^ [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

[aflashbastard]

"Long story short... I did the dishes. 4 out of 10, I'd say?" Is this a rating of how well he did the dishes or a rating of how much he likes that chore? And what does he want Susan to do about it? Who knows.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Did you! Well done," says Susan, and then, tremendously curious: "Where did you find the chore chart?"

[aflashbastard]

"There isn't one. That's the problem, isn't it?¹ One of those children insisted that I needed one -- and that's when I thought to myself, who would know all about chore chores? Susan might -- and when I told Aziraphale, he said," affecting a stellar Aziraphale impression, "Crowley, it'd be ever-so dear if you could do the dishes for me-- get those hands back on the wheel, you scoundrel! ...And here we are."

¹Is it?

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan isn't sure where to start - since obviously she was the child in question - but then she cocks her head to the side. "Then you shall be relieved to hear that I've spoken to Sagramore on this very matter and we shall finalize the chore chart shortly."

[aflashbastard]

"Oh. Great. Er, just let me know." Secretly, and not just because it will become a source of great joy to some mansion spirits, he thinks that he should share his chores with Sunny and vice versa -- so he can show her the meaning of true responsibility, of course.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I imagine we shall post it in several primary locations. I understand that you regularly frequent the Welcome Table, so doubtless you shall see it there."

[aflashbastard]

"Fine. Great," Crowley says, repeating himself. He's not exactly sure how he's talked himself into more chores.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Lovely. Have you got any preferences for your first assignment?"

[aflashbastard]

"Not the dishes," emphatically. "Or anything to do with the horses."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Very well, I shall slot you in for laundry in your first round."

[aflashbastard]

Well, there's no way out of it now¹. "Sounds grand," he tells Susan.

¹You could just say no, Crowley.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh, Crowley, I'm so pleased. This shall be ever so helpful, you know."