Excalibur Totallly

Let me just say this upfront: being embedded in a rock for an unspecified number of years is not the glamorous origin story people think it is, at all.

Yes, I’m that sword.

The one in the stone.

No, you cannot pull me out. Trust me, they’ve tried.

There was a sign, BTW. Not for me. For them.

Whoso pulleth this sword from this stone… etc., etc.

Very dramatic. Slightly desperate. Also unclear on hygiene requirements, which feels like a major oversight given the target audience.

They came in waves at first. Knights. Princes. Men with names like they expected me to care. Sir This, Duke That, a Viscount of Something-With-Two-Hyphens. You could always tell the ones who thought they had it. Grip too tight. Breathing weird. A lot of unnecessary eye contact.

One of them winked at me.

Sir, this is a rock.

I developed a system, obviously. First impressions matter. Posture, grip, general presence—

Not vibe. I don’t say vibe.

Presence.

Anyway, none of them had it.

And before you ask, no, I was not “stuck.” I was selective.

People like to tell the story as if they couldn’t pull me out. As if it were some failure on their part. Which, sure, technically. But I prefer to think of it as me maintaining standards. You don’t just hand yourself over to the first person who shows up in polished armor, snazzy facial hair, and unresolved childhood issues.

I rejected at least forty-seven potential kings before lunch one day. That’s not an exaggeration. That’s a conservative estimate.

You’re welcome.

There was a line. Not an official one. No ropes or anything. But there was definitely an understanding. And somehow every man in armor thought he was exempt from it. Cutting. Pushing. Clearing his throat like that would help.

It did not.

And look, I get it. I’m beautiful. It’s a lot. I don’t say that lightly. I have a mirror-like finish. Balanced weight. A presence that communicates, without being crass, destiny. If you saw me, you’d understand. People talk about me like I’m an object, which is rude, but also I am an object, so it’s complicated.

The point is, I knew what I was doing there.

I mean, obviously, the whole point of all of it was me. That seemed clear. At the time.

Days blurred. Seasons changed. Cloaks got heavier. Beards got worse. The attempts slowed, then picked up again whenever someone new convinced themselves they were different. They weren’t.

I started ranking them. Not by strength. Obviously. By presentation. You’d be shocked how many future kings don’t understand basic grooming. Nails. Hands. Breath. I’m right here. We’re going to be in close contact. Make an effort.

One of them brought flowers.

I don’t know what he thought was going to happen. I don’t have a vase.

Still. Points for initiative.

And then there was the boy.

I almost didn’t notice him at first. Which, in hindsight, should have been a sign.

No armor worth mentioning. No speech. No announcement. He wasn’t even in line. He was there to help someone else. Holding things. Running errands. The kind of presence that disappears into the edges.

I remember thinking, this is not the energy we’re going for.

He didn’t look at me like the others did. No scanning. No calculating. No “this will make me king” face. He looked at me like I was… I don’t know.

A thing.

Rude.

He reached for me like he was picking up something that belonged to him. Not with entitlement. Just… familiarity. Like he’d done it before, in some other version of the world where this wasn’t a spectacle.

And then…

Well.

You know.

It wasn’t dramatic. That’s the thing no one tells you. There wasn’t a struggle. No moment where everything held its breath.

He just pulled.

And I came free.

Just like that.

There was a sound, I think. Or maybe that was the crowd. Or the story starting to rewrite itself in real time.

Everyone stared at him.

I stared at him.

He stared at me.

And I thought, very clearly, finally.

This is what it’s been about.

Him, obviously. But also me.

Mostly me.

He became King Arthur, and I became… well. Me, but in motion. No more rock. No more waiting. We had places to be. Things to do. A whole kingdom to establish, apparently.

It was a lot very quickly.

Coronations. Crowds. People kneeling. Which I had mixed feelings about, because technically they were kneeling to him, but I was right there, so.

Shared credit.

We went everywhere together at first. Which felt correct. He held me constantly. Displayed me. Practiced with me. There was an understanding. I was central. Visible. Necessary.

Finally.

I thought this is what it means to be chosen.

And to be fair, I was excellent.

Light in his hand. Balanced. Precise. We moved well together. There’s an intimacy to it that people don’t talk about. The way a hand learns you. The way you learn the pressure, the angle, the moment before movement.

We were good.

Better than good.

We were inevitable.

Battles came, because of course they did. You don’t become a king and then take a quiet administrative role. There are always men who disagree. Loudly. With weapons.

The first time, I was… excited feels like the wrong word, but it was something like that. This was the part where I mattered in a way people could see. Where everything I was built for would finally be obvious.

It was.

We cut through them. Clean. Efficient. There’s a rhythm to it. A terrible, undeniable rhythm. Movement, resistance, release. Again. Again. Again.

I noticed things.

The sound, mostly. Not the clash. The quieter ones. The ones after.

I told myself everyone was being a little dramatic.

People fall down. It happens.

But it kept happening.

The faces changed. The ones looking at us. Not awe, exactly. Something sharper. Something that didn’t care about me at all.

After the first battle, he didn’t hold me up.

