# [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]

Galahad also dislikes imprecision. He nods.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Point made, Susan starts the record again, now on the third track.

[onthewillowsthere]

He listens with her, savoring the warmth of the kotatsu on his feet and hands (which are folded neatly in his lap), the sound of the music, the faint smell of Claudius' favorite perfume. He loves these rooms, which feel more like home than anywhere ever has. He belongs here, in this life.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan settles into the sound of the scratch of the record, the little mechanical whirr underneath it, and the sound coming out of the machine. It's a little more stripped-down than the music she gravitated toward in London, and it's clear music has shifted somewhat since her time, but she likes it very much. There are songs she likes better, but none that she specifically dislikes.

She is, she finds, smiling faintly.

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad can't read her, any better than he can read anyone who isn't Claudius, but he trusts her to be someone who'll just tell him if she's bored or thinks he should make a cup of tea, and that soothes any anxiety he might feel. When the record ends he looks over at her.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I quite liked that," says Susan, ruminatively, looking back at Galahad. "I admit, I prefer the songs with the, ah. Double entendres."

[onthewillowsthere]

"I thought you would."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Her lips twist in a faint wry smile. "What do you like about it?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"It reminds me of Claudius. And I'm trying to learn to tell different instruments apart. I'm not very good at it yet, but I can tell some of the ones in these songs."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh? What have you sorted out so far?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"There is a piano in many of them. And a trumpet. Drums. The others I don't know yet. I have to learn the instruments, too."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I'm afraid I've always been fairly rubbish at distinguishing instruments," Susan admits. "I've got a miserable ear in that regard. The closest I've come to playing any sort of instrument was with my old horn."

[onthewillowsthere]

"What kind of horn?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh, some sort of old hunting horn. It sounded like a cross between a bugle and a conch. It was magical, you know. Father Christmas gave it to me. If one blew it, help would arrive posthaste." She's quiet for a moment, remembering - so much of the past year for her is murky now, but these memories are as clear as day. When she hadn't been Queen Susan the Gentle, she'd been Queen Susan of the Horn¹. "'And when you put this horn to your lips and blow it, then, wherever you are, I think help of some kind will come to you,' that's what he said. They used it to bring us back to Narnia once, when it was in crisis."


¹Her typist has taken this in a different direction altogether².
²Susan has no way of knowing this, but per an Easter egg in her intro post, the horn also brought her here!

[onthewillowsthere]

"Tell me about Narnia," with interest. This isn't something she's spoken of before. "Is it your land?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan supposes she has only mentioned it in the context of the dagger she drew from his experiment. "It was," she says. "It was another world. We got there the first time through a wardrobe, of all things - it didn't have a back, it just kept going and going, past the coats and into a wintery forest. We had to liberate it from the White Witch, and then we ruled it for fifteen years, my brothers and sister and I."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad has so many questions he almost wishes he had a notebook like Shen Yuan's to write them down in, to be sure he forgets none of them. He starts with: "Was it magic?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh yes. Very. Both literally and metaphorically, I believe."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Metaphorically?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"It was so wondrous, it would've felt magical even if it wasn't," Susan says. Her brow furrows lightly. "That sounds remarkably imprecise, doesn't it? I mean, there were elements of magic and myth everywhere you looked. But the magic was all there because of Aslan - the great Lion. And no one used magic, except Aslan and the Witch. Even Father Christmas and the river gods and Bacchus only had power because of Aslan. I suppose it's most accurate to say that magic was present, and part of the land itself, but actual workings of magic were vanishingly rare during our reign. So we didn't see it every day, except for where it was just part of the landscape. But compared to England..." She trails off. "I'm afraid I'm not making any sense."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Like here," Galahad says, simply.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"In many ways, yes. I would say - this place is queer and magical and unexpected. Shifting. Narnia was queer and magical, but predictable. Really the greatest similarity was - we left Narnia, you know, fifteen years into our reign. Not on purpose. We were called back a year later, in our time, and fund that over one thousand years had passed in Narnia. So the streams we'd played in had become canyons; our castle was in ruins and the peninsula it sat upon had become an island. Logical changes, but ones for which we were unprepared."

[onthewillowsthere]

He waits -- it feels like she's telling a story, one that she hasn't finished.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"The changes here are faster and less predictable."

[onthewillowsthere]

He thinks of the sheds and how they found Drosera, and nods. "Is that why you spoke to Drosera when you first met her?"