^ [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]

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."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"The Seethe?"

[sporesprouter]

"It's how the seas... work, basically. There's a stream of air bubbles that rise up from the seafloor and let the spores move in a way that they can be sailed on. Sometimes it stops for a while. That's called a Stilling, and ships just freeze in place."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Air bubbles from the sea floor," Susan murmurs. "I don't suppose there's any books about the geology of your home in the library here?"

[sporesprouter]

"I don't know. I haven't looked for any."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"If you find any, I should very much like to read them."

[sporesprouter]

"I'll keep an eye out, then. It's probably a better idea than whatever I can muster up to explain it."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I suppose I might look, too, but I'm afraid I mightn't know where to start."

[sporesprouter]

"I haven't looked too much for books from home, but I'll see what I can find. And if you stumble on something just from being lucky, that works too!"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"It's a plan, then."

[sporesprouter]

"Agreed."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Now," says Susan; since the queer oceanography of Tress's world has been addressed, she's got more questions about other topics. "What's this about a secret assassin?"

[sporesprouter]

"It wasn't really my idea? It's just that a bunch of the crew thought I was, and... well, I told them I wasn't, but I knew there was one thing I could say that would make it certain, and I just... didn't."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"One thing?"

[sporesprouter]

"It's kind of silly. If you're a King's Mask, you can't say you're a King's Mask, so when I just kept denying it, it kept reinforcing to them that I was just trying to hide it..."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"How tremendously odd," says Susan, frank.

[sporesprouter]

"And a little bit frustrating, to be honest."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I imagine it must be."

[sporesprouter]

"It all got cleared up in the end, at least."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"How's that?"

[sporesprouter]

"They ended up realizing it when I... really couldn't do what an actual King's Mask could have done."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"You mean when you infiltrated a pirate's ship, sailed dangerous seas, and defeated a sorceress?"

[sporesprouter]

She pauses. "The Sorceress hadn't actually been defeated yet at that point."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"No?"