I can be serious, on occasion," I responded with a wink and then gave him an expectant look so that he would allow me to take off the bridle.
"My lady – the mêlée is less than a week away," he responded sternly. "This is not the time for games."
You see, Camelot will be holding a tournament called a 'mêlée' over the weekend, which is, from what I gather, a mix of jousting, bumper cars, and a lot of stupidity. Basically, a large group of knights on horseback get thrown into a big chaotic arena and they have to fight each other in a kind of mock war – with blunted swords, Arthur emphasised, so that no one will be truly harmed – until only one is left standing. It sounds absolutely dumb, but I've long stopped trying to figure out how these people's minds work.
As ridiculous as everything is, though, I'm still expected to get the horses primed for it.
"'Cause the mêlée is such a serious matter?" I shot back, earning a glare. I huffed before continuing, "I'm not playing games, dude. This exercise will improve communication between y'all and the horses, which will help ya' in the tournament."
"Have a little more faith in her, Leon," Sir Merrick stepped in with a kind tone. "The King assigned her this job for a reason."
I sent him a grateful grin and thanked him. Leon finally relented and allowed me to take off Faye's bridle.
I explained the exercise – which was going through a bunch of different obstacles that required intermediate-level maneuvers to navigate while using mostly only body weight to direct the horses – and then I hopped to sit on the fence of the arena to watch.
Sure, the 'being knocked off your horse and beaten unconscious' part of the tournament is totally unappealing, but part of me kinda wants to sneak in and try my luck, if only to show off my wonderful horse and my riding skills.
Equestrian sports such as Show-Jumping and the like are far from being an idea yet, so a knightly tournament is the closest thing that medievals have to horse shows. And I must admit that I miss the thrill and glory of participating in those. I can remember only a few times when I returned from a competition without some sort of prize.
The training session ended a half-hour later and the knights took care of untacking their horses and washing off their sweat.
Feeling pretty pleased with myself, I returned to the castle and took a quick bath. Then I put on my fleece baby blue with white polka dot PJs and wrapped myself in my Avengers blanket.
