Okay, this is about a year previous to the movie, but Cora is sixteen, so bear with me. That will be my one anomaly in this story. At least for now...

Prologue

The Knights were returning. Not far from where Bors' lover, Vanora, and their bastard children pressed against the gate; was a young woman, her hands curled around the bars, perched on her toes, peering into the distance.

She was of average height, and as thin as a reed. Her inky-black, pin-straight hair was cut to shoulder-length, revealing a pair of slender shoulders that had slipped free of her much too large dress. The dress had been a lovely periwinkle blue when her father had purchased it for her (though he had misjudged her size quite terribly), but it had faded in the months hence into a dingy grey with just a hint of the former blue. The frock was cinched at her waist with a ragged, torn scrap of red cloth. Her calves were bare and dirty, as well as her feet.

Her face only held a few smudges of dirt, the rest pale and clear, letting her most defining feature pour forth: Her large, black-lashed eyes held orbs of cerulean that stared out from her narrow face. Those orbs searched for familiar features of the armored Knights returning. When she saw a Knight with black armor riding in, seemingly unharmed, her grip only tightened on the bars, especially when she saw the Knight's dark eyes searching the crowd on the other side of the gate.

"Cora! With me, girl! Your father will never find you if we don't stay together," Vanora called to her, motioning with a waving arm even as her eyes remained glued to her lover on the other side of the gate.

Without another word, Cora abandoned her place, another quickly taking up that space, and was promptly swallowed up in a sea of Vanora's children. The red-haired woman pulled the teenager to her side for a warm, one-armed hug. "You saw him, love. Your father's unharmed. He'll be here, soon enough, simpering and annoying the daylights out of you. You'll miss Vanora in only a few hours, I tell you," the mother assured Cora.

"I don't doubt it," Cora responded, her eyes searching again for the dark-haired Knight she called father. The group of them waited nearly an hour, most of the crowd thinning out from disinterest, except for those with personal connections to the Knights. That left pretty much only Cora, Vanora and her children, as well as a few women who fancied themselves one of the Knights' women.

Finally the gate opened, and Cora stepped away from Vanora and her brood, to avoid the trampling path they'd take to Bors. Her father, Lancelot, slipped past the others, glancing around and smiling once his eyes found Cora. His long legs closed the distance between them in mere moments, and he was pulling her into his arms."Da!" Cora cried, breathing in her father's musky scent that smelled far more like sweat and horse than man, squeezing her arms around him.

"Cora, my little urchin," Lancelot greeted her, tilting her face up so his eyes could rake her features in greedily, assuring himself of her safety and health, before brushing at a smudge of dirt on her cheek. "There was a time where you would have run into my arms, and would cling to me for days, until you were sure that I was not leaving," Lancelot remembered, wistfully.

Cora laughed, smiling at the expression on her father's face. "That was before Vanora convinced me how annoying you are, Da." She retorted, squeezing him again to remind him that she loved him still (even though he was a great prat).

Lancelot let out a great guffaw of a laugh. "Oh, that meddler will get hers, soon enough. Just let me look at you, Cora." He said, drawing back from their embrace to examine his daughter from head to toe. "You look like a dirty street-urchin, girl! What happened to your shoes? And this poor dress?" He questioned, incredulously.

"Da, this dress was a casualty the moment you bought it for me. I outgrew the shoes, and gave them to Six." Cora explained, rolling her eyes.

"Well, that's it then, we're getting you a new dress and shoes for your birthday tomorrow," Lancelot informed her.

Cora just shook her head at him. "Come, Da. I have a bath waiting for you at home," Cora told him, taking her father's hand and leading him from the gate.

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