Alfred's ears reddened. How embarrassing to have run off in the middle of his own half of the conversation, and then to have forgotten about it, on top of it all. He was too focused on his own social faux pas to notice that Miss Zelda was blushing, too; instead he glanced down at her shoes briefly before reminding himself he ought to be making an effort to look her in the face and struggled to come up with some compelling way to continue the conversation. "Oh, uh, yes," he stumbled; not as suave as he would have liked, and he wasn't entirely sure where he was going with this since he wasn't sure whether she actually cared about his expedition or was just being polite by listening to him talk about it.

"All of the, uhm, literature and myths on the subject talk about the witches taking King Arthur away by boat," he managed. "To Avalon, I mean. And it's believed that they most likely set off from Wales — so the island has to be somewhere you can reach by boat from Wales. In the days of King Arthur, which — well, it wasn't like they had cross-Atlantic cruises back then," he said with a shrug. Magic could account for some differences in the technology, but going back all the way to the days of Merlin, there was only so much that a little sailboat could do.

Of course, there was also a theory that Avalon was a metaphorical place, rather than a literal one, but Alfred and the rest of the folks who had planned the expedition had handily ignored that interpretation. They couldn't set out in search of a place that actually didn't exist.