^ [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

[sporesprouter]

"Somehow I didn't even consider that option."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Perhaps it's covering all of its bases." Susan doesn't believe this, naturally.

[sporesprouter]

"You never know, I guess. I've been keeping track of my calendar too. I guess I can let you know if I get presents a few days earlier than my birthday?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Please do," says Susan. "What sort of calendar do they use in your home? Is it similar to the one here?"

[sporesprouter]

"Not to the one here so much, no. I'm not sure the calendar here is similar to anyone's."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"But you've worked out when your birthday would be?"

[sporesprouter]

"I've been keeping track of how long I've been here, and I know when I left home, so yes, I suppose so."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"When would your birthday be?" Susan wonders, and then, in quick succession, "How many days are in a year, where you're from? How do you divide time into smaller increments? Have you also got months and weeks?"

[sporesprouter]

"In about a week. From what I've gathered, my calendar is actually pretty similar to the one on your world. Although I don't think it's for quite the same reason, because we have twelve months because we have twelve moons."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"The months on our calendar were originally based on how frequently our moon was full," Susan offers, when the other part of Tress's statement catches up to her. "A week! That's so close."

[sporesprouter]

"Not as close as three days, if Galahad's calendar is correct," she says with a little smile.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan waves this off. "Have you got plans?"

[sporesprouter]

She shrugs. "Not really. Maybe I'm just being a little superstitious, but it feels like it would be tempting fate a bit."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Tempting fate! In what way?"

[sporesprouter]

"I didn't have a very nice one last year, and there's still a week for the mansion to do something that might ruin any plans I make."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan flicks through her mental calendar, then nods. "How dreadful," she says. "A bad visitor, or no visitor at all?"

[sporesprouter]

"A pretty awful one."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh, how dreadful," says Susan, and then briskly adds, "I shan't compel you to revisit the memory any further. What sort of birthday traditions have you got in your world?"

[sporesprouter]

"Oh, we always just had small family get-togethers. A sweet treat and a present or two."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"That's the sort of celebration I'm used to, as well," says Susan, giving the balloons a reproachful look.

[sporesprouter]

"So all of this is a little much, I'm guessing?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I suppose so, yes. It's certainly unexpected."

[sporesprouter]

"Unexpected isn't exactly uncommon here, at least."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan blinks. "Yes," she says. "That's true."

[sporesprouter]

"At least as long as it's a good sort of unexpected, because moons know those can go either way."