The Silver Lining

An hour walking round the fort with Gawain and Galahad not only was informative but also amusing as all heck to her. They were lively for their age but maybe that was because she was listening so intently to every word that they said. When they returned her to her room, Sophia looked at the very inviting bed and had just crawled onto it when there was a knock on the door. Sophia groaned and climbed from the bed, knowing that it was Jols. Opening the door, Sophia smiled at him. "I see that they brought you back safe, sound and with no limbs missing," he remarked jestingly.

Sophia laughed and nodded at him before following him further down the hallway of rooms and through two other halls before he stopped in front of two large doors. "The Great Hall?" she asked. He nodded and knocked before sticking his head in. After a moment, he pushed the door open and stepped aside to let her in.

She came to a stop abruptly, a little taken back by what she was presented with. In the center of the large hall was a fire burning strongly and around it was a round table. It was amazing. The stories were right, Arthur did sit at a round table among his knights. The table looked like it originally had held around thirty men or so. Now what remained of the knights sat around it scattered. Arthur sat nearby Lancelot and he stood when she had walked in. Though she understood that in this time, she should not act the way she normally did and had so far, Sophia refused to become a quiet and yielding woman. She wasn't raised to be like that.

Putting on the best smile she could muster, Sophia approached Arthur who pulled a chair out for her. "You really need to stop treating me like a lady. Its uncomfortable," she told him as she sat down beside the seat he had pulled out for her. After a second or so, he nodded hesitantly and sat back in his own seat. She was opposite the table from Agravaine who was reclining back beside Tristan. The two men in themselves were odd, but from what she had already learned were extremely loyal to their leader.

They both looked more like mercenaries than they did knights, even when they were a little more cleaned up. Tristan was cleaning his fingernails with his dagger which Sophia found to be an amusing but also nervous sight. Galahad and Gawain sat a seat down from Tristan, and were talking to each other quietly, hunched in close. Bors sat directly beside Gawain and he was drinking, at this time of the morning she gathered he was a heavy drinker. Lancelot was just sitting there watching Arthur and also her every so often.

"You're a very strange bunch of knights," she said aloud suddenly. Arthur chuckled a little as they all looked at her before going back to what they had been doing. She shook her head and turned her eyes to Arthur. "So, you wanted to talk?"

He nodded. "I had some questions I'd been meaning to ask you." Sophia just pulled off her gloves and set them to the side before crossing her arms on the edge of the table. Arthur took it that she was fine with doing that now and in front of all the men by the way she relaxed herself. "Where are you from? You've an accent I've never heard before."

And aside from me, you probably never will again she thought. "Romania."

"I'm sorry, where?"

Sophia looked around the table when everything fell silent. They were all listening in. She looked at the Roman guards around the room and asked Arthur to send them out, that what she needed to say was only for their ears. Arthur complied with her request and sent them out. "Um... it is sort of hard to understand what I'm about to say but... I'm not from here. This time," she said, looking down at the table.

"Time? Not from here? What do you mean?"

Sighing, she asked if they had a map that she could look at for a moment. "It would help me explain and clear up everything you may be wanting to ask me," she told him. He nodded and after a moment or so she was handed a map. Sophia looked at it for a moment before getting up and moving to Arthur's side, putting the map down in front of him. She put her hand directly over where Romania should have been on the maps in her time. She couldn't read the name of what it was called now. "This is where I'm from. Romania should be there but it isn't because it does not exist yet, the country itself has not formed."

"That land is part of Sarmatia," Arthur stated, looking up at his men. "I wasn't entirely wrong, was I?"

Sophia frowned slightly and looked at the knights. "So what you're saying is that you're Sarmatian?" Galahad inquired, looking extremely happy at the moment.

She shook her head. "No... This may be hard to understand but I am not originally born in the fourth century."

"I find that hard to believe," Arthur remarked.

Pulling a face at him, Sophia paced for a moment before deciding that telling them the truth was going to be the only way to make them understand. Turning round to look at Arthur, she let out a deep breath. "The reason why my clothes are so different, why I speak a language that none of you have ever heard before, why I do not understand for the life of me what is going on around here is because..." she trailed off, looking down for a minute, "I'm from the future."

It sounded more ridiculously unbelievable even now as she said it aloud. There was a loud silence in the room right before the men began laughing. Arthur put his hand up to silence them. "That is quite impossible."

