2-Be-Continued

    She was in the kitchen when he stumbled in noisily, tripping as he went past the shelves and catching the edge of the table to keep himself from falling.     Pretending not to hear the stream of curses that followed, she kept her eyes fixed on the dishes, letting her hand trail in the soapy water. There was a loud scraping of wood against grimy concrete as he drew a chair and collapsed into it. At this she looked up, and after a moment's hesitation, she said, unnecessarily, "You've been drinking."     He clutched his head and said nothing. He hadn't shaved in weeks and stank of

Sir Perfulus: Part One Sir Perfulus and the New Squire Frankly put, my instructors didn’t know what to do with me. I stood at least a head shorter than the rest of my class, and although I was top of my class academically, I was far lacking athletically. Graduation was coming soon, and my class and I would be assigned the knights we would serve until we became knights ourselves. I was walking down the corridor towards swordplay practice, and dreading the following hour. A big lug named Gary always volunteered to be my practice sparring partner; the instructor tended to think it was him being nice to me, but really it was just Gary taki