# [closed post]

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan has devised another activity to occupy her days. By the calendar's reckoning, the start of spring is roughly a week away. Between her and Tress, they've got the outline of a plan for the next Dark, and Susan is happy to rely on people who've got greater interest in and skill for growing things insofar as agriculture goes. But the growing season here shall be longer than usual, and Susan should like to have some idea about what that might mean for the ecosystem,

This is her flimsy excuse to pardon the latest stack of books she's currently carrying out of the library. There is a marginal off-chance that preparatory reading on soil biota could, potentially, be useful. Perhaps she might even talk someone else into reading on the subject as well, so that they might discuss it.

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[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I suppose," she allows, and then a tiny smile twitches across her lips. "I must confess: I've sneaked a peek at some of the submissions."

[futaille]

"Oh, have you? Don't tell me any of them, but do let me know your general thoughts."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I suspect we might be in for a treat."

[futaille]

"I am absolutely delighted to hear it."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan flashes a small smile at him. "So. Grantaire. I trust you've been well."

[futaille]

"I would be even more a fool than I already am to complain."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan gives him rather a severe look at that. "Oh?"

[futaille]

"By which I mean, yes I've been well, and in fact things are going far better than I ever envisioned for an afterlife."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Better this one than the alternative," she says, emphatically.

[futaille]

"I certainly have become quite fond of it, yes."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan, who is surprised at herself in retrospect for even tangentially referencing her issues with heaven with someone she's not particularly close to, doesn't bother correcting Grantaire. "And you've recovered from Dark?"

[futaille]

"Thankfully. It didn't end as bad as I'd feared at the start, but I still couldn't wait for it to be over."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"A universal sentiment, I believe."

[futaille]

"Almost certainly. Hence Dionysus's celebration. Although now that there's a bit of remove, I now can't help but wonder after Rainbows."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Yes, that was much needed - how was the afterparty, by the way?" Susan asks, with impeccable politeness and no small amount of curiosity.

[futaille]

"Delightful and exhausting."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Another flash of a smile. "Jolly good. I'm glad."

[futaille]

"In that case, I'm happy to be the bearer of good news."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Not too overwhelmingly masculine, I hope?" Susan would have found it too overwhelmingly masculine, but she knows she's one of the few invitees who would.

[futaille]

"I'll say we made do with what we had available, at least."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Rather a lot of cock, I imagine," says Susan, more primly than anything else she's said in months. (After all, why should she be circumspect? They both know she's sexually motivated. Susan has never bothered to learn the rules for being friendly with a one-time assignation before - in London, they were so rarely people she interacted with in any meaningful way, after the fact - but surely this is within the bounds of some sort of propriety?)

[futaille]

He laughs. "Categorically true, I must admit."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I must admit," Susan says, emboldened by the laugh. "I'm wildly curious. If you were generating the list on your own, rather than amending Bacchus's, who would you invite?" And then she comes to her senses, and adds, "Obviously you needn't say if you'd rather not."

[futaille]

"You know, there is some impish part of me that would just put a sign-up sheet on the table and watch what chaos unfolds from that."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Precisely how much unrest would you like to sow?" Susan wonders.