"Not really... I- I- I mean, I don't understand exactly how I went from the year 1887 to the year 467 by just falling over and knocking my head on a large rock very well but it is the honest truth," she said to Arthur and felt stupid when they still didn't believe her. "You don't believe at all do you? I am not crazy. Look, I am Romania, my father and mother were... My home, will not exist for some time but it will be real and I know because you are nothing more than myths and legends in books. This," she waved her hands around at the room in emphasis, "I should never have seen for my own eyes but I am and I am not lying, whether you chose to believe me or not."

Arthur said something about not understanding how it was possible.

Sophia shrugged her shoulders as she sat back down. "As I said, I do not understand how I got here exactly but I am here, plain and simple."

"What were you doing before you were knocked out?" Lancelot asked, looking at her as though regarding her in a slightly different way now.

That she refused to answer and so she made up a lie. "I can't remember it well but I was running, I know that much, from what- I don't recall." Of course she did but the lie was much better than the truth.

Arthur scratched his chin as he looked at her. "Would you mind answering a few more questions?"

"First, do you believe me? Even in the slightest that I am telling you the truth," she replied. Arthur nodded.

"I do believe you. You have not lied to me yet as far as I can tell. How do you plan on returning to your time though?"

That made Sophia shut her eyes. "I- I- honestly don't know. Returning the way I came doesn't exactly seem possible, there would have to be something or someone in this time that can help me, but it is a matter of searching them or it out," she answered. In her mind, she already knew what she was going to have to do, she just wondered whether or not Arthur would aid her a little with it. "So, your other questions?"
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Sophia discovered that once she had told the truth, the knights steered clear of her for the remainder of the day. It was a small relief as she had just returned to her room, removed her long coat, her jacket, corset and boots, and slipped in beneath the blankets of her new bed. Though it was not like her own back in her time, it was comfortable and Sophia relaxed against the cool pillows, wiggling herself further down into the bed as she shut her eyes with a contented sigh.

A weight had been lifted off her shoulders. Though there were still burdens, worries, discomforts and strain on her mind and body, Sophia was glad that Arthur believed her and had not done something like call her a witch and thrown her into prison.

Her mind wondered as she slept, her dreams changed numerous times through her rest; first she was back home in the forest, waiting for Zachariah and Anna, then she was just a little girl, sitting on her father's lap and he had been telling her about what their family was and what they had to do to protect the world and then she came to a dream that confused her and woke her from her sleep.

Sitting up sharply, Sophia looked round the room to find candles had been lit, the window shut and a fire had been started in the hearth. Gathering that it was maids who had done so, she laid back down, rolling onto her side and facing the fire. It was obviously dark out and Sophia wondered where the knights would be, though her head was telling her that they most probably did not want to be within ten steps of her after what she had confessed.
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The knights in question were in the tavern, drinking and just relaxing like many of the fort's people were doing. They however were all sitting at a large table, solemnly. "Do- Do you think she is really telling the truth?" Galahad asked.

Tristan looked over his shoulder at Agravaine who was leaning back against the wall behind him. "She was," Tristan said gruffly. "Her eyes give her away. She wasn't lying."

"Wow," Galahad breathed out softly before taking a long sip from his drink.

"She said that her home was right where Lancelot came from," Dagonet mused. "That means she is Sarmatia, technically while she is here."

Lancelot shook his head. "She is not Sarmatian."

"Oh aye, I agree with Lance here on this one," Bors piped up and some of his comrades just looked at him in disbelief before he grinned widely. "She's much too good looking to be Sarmatian."

Lancelot chuckled and the other knights laughed at their friends joke. Bors' attention quickly diverted to the red head who stopped alongside of him, her belly swollen to the size of a watermelon almost from her pregnancy. "How's the little one doing?" he inquired, slipping his arm around her waist and gently pulling her into his lap.

She smiled. Vanora was truly a strong woman. This was her eleventh child with Bors and probably not her last. They were young when they had first met and a child had graced their worlds only a year later. "Good. So who was the woman you brought back with you?" she asked of the knights.

"Her name is Sophia, she is not from Briton or Rome. She is in a way, Sarmatian and I guess she'll be staying at the fort for the time being," Gawain told her.

Vanora looked up. "Well I must say that if she is Sarmatian, Bors is thoroughly mistaken on Sarmatian women appearances," she commented. Most of them turned to where she was looking when she said that and found Sophia coming into the tavern. "I think I'll go and say hello."