I may not always know what's right, but I know I want you here tonight.

“Yep.” Mallos answered. For the first time since Arthur had died, he felt a little smirk tug at the corner of his mouth. “Best description I’ve ever heard of King Arthur. Good work, Ned.”

Ned’s question about the ‘go-fasterer’ stripes was met with an almost identical answer. Mallos grinned at his approval of the car’s speed and noise; he kept it in a low gear to maximise the sound of the engine until they joined the main road, after which he reluctantly put it back up to a more acceptable level. Even in the correct gear, the old engine purred like a hungry tiger, ready to bound forward as soon as he dipped his toe.

“Ponies and dinosaurs it is.” Outwardly, Mallos gave no indication of his internal disappointment; he smiled and kicked the car up a gear to overtake a pootling SEAT.

The roads in Madrid were a bloody nightmare, as was only to be expected. Approaching the city wasn’t so bad, but once they were in they slowed up to a mind-numbing thirty or so kilometres an hour. Mallos rolled the window back up, tapped the power button on the stereo and showed Ned how to cycle through the albums on his SD card. He peeled off the roads into the first city-centre carpark with available spaces and parked up, grimly contemplating the return journey. He twisted the key in the ignition and pulled it out, exited the vehicle and moved round to the other side to open the passenger door and unstrap Ned. Once the toddler was out, Mallos lifted him back up onto his shoulders. Safer and faster for moving through the capital city.

As they exited the carpark and walked down the high street, Mallos pointed out interesting and completely ordinary features of the city to Ned, telling him stories about each which were a mixture of historical fact and fantastical make-believe. Where reality was dull, he spiced it up with imaginative quirks. They passed cafes, restaurants and shops of all kind, until Mallos stopped outside a glass-walled building named Imaginarium. He swung Ned back off his shoulders so that the young boy could go through the smaller children’s door and stepped through the adult door himself to meet him on the other side.

“And here,” Mallos spread his arms, “we have the finest selection of ponies and dinosaurs in all of Spain. But…” He crouched down next to Ned, straightening his shirt. “The ponies and dragons here pretend to just be toys while they’re in the shop in case they scare the humans, so they won’t come to life until we get home.” He stood back up again and took his son by the hand. “Let’s go find the noblest steed.”

Mallos
I've learned enough to know I'm never letting go