Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
first released 30th August 2021

Jim knocked on the doorframe. Douxie was sat on his bed, guitar plugged into his mini-amp, which was in turned plugged into a pair of can headphones. Archie sat meatloafed on the bed by his side. Jim could barely hear the sound leaking out as Douxie's fingers flew over the frets and strings and the wizard didn't notice him.

Jim knocked louder. Douxie still didn't notice.

Jim stepped into the room and waved his hand between Douxie and the guitar.

The wizard jumped about half a foot and tore off his headphones. "Bleeding balroths, give me a heart attack, why don't you?" he demanded.

"Sorry," said Jim. "Also, what if I'd been someone trying to kill you?"

Still trying to catch his breath, Douxie nonetheless smirked. "That's what Archie's for."

"Don't bring me into this," remarked the dragon, not bothering to move or open his eyes.

"So. What can I do for you, Jim?"

"Uhh..." Jim leaned against the wall. "This is going to sound stupid, but I could use some help with my costume for the play."

"What did you do the first time?" Douxie asked.

Jim winced. "I wore my armor."

"...Yeah, that's right out," Douxie agreed. He shook his fingers out, interlaced them, and stretched his hands high over his head. "Well, it's been a while since I've done any tailoring, but I could probably manage to come up with something. Do you and Claire have any ideas on how well you want to match? And, what kind of restrictions has your director got in place?"

"I have no idea," Jim confessed. "I kind of auditioned in the armor last time, so I really wasn't part of the costuming process."

That earned him a facepalm and a muttered "Of course."

"You could come to rehearsal on Monday and help us hammer it out with Miss Janeth?" Jim suggested.

Douxie sighed. "All right," he agreed. "But you're learning to sew," he warned. "I'm not making the entire costume by myself."

"Deal," agreed Jim.


Test subject number one of Jim's efforts at cooking troll food was Draal. He crunched his way through klor-na-tek, which Jim could only label as a stew, then ate the bowl as well.

(Jim was prepared. He'd hit up the thrift stores for cheap pottery and cutlery, knowing he was never getting them back. Also a battered canning pot, since he didn't want to cook any /human/ food in the same pot he'd used for troll food. And he'd thought ahead and left the doors and windows open and a fan going, so the kitchen didn't even stink too much.)

"Not bad," Draal complimented him.

"Any critiques?" Jim asked.

Draal thought about it. "My mother used to make it with bits of metal on top, for extra crunch. Little things with holes." He held his fingers together, approximating a size.

"Nuts, then. Or maybe washers," Jim said, making a mental note.

"Other than that... no, that was very good." Draal settled down with a sigh. "I haven't had klor-na-tek in decades."

"Gotta say, not surprised at all at you learning to make troll food, Jimbo," Toby said from where he was seated with his own bowl. Far-i-kal was literally just lamb, cabbage, and spices. Easy enough to make, and both visually and texturally not that different from Draal's meal.

"Well, it's rude for me to cook for us and not for Draal," Jim pointed out. "So, question," he said, looking back at Draal. "I know trolls eat cats. Is there a reason you don't eat other kinds of meat? Well, other than eating humans being, you know, /bad/."

Draal snorted laughter. "We will also eat rats and stray dogs. And any wildlife that we can catch, really. Larger animals... well, you humans notice a cow going missing a good deal more than some feral cats. We stopped eating most of your domestic animals out of self-preservation."

"So it's not that you can't eat beef, then," Jim said. "It's just that it wasn't worth the swords and pitchforks."

"Exactly. Though how you humans can ruin your meat with fire, I will never understand."

"Yeah, well, I still don't get how you think sweaty socks are tasty," Toby replied.

"Agree to disagree, then," Jim advised.


Monday afternoon found Douxie sitting in a folding chair in the Arcadia Oaks High School gym/auditorium. He watched for a while as the drama director ran her various actors through the scenes. Eventually Jim and Claire were dismissed for a bit so that Benvolio and Mercutio could be put through their paces. They came and sat on either side of Douxie until they were needed again.

