^ [open post]

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan doesn't believe in the mansion spirits, but she is being followed by something in a way that makes little sense.

It begins when she wakes up. Opening the drawer to the sideboard in her room to retrieve tea, she finds another gold chess piece wrapped neatly in ribbon. Lancelot didn't put it there - it hadn't been there when she made her pre-sleep cuppa the night before, and she woke up when he did and sleepily saw him off to his training; he hadn't gone near the drawer. She shuts the chess piece firmly away, makes her tea, and dresses blearily for her own archery practice.

There's a new bow in the closet, too. To her pleasure, it's a heavier one that requires a stronger pull - she's quite got used to the draw of the ones the closet first supplied to her.

After her shooting routine, she finds a lipstick in the precise shade Ingrid used to wear on the bathroom vanity. When she's showered and dressed for the rest of her day, she finds her favorite pastry - a sort of breakfast roll she used to get from the shop by the tube station she'd walk past on her way to work, back in London - on a platter in the kitchen.

It's when she opens one of the closets in the hall off the library to return a pile of laundered wash-cloths that she receives both some clarity and a deepening of the mystery: a jumble of assembled balloons tumbles out, made of some queer material and filled with a gas that keeps them afloat. The writing on them reads: HAPPY BIRTHDAY SUSAN PEVENSIE.

She stares at them, perplexed.


Susan's birthday post! Three days (by our reckoning) and eight months (by her reckoning) early! Feel free to have your puppets run into her in any reasonable location at any point during the day; she's just going to be accumulating more Stuff she can't get rid of as the day goes on.

Comments

[vineleaves]

"I know," he says, clearly disappointed by this fact. "I wonder if they got nervous about it -- a lot of people are nervous about any sort of audition, you know." Which is why just posting up a cast list and hoping everyone agrees to show up to rehearsals is clearly the best option right now.

[sporesprouter]

"Although, really? I don't think I'd like it if it were too predictable either."

[sorrowandsorrow]

Success, or some of it: Janet laughs as she gets to her feet. "Pretty wide margin of error there, Your Majesty."

[tallyyoungblood]

"An index doesn't find every single example of a word, though," Tally points out. She's familiar with them by this point, having leafed through lots of library books.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Do you suppose we ought to consider smaller roles for those individuals? Might it correspond to stage fright?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"No, we shouldn't want it to get dull," says Susan, though she wouldn't mind a lengthy break from all the upheaval. It does get in the way of her agendas.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Then I suppose you shall have to spend an indeterminate amount of time with me."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"No, but every individual instance is surely less helpful than a guide to the contextualized and pertinently useful applications of the words."

[sporesprouter]

Tress thrives in upheaval a bit more than she realizes, her own plans and diligence notwithstanding, so if her responding nod is a bit emphatic, it's to be expected in a way.

[vineleaves]

"It can, it doesn't always have to. Sometimes people are very nervous about an audition, but being in the actual play, doing rehearsals, having that safety net of other performers on stage with them, it can help them not be nearly as nervous. I do think we should give preference to those who did actually audition though, it seems only fair."

Here he pauses, not entirely certain how to go about this next topic of discussion. "There is -- ah, there's one particular exception to that though--"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"What do you suppose the next nonsense shall be?" Susan asks, and then, "Do you suppose it would be diverting to set up a betting pool for predicting its nonsense? The winner might... oh, I don't know. The winner might select the topic of Grantaire's next lecture - I mean to initiate the lectures soon. Or perhaps you and I might bake the winner a prize."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh?"

[sporesprouter]

"If nobody guesses it, would nobody get the prize? Or would we just decide who was the closest?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Did you care for him also?'

[lightbearinglord]

Only now that Susan has tasted it does Lan Wangji take his own slow mouthful, a savoring one. The flavor is bright, grassy, almost sweet if not for its mild bitterness.

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Twist my arm," Janet says, dryly but with a little half-smile. She absolutely doesn't bus her dishes. The mansion'll take care of it. "Lead the way."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan purses her lips. "Perhaps - nobody, but the next time the prize shall be doubled."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan flashes a smile at Galahad. "Not in the way I cared for you. Lancelot and I were children together."

[onthewillowsthere]

He absorbs this. "What was it like?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan sighs happily, secretly mildly shocked that this cuppa needs neither milk nor sugar. "I do so love a good cup of tea," she says.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan eyes the dishes, then decides that perhaps by the time she returns someone else will have handled them. "Inside or outside, Majesty?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"At the time, it seemed a grand adventure. I thought we must be destined to become fast friends. In retrospect..."

A strange look crosses Susan's face. "Galahad, will you keep a secret?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"You don't want me to tell Claudius, either?" This is an important clarification, of course, because there are things he will tell no one, but he tells Claudius most of what he learns.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan hesitates. She shan't pull a Magnus; what she has to say is more embarrassing than anything. "You may use your own judgement," she allows. "I shouldn't want to ask you to avoid a subject with your husband."

[onthewillowsthere]

"All right."