The t-shirt fabric is thinner and springier than either his old linen and wool tunics or the soft sweaters and slacks he's been wearing; he likes the lightness of it, though he thinks he would be too cold to wear something like it. He feels the pressure of Magnus against his body, the heat that radiates out of him even when he isn't conjuring summer. Fasting has always been a solitary thing: in the nunnery he was often alone -- except at mealtimes, which were taken in silence, and at mass and prayers, when he sat by himself in the first pew and no one spoke to him except God -- and in Camelot he fasted more seriously than anyone else, even Percival.

He only remembers a handful of times when it ended in something like camaraderie: once when he drank too much wine too quickly at Easter and afterwards blushed and laughed at everything Percival said; once at Epiphany when he ate meat again and Percival had twelfth cake with fruit and found the broad bean in it. All his happy memories of breaking fast are like that: Percival is there.

Suddenly he feels so sad that it takes his breath away. He doesn't know whether he'll ever see Percival again. The person he was in Camelot feels as distant and unfamiliar to him as any other knight there -- impossible to read or sympathize with, a stone statue of a man with God's voice in his ear, someone who never questioned anything until Claudius asked him if he doubted his purpose -- but that person would have defined himself by Percival's friendship. He misses Percival's light, his chatter, his stories, his touch. He misses watching him catch fish and build fires, misses praying beside him, misses his Welsh accent and the way he knew about every natural thing. He misses everything.

He tries to imagine Magnus instead. He tries to imagine sitting by the water, looking at the stars, eating dates, the sweetness on his tongue.

"Thank you," he says at last.