I put the stack of books down on my kitchen table and rubbed my aching arms. In addition to carrying in the very large pile, we'd grabbed a takeaway on our way home. Although I didn't really have the money for it, I definitely didn't have the energy to cook and I didn't have much food left either way.

My usual budget wasn't going to last very long if I had to keep feeding two of us and not just one. And especially if I got takeaway again. On top of that I had needed to put a hefty deposit down on the books just to take out the more rare ones. I sighed, trying not to think about how much this was costing me, but Arthur seemed to pick up on my sadness.

"I'm sorry. I appear to have made you unhappy. I don't mean to. Is there anything I can do to make it better?"

I took the takeaway into the kitchen to plate it up, not sure that I could reply yet. How did I answer that question? There was nothing he could do to make it better. He had no money, no home and very clearly no ability to survive five minutes on his own. But I couldn't afford to keep him either.

He followed me into the kitchen but had the sense to hang back a bit and give me some space.

"I know that you're doing a lot for me and I am very grateful. I promise that I will pay you back."

"Can you?" I asked, sounding more angry than I'd intended. I considered apologising, but he didn't seem to mind and simply came in closer to help me put the food on plates and get cutlery.

"I can. I have money, I just need to find it. And I will make sure that no matter what happens, you are all right."

I stopped and looked at him, not sure I understood.

"What do you mean, you just need to find your money?"

"I had several treasuries buried in various places to ensure that when I woke again there would be plenty of supplies for me to work with. I just need to figure out where they were. One should have been very close to me, but I didn't get a chance to look for it. I thought there would be others and I could unbury them as I needed.

"What kind of treasure are we talking about?" I asked as I handed him his plate and walked toward the small table.

"Coins, precious gems, a crown or two. It varies from location to location, but each one should be enough alone to help us."

I sat down, considering how we might go about finding them and getting at them before I caught myself again.

"It's crazy. This whole thing is crazy."

"If you think you feel crazy, how do you think I feel?" Arthur replied. "Everyone is treating me as if I am very crazy and no one is helping me but you. I literally sacrificed the last time I could have had in Camelot with Guinevere and my friends to make sure that the future of my country was protected."

Pausing before a mouthful I considered his words. I didn't doubt that this would be difficult for him if everything was true. It must be miserable in some ways and overwhelming and even scary. But I was taking a lot on faith.

"I think this must be even more difficult for you. I don't understand a lot of what you're telling me and you don't understand a lot of now. That doesn't make this any less difficult for me to handle and sort through or to process."

Arthur nodded and looked down, still not touching his food. When he finally looked up at me, there was a shine to his eyes that spoke of barely held back tears.

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"You are right of course, forgive me. You are a lot like her, you know."

"Who?" I asked, although I thought I might know who he meant.

"Guinevere. She used to remind me that it wasn't all about me when I needed to hear it as well."

"Sounds like something you needed to hear often," I replied, teasing and smiling so he'd know I didn't mean any harm by it. He let out a snort of laughter but nodded.

"More often than I'd like to admit. I appreciated it, however, even if there were times she was like fire I couldn't understand or control."

"Fierce then?" I asked.

"Very. She knew her mind. Not something that women were meant to do then, but it seems women here can. So many come and go on their own and to be looking after books..." he trailed off, another thing so wildly different between our times that it was blowing his mind.

We ate in silence for a while. I didn't know what to say and I didn't know how to bring the subject back to anything helpful, or if I even wanted to. The truth was, I didn't know how to help him beyond giving him a place to stay and time to figure himself and the world around him out.

And if he was crazy, the good news was that he seemed to want to adjust. He appeared to want to fit in and that was something that crazy people, in my experience, didn't have the capacity for. They were crazy simply because they had no idea that they were. Arthur was aware that he was out of place, even if he still wasn't hiding it.

"If I could find where one of my treasure chambers was, would it help you?" he asked after a while. "Would it help me?"

I shrugged. "I don't actually know for sure. I think the money might help a little. I don't earn a lot and we have to pay for food."

"And you gave that librarian woman money for the books, did you not?"

"That was a deposit. In theory, if we return the books in the same condition we get it back." I didn't elaborate that it was only for the more rare ones specifically. I figured it was better if he took care of all of them.

"Then, yes, let me find one of my treasure stores and help you. I think this would be a good next goal while I learn more about this world."

I nodded, but I felt my insides knot at the same time. I didn't want to disappoint him, but finding them was unlikely to be easy.

"Do you have any maps?" he asked me. "Or pictures of an area? Or can we go in this horseless carriage of yours?"

"It's called a car, remember?" I asked and then noticed the hint of sadness that appeared in his eyes and vanished again.

#be nice,# I told myself. #He doesn't mean to struggle and not understand.#

"I could take you there in the car this weekend if you had a good idea of where we needed to go. I think looking at maps first is a good idea." I considered the best way for a moment and went to fetch a tablet. It was the largest of the screens that could be manipulated easily enough and it would blow his mind when he discovered how detailed the maps could be.

He was sitting on the sofa by the time I came back out of my room with the tablet and had made us both some tea. I marveled at how natural it felt to sit down beside him and enjoy it. And he seemed genuinely interested in whatever I had to show him, even if he didn't understand it yet.

As I pulled up the map program and asked him where he was found, his eyes grew wider and wider. Glastonbury was our starting point and I zoomed in by pulling the map around with two fingers. It didn't take long to load a more detailed image and then another detailed one.

"It's hard to see the exact lay of the land," Arthur said when I handed it over to him and he looked around the area a bit. "I can't tell if this is all flat or if there are some hills."

I took it back and added the height lines before giving it to him and explaining how to read it. Again he sat stunned at the level of detail I could pull up.

"And does this control some little camera that we can get to move around somewhere and send us an image?" he asked.

As I shook my head, I smiled. "Not exactly. Someone else took these images and put them together for us. They use a combination of a car that drives down roads and they use satellites."

His gaze turned to me again, clearly not understanding the last word.

"I'll explain another time. It's more complicated than knowing these were taken previously and sort of pieced together for us to look at."

Arthur nodded and went back to looking. I got up and left him to it, tidying the apartment and trying to figure out what food we had. I wasn't sure if I expected him to find anything or not, but he made me jump when he called for me in only a few minutes.

"I'm pretty sure I've found one."