# [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.

Comments

[onthewillowsthere]

"Yes." A touch apologetic, "It's easier to show you."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Of course it is," she says, with a firm nod, and savors a sip of her tea, regarding him thoughtfully as she does. "Do you know," she says, after a spell. "I rather appreciate your tendency to suit action to word."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Thank you," Galahad says, in his usual serious way. It is something he's good at, although he hasn't quite worked out why other people aren't (except Claudius; Galahad knows that when Claudius says he will do something and then struggles to do it, there's a reason, and if he pays attention he can often find out what it is).

[quote_gentle_unquote]

She finishes her tea. "I think we ought to be friends, don't you?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"I would like that."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Jolly good," says Susan, pleased. She chases the tea with the last bite of her Jaffa cake and then pushes her mug aside. "Right. I'm ready when you are."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad rises to his feet and carefully brushes crumbs off the front of his overalls and into his palm. "I'm ready."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan rises, too, taking just a moment to nip into the bathroom and deposit the mugs on the sink counter to be washed later. "Lead the way."

[onthewillowsthere]

At one point, the record player was in a room of its own, and records seemed to appear there, like water-loving plants springing up around the edge of a pond, but since Claudius moved it to their room Galahad has noticed more and more records populating on their own shelves. Following the water, perhaps. The original room has the bulk of the records still, however, and so he takes Susan there. There are boxes and boxes of them on low tables, perfect for browsing; Galahad has been going through them slowly, taking his time. He can remember all the covers after only looking at them once or twice, the way he can with text, and he quickly finds the box of jazz and swing that Claudius tends to favor and pulls out Code Red.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan had mentally categorized this room as belonging to someone, and therefore its contents are new to her. "My goodness," she says, staring around it. "There's so many of them!"

[onthewillowsthere]

Before he began training with Lan Wangji, he spent a great deal of his free time here, deciding what records he wanted to try. He nods. "I've listened to a hundred and sixty-seven. So far."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Have you got documentation of your thoughts?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"I keep notes."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan would expect nothing less from a bright young man like Galahad. "Very good," she says, approvingly, and then a strange look crosses her face. "I wonder what's become of all the notes I left in London."

[onthewillowsthere]

"From your studies?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Yes, but - I also kept an extensive diary."

[onthewillowsthere]

He doesn't know whether she's perturbed at losing her chronicle or concerned that someone might find it in her absence -- probably she didn't keep it in cipher as Claudius does. He waits and listens as he sorts through records.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

It's neither, actually - Susan is wondering whether the people she's left behind are worried about her. It's not a concern she had in Narnia, not even once. And isn't that queer! Her siblings were with her, yes, but their parents and the old professor were all left behind, and it was as if they just... forgot.

Perhaps Susan's natural tendency is to forget, then. Forgetting to worry about her family when she was in Narnia; forgetting Narnia when she was in England. She'd forgotten to worry about Ingrid and Miriam, too, for months and months. Perhaps it's that she remembered at all that's queer, now. Except now she's had experience being the one left behind, hasn't she?

It won't do to ruminate on this now, though. She's got better things to do with her time. "It's no matter," she says, and shrugs it off briskly.

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad says nothing to that -- it does matter, or she wouldn't have thought of it, or spent so long thinking of it, but he doesn't know that he wants to point that out right now. It's just something to remember. Still, he continues not to speak. He's found that sometimes if he waits long enough people decide they want to keep talking.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan has put the threat of having an emotion firmly behind her. "Is the turntable in your room, then?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Yes. Would you like to come up?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I would."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad can no longer carry entire boxes of records effortlessly, so he chooses three or four he wants to listen to and then starts for the door.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan casts about for a conversational topic as they walk. "What other sorts of things do you keep notes on?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Tastes. I like rating things. Magnus and Shen Yuan taught me about it."