^ [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]

"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?"

[lightbearinglord]

"No," he says again, a little more gently this time. "I had that sort of tea once. With Detective Chief Inspector Nightingale."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Ah! Thomas," says Susan, as fond as ever when her friend is mentioned. "He brews precisely the sort of cuppa I'm used to." It's ever so comforting. She does miss their little chats.

[lightbearinglord]

"You may try cream and sugar in my tea if you like, but it may alter the taste unfavorably."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"No, I shall drink it as intended."

[lightbearinglord]

The approval in his expression is almost entirely invisible, and so it may go unnoticed, but Lan Wangji nods. He takes a seat at the table, then; the portion of events wherein he prepares the tea has concluded, and they may sit in order to share it. He takes his cup, holding it in both hands, but waits for Susan before he drinks.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan sits across from him. He'll have to wait for a minute or two, because the important first step in any cuppa is, of course, wrapping your hands around it and inhaling the delicate scent. Her eyes drift closed as she breathes it in, and her face goes lax and soft. One must imagine she looks her age in a moment like this.

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji doesn't mind the wait at all. The slow unfurling of the ritual is at least half of what he likes about serving tea: the enforced pauses, the intervals as he waits for the water to heat, for the leaves to steep, for the delicate little cups and their contents to cool to a tolerable temperature. He watches the slackening of Susan's face, and although he knows her very little, it seems as if he can see the accumulation of burdens and duties she has taken upon herself only in this moment, when she sets them briefly aside.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

When she opens her eyes again, she gathers her consequence around her. "It smells lovely," she says, and takes a tiny sip.

[lightbearinglord]

Only now that Susan has tasted it does Lan Wangji take his own slow mouthful, a savoring one. The flavor is bright, grassy, almost sweet if not for its mild bitterness.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan sighs happily, secretly mildly shocked that this cuppa needs neither milk nor sugar. "I do so love a good cup of tea," she says.

[lightbearinglord]

Subtle it may be, but Lan Wangji's expression is one of sincere gladness at seeing that Susan is enjoying it, given what a departure it is from the tea she knows best. "As do I." He pauses, but he has been soothed by the tea and by the flash of quiet vulnerability from Susan, and he gathers himself to speak on rather than settling into only silence. "Brewing, pouring, and serving it is considered an art form in itself in Gusu."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I've heard that it still is in my time, in several parts of Asia."

[lightbearinglord]

"If I understand the maps I have consulted from well in my future, Gusu later takes the name Suzhou, which is in a country called China."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I'm familiar," says Susan, trying to recall her notes from the last political science class she took in London.

[lightbearinglord]

With simultaneous interest and trepidation, Lan Wangji takes a mouthful of tea and waits to see whether she volunteers further knowledge of his home and its fate.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Would you like to hear of it? I'm afraid its present circumstance is... complicated."