^ [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

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I do beg your pardon?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan wouldn't classify herself or Lancelot as 'idiots,' and she also would not classify what they have is incomprehensible, indescribable, or having lasted for thousands of years. It has lasted for one year and a handful of weeks. "Written into the code?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"If it is in fact my birthday, then I must be twenty-four."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Ah. Yes. I do recall something about that."

[sporesprouter]

"Because our moons are so big in the sky, the sun goes behind them for a little while every day and it gets darker out."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan recalls the spore pamphlet she's read several times. "You've got one for each sea, is that right?"

[sporesprouter]

She nods. "They're spread evenly around the planet."

[vineleaves]

"Two birthdays, and I don't know when either of 'em are, aside from a vague idea of 'spring' and 'autumn'. In my defense though, ah, well. You saw me when I was a kid, I didn't even know what a building was, we definitely didn't have calendars to keep track of stuff like that. Not to mention how often calendars change, plus back then most cities had, y'know, their own wildly different calendars anyway."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Do you know what chemicals are in the gas?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"And they don't move, or go through phases?"

[sporesprouter]

"Not really. Well, not like the moons here, anyway. They move along with the planet as it spins, but they stay in the same place in the sky."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Then I suppose you ought to select days that feel right to you."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I haven't the faintest idea," says Susan, thoughtful. "Dirigibles - rigid airships - I believe used hydrogen or helium most frequently for the initial lift, but they were nothing like these balloons. They were vast enough to carry people and cargo long distances. These... I suppose they might have anything lighter than nitrogen and oxygen."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Do they cause disruptions in the spores?" Susan wonders, thinking of how the moon affects the tides on Earth.

[sporesprouter]

Tides aren't really a thing in Lumar as such, so she doesn't interpret the question quite correctly. "The spores fall from the moons, so the sea is higher when you get to the lunagrees. It's like sailing uphill."

[onthewillowsthere]

"We could try to capture some of the gas in the laboratory. Perhaps there is a way to find its composition."

[vineleaves]

"Oh, I've done basically that in the past. Sometimes if I just feel like having a party and can't think of a decent enough excuse I tell people it's my birthday party. Not that you need an excuse for a party, but you know what I mean. It just, y'know, would be kind of fun to know when the actual days are. If the mansion spirits are aware of it themselves¹." Choosing random dates every year definitely feels like something that's easier to get away with when you're constantly traveling and rarely around the same people long enough and constant enough for them to get invited twice. He is aware that this is a distinct improvement in his life as a whole, but it does make pretending to have a birthday harder.


1. Nope.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I shall leave the balloons there until we find a way to extract the gas," says Susan, decisively. "I wonder if Constance mightn't know a good way to test it?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

How truly incredible! "But do they... churn more, I suppose... the closer you get?"

[sporesprouter]

Tress thinks the question over a bit. "I don't think so. Not really, anyway. Which makes sense, though, because the Seethe comes from down at the seafloor."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Fuck," Janet says with a rueful laugh. "I'm a cradle robber."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"You might hold a birthday party every day and settle on your favorite one for regular celebration," Susan suggests. She still doesn't believe in mansion spirits, so she can't speak to their potential awareness of birth dates.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"The Seethe?"

[aflashbastard]

"Yeah. Meant to be. Written in the stars. Fated. Anyway, it doesn't matter, since you're not married."

[lightbearinglord]

"If I were to serve food alongside this tea, it might be dried fruits or nuts."