She made him want to say words like fustian and yeoman. Sedge and samite. Everything was texture with him. His skin, his clothes, his breath, his words as they leaked shyly from his lips. And he would not have been surprised that if that morning, by the reservoir, an arm might have emerged triumphantly out of the grey depths, waving a silver sword, calling him by his secret name, his soul name. A beckoning and an awakening.
So he stood waiting by the water’s edge, hoping for a sign. For she had declared in his Aunt’s garden that he was special, that he was a knight from another age and that one day, one day soon, he would find the thing that would define him, that would make solid all that had been so vague and broken. He would keep the faith. He would raise that sword high. Demeter had restored his wonder and his heart knew it.