"And how long have you been training to be a prat?"

Arthur wheeled about at those words to gaze in furious disbelief at their speaker, the scrawny, pale, dark-haired boy who had already dared to tell him off for heckling an incompetent servant. And it was not only because this nobody was so horribly outmatched that Arthur could not believe the brazen words he spoke.

For it had been several years, but once, he had heard almost those exact same words from a mouth almost as unexpected./em/p

• • •

"Have you always been such a prat?"

The young prince stood with his mouth agape. He had been insulted. By a girl. And he was not entirely sure what to do about it.

"Well," demanded his aggressor, tapping her foot impatiently, "have you?"

"I,"-hang it all! It didn't help that she was taller than he was-"am not a prat," he said at last, stupidly.

She threw back her head and laughed-a high, clear, but somehow cold sound-her ebony curls flowing effortlessly over her shoulders like a dark waterfall. Her eyes gleamed with mischief and a caustic mirth disconcerting in a child of ten. When she caught her breath again, she eyed him with amusement.

"Arthur Pendragon," she proclaimed, "you most certainly are a prat."

Arthur opened his mouth, shut it again, turned away, then turned back. "If you weren't a girl..."

"You'd fight me?" she inquired. "Fight me anyway."

Arthur stared. "What?! No!" He continued to splutter, and the girl began to laugh again. "You're a girl; I can't fight you! My father-"

A well aimed blow to his chest stopped him mid-sentence, and he found himself sprawled, winded, against the wall. The girl looked down at him expectantly, head tilted to one side, arm still extended from the punch she had delivered. Arthur stared back up at her dumbly, and at last she sighed and drew herself up.

"I guess you really won't fight me. How disappointing."

Words flitted through his mind, forming retorts, but his mouth would not work; this girl seemed to have rendered it permanently unhinged. Not only that, but his legs refused to allow him back up, and his heartbeat was inordinately loud. Though it was only moments later, the girl had walked away without a second glance when Arthur managed to stand again. And when the use of his tongue returned to him moments after that, the only thing he managed to shout after her was "I'm not a prat!"

His heart was still pounding as her laugh echoed through the corridor./p