"So, what do you think?" asked Claire.

"I think I want to get a ticket to see this production in its entirety," Douxie replied. "Jim, have a pencil and some blank paper I can use?"

"Sure." His friend and future king dug through his bag and handed Douxie the requested items.

"Claire, you said your costume last time around was fairly similar to your clothing in Camelot?"

"Plainer, and different colors, but yeah."

"Hmm." Douxie bent over the notebook, doing a quick drawing of her twelfth-century clothing as best he remembered it. Jim needed to wear something complementary, so they didn't look like they came from two different plays. But not what Douxie had worn in Camelot - something different, something that dated a little later and perhaps with a bit more Gallic style...

He started sketching.

"Wait. Are you left-handed, Douxie?"

He grinned at Claire. "I am indeed. I could tell you that it's a sign of wizardry, and you'd have to believe me."

"No I wouldn't, because it's not. Is it?"

"Why do you think Arthur cut off Morgana's left hand?" Douxie considered Jim's build and preferences. Definitely not pumpkin pants or breeches. Trousers, then, with something decorative down the side seams. Blue and brown would suit him best, with some gold thrown in to catch the stagelights and indicate Romeo's noble status...

Claire's eyes were wide. "You're kidding. Aren't you? Jim, tell me he's kidding!"

"But I've seen you play your guitar," Jim said. "You do that right-handed."

"By now," Douxie said, adding a half-cape to the sketch for dramatic flair, "I'm functionally ambidextrous. And I am kidding. The sinister hand has nothing to do with wizardry, it's just something that happens."

"The sinister hand?!" Claire demanded.

Douxie shrugged. "People have strange prejudices and ideas. Such as left-handedness being related to witchcraft. I've mostly trained myself out of it over the centuries. It made it too easy for people to get the right idea."

"Ugh. The more I learn about history, the more I hate it," Claire complained.

"Can't say I enjoyed it all the time either," Douxie agreed, finishing his design. "There, what do you think?"

"Holy..." Claire mumbled.

"You can make that?" asked Jim.

"We can make that," Douxie corrected. "It's ninety percent straight seams."

"It looks good to me," Jim said.

"Miss Nuñez! Mister Lake! We need you back on stage," called the director.

"Coming!" called Claire. She turned back to Douxie and grinned. "Come on, let's go get your designs approved."

"Why are you dragging me into this?" Douxie complained, but followed their lead over to the woman with perhaps the most impressively styled hair Douxie had seen since the nineteenth century.

"Miss Janeth," Claire said, "before we go back on, can we get costume approval from you?"

"Well, that depends," she said.

Jim showed her the drawings. "Would something like this be okay?"

"Hmm." She took the sketches and studied them. "And who drew these?"

"I did," Douxie said.

The teacher looked him up and down. "You have a flair for costume design," she said after a moment. "Are you by any chance considering a career in the theater?"

He'd had a couple careers in theater already, and wouldn't be opposed to another, but that wasn't what she was asking. Her question, in fact, sounded like she liked what he'd come up with. "Not at this time," Hisirdoux answered honestly. "I'm considering my options before committing to anything."

"Well, if you did, I think you would go far." She handed the notebook to Douxie. "Costumes approved, and if you can wait half an hour, young man, I can show you all our donated materials so the three of you can start making them. Now, places!" she told Jim and Claire.


Barbara came home to find Jim standing in the middle of the living room, Douxie knelt by his side with a measuring tape. "Hi, boys," she said. "What's up?"

"Nothing much," Jim said. "Douxie's helping me with my costume for the play."

"Legs wider, I need your inseam, please," the older boy said. Jim shifted. Douxie took a measurement and wrote it down in the open notebook by his side. "Right, I think that's it for now."

"Is there anything you can't do, Doux?" Jim asked as Barbara put away her purse and jacket.

"Plenty," Douxie replied, standing. "Potions, obviously. So, chemistry? And I'm no better at algebra than you are."

