Fire and the Flood ✺ Arthur Pendragon

𝒊𝒊. prince arthur of camelot

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Gothel left the tower, satisfaction rippled from within when she mused that she had succeeded in convincing Rapunzel never to ask to leave the tower again.

The girl was not courageous on her own to leave the tower. She shuddered at the prospect of the cruelties that lurked beyond, not aware that what, and furthermore who, she should be frightened of had been right in front of her.

The screeching of the wyverns were extraordinarily high-pitched that day. They were creatures of magic, the distant cousins of the dragons that guarded the erstwhile Kingdom.

They never flew close to her tower. Rapunzel only watched wistfully as they soared into the air and guarded the fallen Kingdom.

But on that fateful day, they were screeching like mad, preying on something and, more importantly, someone.

Their sudden frenzy troubled her ⎯ Rapunzel resided in the tower her entire life and had never heard them sound so unsettling.

Rapunzel was arranging the kitchen when she heard the alarming sound of rattling and panting. Her heart was hampering in her chest when she picked up the very first thing that fell into her possession.

Her mother always dropped a special line to get Rapunzel to let down her hair. Gothel would not climb the tower like an invader.

The blond- haired girl clamped her hand on the frying pan and hid herself behind the pillar. She poked her head up to catch a glimpse of the male figure that had climbed to the top of her tower, hurriedly shutting the wooden door off the balcony and clambering over something coniferous and golden.

At this point, he looked like he was hiding from something, but Rapunzel saw him as a threat. Therefore, she sneaked up behind and attacked him.

Her green friend, a chameleon named Pascal jumped off her shoulder and jumped onto Arthur's nose. The animal looked as if it was examining a mystery personage who had broken into their home.

For a moment Rapunzel was startled that she might have killed him. She nudged him in the face with the other end of the pan, but when she saw his chest rise a little, she breathed a sigh of relief.

She brushed his hair off his forehead with the end of the frying pan and jumped back in fear. He appeared peaceful, but everyone was benign when they were unconscious.

Pascal climbed up again onto the purple dress of his owner, who watched Arthur with deepened interest, as if he were a new-found phenomenon to her.

In truth, he was a new thing for her ⎯ the only person Rapunzel interacted with was her mother and the human significant of the male species was a completely distinct concept to her.

A painful groan left Arthur's lips when he started to awaken. The seventeen-year-old girl closed her eyes in fright when she took another swing at him with the frying pan.

Rapunzel never knew what true physical exertion was until it took her more than an hour to hide Arthur in the closet.

"All right, all right, I got a person in my closet." Rapunzel said in a choked voice, slowly walking away from the closet, whose door was propped open by a chair. "I got a person in my closet." Her dismay turned to excitement with the relization that she had knocked down someone thrice her size. "I got a person in my closet!"