re: Bard's Poor Attempt at a Combined Marvel/DC Universe (an ongoing project)

Man this is so good. You have a real talent. I am enjoying this immensely.

Young Arthur Curry looked up from his book with yet another question. "So was King Arthur real or not?"

His father, Tom Curry, answered without looking up from his cooking, "That answer is lost to history, son. The better question may be 'do you want him to have been real?'"

Tom Curry had always been a simple man. He had never needed a big home nor a grand carriage to feel good about himself. He was a carpenter by trade but Tom's real love was the constant discovery he experienced from reading books of knowledge. Even now, Tom considered the book he had just finished, a book on tides, currents and their impacts on life in the oceans. Life in the oceans... Tom arrested those thoughts, there was no reason in going back there but sometimes the memories came unbidden on their own.

Like now.

It had been almost a decade since Alanna had left he and Arthur. He long ago decided that her not returning meant she was dead but that didn't dull the pain, even after all these years.

He had found her washed up on the rocks of his small, lighthouse island during a brutal storm. It had been pure luck he had been outside lashing down his supplies and looking her way when the raging seas spat her out like a soured grape. He thought surely she must be dead as there were no ships around for her to have come from and she landed head-first onto a large rock then lay there motionless.

Tom had thrown all caution to the wind as he scrambled down to her. He paid the blowing wind and stinging rain only enough attention to make sure he could make it to her without taking too much damage himself. He had found her then, lying on her stomach, facing away from him. Her shoulder-length black hair had washed around her face, some sticking to her strange, scale-clad garments. He rolled her over then felt a sense of growing urgency as he noticed the large and growing bruise on her forehead. He had seen the impact of her head against rock and was certain that no one could have survived that (even if she had somehow managed to survive adrift at sea in this storm). She had though, he smiled at that thought, at his naivete.

He had taken her back to the lighthouse then proceeded to watch over her until she woke a day later. In those early days she was often dizzy and apt to vomit when she rose from more than a seated position. Tom cared for her as she slowly mended. Being the only two on the island they had plenty of time to talk. As she mended, they grew ever closer.

This was the part Tom liked to remember, the days and weeks and months of their bonding, the day the priest came out from Boston and married them, the months of her pregnancy, the birth of Arthur, the few years they had together as a family. It had felt truly magical.

She had long since told him of her lineage. He hadn't believed it at first even though she had proven to be far stronger than he. It wasn't until that late spring afternoon when she submerged herself near the dock for an hour until he began to believe her tale as being more than just fanciful teasings. It was true, she really could breathe underwater and really did come from a realm beneath the waves called Atlantis!

He had been only slightly worried when she left. She had wanted to return home briefly, to contact her family and let them know she not only still lived but had now started a family with "the most wonderful man of the surface". He still remembered holding Arthur in his arms as they waved to her well after she had sunk beneath the ocean's surface.

"I think I want him to have been real," Arthur decided aloud and with a nod of his head. Arthur's words brought Tom back from the past, he found himself thankful for it but also a little sad. It was at that point Tom realized he had been thinking about Alanna more often lately and, more pointedly, about her Atlantean heritage as Arthur had recently begun showing those same abilities.

The boy was already as strong as a blacksmith and could stay above and below the waters as long as he liked with not a single ill effect. Tom had schooled Arthur to silence on letting others see what he could do. The witch trials in Salem had been long ago but people in these parts were still quick to label things they didn't understand as "witchcraft".

A knock at the door startled both Tom and Arthur. Visitors rarely came during the day and it was now after sunset. So new and uncommon was this event that neither did more than stare at one another with matching quizzical looks, almost as if each blamed the other for the sound.

"I'm looking for Tom and Arthur Curry," a voice called through the heavy door. It was a woman's voice, it was soft, it was timid and -even with the muffling of the heavy wooden door- Tom recognized it as the same voice he heard with both his head and his heart in every night's dream.

It was Alanna.