^ [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]

"The patterning on that is lovely," Susan observes, mostly for the sake of saying something. She holds her hand near the side of the kettle. It's warming, but will still take a minute or two longer.

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji glances toward her with a nearly imperceptible softening of his expression. "Claudius called these into being when he was in the body of Crowley's angel." Naturally, he kept them, and has used them often ever since.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Claudius is ever so thoughtful," says Susan, her own expression also softening.

[lightbearinglord]

"He has been a steadfast friend and brother," Lan Wangji agrees. The depth of his fondness feels glaring to him, as if it must be shining forth from every nuance of his expression, but he knows by now that what he feels is obvious in him is rarely notable to others.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan, whose expressions are also often muted, can sense at least a fraction of that warmth. "Yes, he's lovely," she agrees, matching that affection. "He's always been good to me - oh!" The kettle has come to a boil; she switches off the stove and lifts it away, offering it to Lan Wangji.

[lightbearinglord]

"Thank you." Lan Wangji takes the kettle, plucks the lid from the teapot, and pours the hot water within in a careful stream. Almost immediately, the scent intensifies as the tea cake breaks up and the tea begins to steep.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan closes her eyes, inhaling happily. "Oh, that's lovely."

[lightbearinglord]

This infinitesimal twitch to Lan Wangji's mouth very well might herald a smile. "Mn. Tell me your opinion of the taste, too." For now, it must steep.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh, I shall." Susan hesitates, hovering, and then says, "Ought I find some digestives?" There's likely some still lying around from the batch she made yesterday.

[lightbearinglord]

"Digestives?" Lan Wangji inquires, politely curious.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Digestive biscuits," Susan clarifies. "The ones you take with tea. Have you got anything of the sort where you're from?"

[lightbearinglord]

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

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Interesting. Any particular varieties?"

[lightbearinglord]

"Dates and pears, perhaps. Walnuts." Without admitting that he feels any particular way about this, Lan Wangji adds, "I have seen several fruits here that I had never seen before."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"There's ever so many, aren't there? And from such queer places," says Susan, thinking of the moment Laertes was first able to draw at toffee-tree fruit from the icebox.

[lightbearinglord]

"Mn. There is an entire continent I never knew existed."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Which? One of the Americas? Africa? Australia?"

[lightbearinglord]

"I meant North America, but both Americas qualify." He had, of course, been thinking of Magnus asking him to learn Mexican food.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"And I imagine that even with the continents you did know of, the nature of trade routes and travel in your time would forbid genuine familiarity with many of their native species?" This is, of course, largely speculative; Susan is making a number of assumptions based on the timing of the discovery of the Americas.

[lightbearinglord]

"Mn," he says again, agreeing. "I believe I come from at least a thousand years before several of the residents here, and several hundred before most of the rest."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"So long ago!"

[lightbearinglord]

That comment seems to require no response, so Lan Wangji says nothing. Instead, he holds back his sleeve and pours them each a cup of tea, now-loose leaves swirling at the surface of each one before they begin to sink.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan closes her eyes and inhales deeply. "Positively scrumptious," she declares, and then her eyes fly open again. "Do you take cream or sugar?"

[lightbearinglord]

"No," Lan Wangji says, meeting Susan's gaze perhaps out of surprise more than anything else.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

She blinks. "I take it that's not standard with your sort of tea service?"