There was no moment.

No acknowledgment.

He just… let me drop to his side and kept walking.

I remember thinking, that felt like a miss.

We kept going.

More battles. More victories. Stories started forming around us. Around him. Songs. Names. Places attached to what we did.

I assumed, naturally, that I would be a major part of those stories.

I was not.

There were mentions. Sure. “His sword.” “The blade.” Occasionally someone would get specific. But mostly, it was about him. His decisions. His mercy. His strength. His restraint. His stupid Round Table.

But Restraint was a big one.

Which I found confusing, because that was not something I was particularly involved in.

I started noticing how often I wasn’t in his hand.

Meetings. Councils. Long conversations where he would sit with people who were clearly not qualified to advise him, and just… listen. Hands empty. No need for me.

I had thoughts about that.

I had a lot of thoughts, actually.

I just didn’t have anywhere to put them.

There was a day, I don’t know which one. They blur, like I said, when he set me down after a fight and didn’t pick me back up for a long time.

Not a pause.

Not a breath.

A long time.

I could see him from where I was. Sitting. Head down. Blood on his hands. Not mine. His.

People came to him. Not to me. They spoke softly. Carefully. Like he might break.

No one looked at me.

I remember thinking, I was right there.

I had just…

I mean, I had been..

And he set me down like I was… finished.

That was the first crack.

Not dramatic. Just… there.

Things shifted after that. Subtly. Then not so subtly.

He still used me. Of course he did. I was good. The best, arguably. That didn’t change.

But I wasn’t… central.

Necessary, maybe. Useful. Effective.

But not the point.

I didn’t like that.

I tried to reframe it. Maybe this was what it meant to be important. To be beyond needing acknowledgment. To be understood without being mentioned.

That sounded mature.

It also sounded like something people say when they’re not getting the attention they deserve.

More time passed.

More battles.

Less certainty.

He grew… quieter. Not weaker. That’s not the word. Just… heavier. Like everything he carried had weight, I couldn’t cut through.

I was there for the moments people remember. The victories. The turning points. The things that get written down.

I was also there for the ones they don’t.

The nights. The silence. The way he would sit and not reach for me.

I started to understand something I didn’t want to understand.

And then, at the end, when everything narrowed to one place and one moment, he called for me.

Of course he did.

This was it.

The final scene. The culmination. The part where everything comes back to what it was always about.

Us.

He held me again. Not the same way. Slower. Like remembering.

His hands were shaking.

That was new.

He spoke. Not to me. To someone else. Instructions. Specific. Clear.

And then I heard it.

Not a suggestion.

A command.

Take the sword… and throw it back into the water.

I actually thought I misheard.

Which is ridiculous, because I don’t have ears. But still.

After everything?

After me?

There was hesitation. Not his. The other one’s. I understood that. I would have hesitated too. It didn’t make sense. This is not how stories go. You don’t just… return the central object.

You don’t remove me from the equation.

I waited for him to correct it. To clarify. To realize what he was asking.

He didn’t.

He wasn’t looking at me.

That was the thing.

He wasn’t looking at me at all.

He was looking somewhere else. Past everything. Past the moment. Past me.

I had a thought then. Not a comfortable one.

That maybe, in this moment—this moment I had been waiting for, building toward, assuming would finally center me…

I wasn’t what he needed.

The realization didn’t arrive all at once. It doesn’t work like that. It was more like something loosening. A grip I didn’t know I had.

The hesitation ended.

I felt movement. Not in the way I was used to. Not guided. Not directed. Just… released.

Air.

Then water.

Cold. Quiet. Immediate.

For a second, if I can measure seconds, I wanted to fight it. To insist. To reassert. To remind the world of what I was, what I had done, what I meant.

But there was a hand.

Lady of the Lake, if we’re being formal about it.

She took me without effort. Without ceremony. Like I had always belonged there.

Which, apparently, I did.

The surface closed above us.

Everything went still.

I had time then. More than I had ever had, in a different way. No line. No attempts. No battles. No expectation of being reached for.

Just… quiet.

I thought about the stone. About the waiting. About all the men who tried and failed. About the boy who didn’t try the same way.

About the way I came free.

I thought about the battles. The moments I counted. The ones I didn’t.

I thought about how often I had been right there.

And how little that had to do with what mattered.

I used to think I was the thing that made him a king.

That was a clean story. A satisfying one. Easy to hold.

I don’t think that anymore.

I think I was part of it.

Important, maybe. Necessary, at times.

But part.

And somehow…

that doesn’t feel smaller.

It feels… accurate.

I don’t know what happens next. That’s not my role. Maybe I’ll be pulled again. Maybe I won’t. Maybe there are other stories that need something like me.

Or maybe there aren’t.

For the first time, that doesn’t feel like a problem I need to solve.

There’s a kind of relief in not being waited on.

In not needing to be the moment everything turns.

In being… held, I guess. Not displayed. Not proven. Just held.

I used to think no one was worthy of me.

I think I was wrong about what that meant.

Anyway.

If someone comes looking, tell them I’m not available right now.

I have standards.