At home with Brindle (Extended)

The Tale of Taffy and the Stone.

In the green valleys of South Wales there lived a lad named Taffy. He was as Welsh as the coal seams and the chapel bells, proud of his hills, his tongue, and his people. Yet there was one thing he would never give credence to: the legacy of Arthur.

“Legends,” Taffy would scoff, whenever the old folk told tales by the fire. “Dragons? Fairies? A sword in a stone? That’s the stuff of stories, not history.”

“Fuck King Arthur. He's a mongo. He's a fucking mongo with a round table. Yeah, he's a mongo. Yeah. Who needs a fucking wizard to help him? He's a mongo, right? Fuck King Arthur.”

Yet in the very heart of the valley there stood the Stone. A blackened monolith, scarred by rain and time, and jutting from it—a sword. It had waited there for centuries. Every knight, every lord, every swaggering braggart had come to tug and heave at it. Some had prayed, some had cursed, some had broken their backs—but none had moved it so much as an inch.

It was said that the stone would yield only to the one worthy, the one who carried the blood of kings. The valley folk whispered that the sword still rested there not because no man had tried, but because one man had not.

Taffy.

But Taffy would never go near it. To even lay a hand on that hilt would mean admitting that Arthur was no fairy tale, but flesh and blood. That dragons once coiled in the skies above Cymru, that fairies had danced in its hollows, and that Merlin’s magic was not trickery but truth. To pull the sword was not merely to claim kingship—it was to accept a world wider, stranger, and more perilous than Taffy’s reason would allow.

And so the sword remained.

Yet destiny is patient. One night, in a dream, three figures came to Taffy. They were not knights, but scholars—Alan Wilson, Baram Blackett, and Ross Broadstock. Giants of history, guardians of memory. They showed him maps written in stars and stones, chronicles hidden in forgotten manuscripts, truths buried beneath the lies of empire.

“Arthur was real,” they told him. “Your king, your blood, your heritage. But he cannot return unless you believe. Unless you try.”

Taffy awoke with his heart pounding like the chapel drum. He went to the stone at dawn, when the mist was low and the crows silent. The valley was hushed, as though it too held its breath.

For the first time in his life, Taffy placed his hand on the hilt.

The sword slid free as though it had been waiting only for him. Light broke across the hills. The rivers sang. And in that moment Taffy saw them all: dragons wheeling in the sky, fairies glimmering in the woods, Merlin himself standing upon the mountain, staff raised in blessing.

Taffy wept. For he understood then that disbelief had been the only chain holding back his people’s truth.

Thus it was not the strongest knight nor the noblest lord who freed the sword, but a lad from the valleys who dared, at last, to believe.

And with that single act, the legacy of Arthur lived again.