Title: Remember, Remember, What Else
Summary: There are moments that are never mentioned in time because there seems to be no point or meaning to them. There is a point, actually, you just have to pay attention. Hinted Amalthea/Schmendrick.
Warnings: Purely a focus on the events during the trio's stay at Haggard's castle. Small moments with just a tiny hint of nudity. Tiny-itsy-bitsy.
Dedication: To a certain special someone, katkah, who informed me that there were barely four tLU fics published within the year.

-:-
It may sound boring, but I think it's the boring stuff I remember the most.
-Up.

i.

There is blood inside her veins that Schmendrick can see but does not touch or make the effort to glance much at when he passes the Lady Amalthea standing by her window as she often and nearly always is since they had come to Haggard's castle with the lonely halls and air that was so stifling that the magician couldn't imagine how the unicorn inside the woman in her solitude could stand it.

Then he realizes that he is staring at her again and there are steps that clang and billow armor on their ways up the long-winding staircase and his eyes blink, his head turns, four steps and he is out of sight of whoever (Lir—of course—who else could it be) is now standing beside the creature that is not a woman but is barely a unicorn as each day passes and she begins to lose herself in heart and feelings the prince grants to her.

On his way back down the stone steps (each footfall leading to an echo in the tunnels that pass as castle hallways) to the King waiting for his court magician, Schmendrick bites through a corner of his cheek and swallows the blood that blooms its red and its iron flavor. The red drops soak into the lining of his throat and that feeling of nausea that surfaces each time he even thinks he sees Lir gives way to the discomfort of his own taste in his mouth.

ii.

If ink is burned and placed within the head of a pen-needle it can be used against a human's skin and leaves imprints there for as long as the two-legged creature lives. Lady Amalthea read this in one of the very few books King Haggard left about the castles for his own self-interest; and it almost frightened her when she looked upon the old, wax-work colored pages to see drawn figures of men (there was no experience she could recall to consider them ugly or beautiful, but she honestly paid more attention to the marks left on their skin rather than the men themselves—there were no women figures in the book) holding out their arms or legs or standing with open backsides to be viewed by artist and those with idle curiosity.

Dragons of the Orient curling their scaly and ancient bodies into the curve of a toned stomach; purple Brimrose Blossoms planting themselves into the crook of the right ankle where only a lover could gain a passing glance; a tall black cross with a circle surrounding the edges to profess loyalty to God on high imprinted on a muscled arm.

It was disturbing that by accident the Lady Amalthea would look into the bathing room Haggard used so rarely and found the magician naked and wet; the chill of winter that had crept all through the castle made the steam of hot water wave off of his back like smoke, but didn't cover the single blue butterfly painted permanently on his right shoulderblade. The steam couldn't stop her wise-innocent-sad eyes from tracing the wings as he lifted a bucket from the bath and doused the crude suds from his hair and the rest of his body—each movement made those wings twitch and seem alive.

iii.

"Can you remember being born?"

Eyes like blue fire and Witch Hazel grown in a potion jar glanced over as the magician sat miserable beside the fire in the castle kitchen, swamped in all the spare blankets Molly could find; he was sick with pneumonia and a piping hot bowl of broth was grasped in both hands as he looked at the white female with all the airs of a dying man—eyes red and half-blind, nose rubbed raw from touching with a rough cloth, lips cracked and voice rough from stomach acid heaving up every hour or so.

It was one of those days where she was feeling more like the person she had forgotten on the side of a rode with the smell of demon fires in the air rather than this new self that was emerging all the time in the presence of prince Lir with his heart on his sleeve and Molly always nearby to calm her occasional spells of dizziness and sadness and something slipping into forgetfulness. As such, unfortunately, when in this persona, she looked on the magician with cold in her face and ice in her veins and nothing but an answer only someone (thing) like her could give.

"No, not even I can remember being born. Nothing that is or ever was can do something like that."

He continues to sit in his misery, but it seems less of that as in her talking there is that solidified version of universal truth that only a unicorn can know. She answered correctly and he looked back into the fire.

He hadn't lost her quite yet, if she could still look upon him with the distain of a ruined immortal rather than a rich blooded woman.