Barbara paused, looking at the two of them. Jim was smiling at Douxie, looking relaxed in a way she now realized she hadn't often seen him. And for his part, Douxie was smiling back, looking equally fond of her son.

"Definitely not algebra," Jim said. "You're even worse than me, and I didn't think that was possible."

She blinked, and wondered, as Douxie messed up Jim's hair and Jim shoved him away, laughing, if she needed to have a certain conversation with Jim.


The silver needle flashing back and forth through the fabric was hypnotic. Archie's tail twitched in time to the tiny stitches. "My, this takes me back," he said eventually.

Douxie smiled. "Good times, eh, Arch?"

"Quiet times, at least."

Douxie paused his sewing to rub between Archie's ears. Archie purred, he couldn't help it. Not that Douxie had ever been shy of physical affection with him, but he had been even more so as of late. Ever since he got his memories of that future which would hopefully not come to pass.

A quick backstitch to strengthen the seam, and Douxie sewed on.

"You're not going to make costumes for both of them, are you?" Archie asked.

"I might do. Only the best for my king and his future queen, after all," said Douxie, sounding for a moment like the more ebullient, younger version of himself he'd been only a few weeks before. Now, though, he was older. Wiser. Sadder.

Stronger.

But for all that, Archie wasn't sure he liked the change. He definitely didn't like the implied pain that had forged his boy into a man.

"You're not serious about that king business, are you?" he asked.

"Quite serious," Douxie replied. His eyes met Archie's. "He pulled Excalibur from the stone, Archie. You know what that means. Do you remember what the Lady of the Lake said?"

"Oh, yes, I remember. She was rather unforgettable. 'The sword is meant for those worthy. Do good with it'," Archie quoted.

Douxie nodded. "Exactly. He is worthy. And if I'm to seek a star to sail my ship by, I could do a lot worse than James Lake, Junior." His long, nimble fingers never stopped moving. The stint as a tailor's apprentice had taught him well to keep working while he talked; it seemed that centuries hadn't dulled the lesson.

"Do tell me you're not planning to call him your king."

Douxie half-chuckled, his body curling around the swallowed laugh. "Could you imagine his face if I did? No, I'll stick to calling Jim by his name."

"Just as well. Though you do realize they'll be the only ones in the play with historically accurate, hand-sewn costumes," Archie pointed out.

"This?" Douxie brandished the patterned blue polyester he was working with. "This is the opposite of historically accurate, Arch! Half the lords I sewed for in the sixteen-hundreds would've killed their own mothers to get ahold of this."

"Peacocks, all of them."

"Yeah." More stitches, and a flash of scissors cutting off the thread. "Is it weird to say I miss that? Not that I ever went for it so much myself."

"Even at your most enthusiastic, you have always known better than to draw the eye," Archie told him. "But, yes, fashion has seen better centuries than the twenty-first."

"Merlin never worried about blending in," Douxie muttered, rethreading his needle.

"Merlin was untouchable," Archie rebutted. "And Morgana was the king's sister, a princess in her own right. She was nearly as inviolable as he."

"And I'm just a peasant plague orphan," Douxie said. "Only safety I had was being Merlin's errand boy, and even that was gone in five years. So, alas, I'll keep on being drab and anonymous until the whole world changes its prejudices."

"I always knew you were a smart boy."

"Yes, well." Douxie's hand found its way back to Archie's head. "I've had a good teacher."


Author's Note: Far-i-kal is a Scandinavian dish. Its name literally means "lamb and cabbage." It's very yummy! Also, welcome to my working theory on why Douxie is seemingly left-handed but plays guitar right-handed. For context on Douxie's remark on Miss Janeth's hair, look up women's hairstyles of the 1820s-1830s. They're wild! And, yes, men did used to dress much more colorfully and interestingly than they have since, well, largely that same timeframe. Beau Brummell has a lot to answer for. (And, yes, that's more of me digging into Douxie's wardrobe choices and seeming invisibility. He has historical reasons to want to be unnoticed.)