^ [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

[onthewillowsthere]

"There are too many variables to guess when it will hatch."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"There certainly are. It's simpler with more complex animals, don't you think?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"I think perhaps they're easier to study, and so we understand the variables better. It's easier to candle the egg of a reptile than a mantid."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Precisely," says Susan; she is, as ever, terribly pleased that Galahad takes her meaning with such frequency. Which does make one think...

"I don't suppose you'd like to go for a walk after we sort the ootheca out?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Yes." It's a pleasant day, and he'd only been planning to explore and draw until he'd found the ootheca. "I would like that."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Lovely," says Susan. "I've been meaning to see if we haven't got any changes cropping up in that marshy bit past the sea-cliffs." She's also got several things she'd desperately like to speak about with a friend - particularly a friend she hasn't got any romantic entanglements with - but even though he's the best unentangled friend she's got, she hasn't decided yet whether Galahad ought to hear them. Perhaps by the time they've got the ootheca in the laboratory she will have decided.

As she starts walking in its direction, she says, "I suppose I'll have to find a place to store these queer balloons. They're terribly unwieldy."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad finds that area to be productive for dragonflies -- and regular biting flies, as well -- and he also intends to take a few water samples for Constance there. Fortunately there are plenty of sampling flasks in the laboratory. He also just enjoy spending time with Susan, and considering whatever she decides to talk about.

"What are they?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I believe they're an evolution of a... toy, of sorts, from when I was a child," says Susan, tugging one down by its ribbon. "But it's filled with some sort of gas that's lighter than our atmosphere, and it's in one individual piece. The balloons I'm familiar with had to be constructed from two pieces of rubber."

[onthewillowsthere]

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

[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."

[onthewillowsthere]

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

[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?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"She's very knowledgeable." The kinds of science Constance studies are very different from the behavioral and life cycle observations that make up the majority of Galahad and Susan's work.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"She is, isn't she? I'm pleased you said she might use our laboratory space for her own projects."

[onthewillowsthere]

"So am I. I like working with another scientist, and I like that her studies are different from ours."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan nods her agreement. "I believe it makes this place feel more expansive, to have breadth and variety to our science."

[onthewillowsthere]

Exactly. Galahad nods.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan falls into companionable silence then as they make their way to the laboratory where, as promised, she ties off her balloons around a stool. In case Constance should stop by before Susan has a chance to speak with her, she starts jotting off a note explaining them.

[onthewillowsthere]

Meanwhile, Galahad sets up a tent enclosure for the ootheca, and checks on the other habitats while they're there, misting where necessary and occasionally adding leaves or fruit.

"I'm ready," before too very long.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"As am I." There's another gift by the door to the laboratory - an pristine pair of sturdy gardening snips tucked next to work gloves in precisely her size - and she tucks these away in her pocket and straightens. "Shall we?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Yes." He doesn't offer her his hand, the way he would Magnus, but he feels the pleasure of walking with a friend nonetheless.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

And Susan, who is in this moment viscerally remembering Galahad as a quiet, wide-eyed little boy who could not be touched by a woman, does not snag his arm. As they make their way out of the Mansion, she asks, "How is married life treating you?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"I'm happy," he says, and then, "Claudius is happy. He calls me husband more than he uses my name." Galahad prefers this. His name, of course, is an ugly trick and a marker of his intended purpose. Husband is a title he has chosen and earned.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"And you like it that way," says Susan, reassuring herself that this is true even as she says it - she should hate to be called 'wife' over 'Susan.' "Good. I'm ever so pleased to hear it."

[onthewillowsthere]

"I like it," he agrees. "Are you well?"