^ [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]

"Bacchus," says Susan, her tone equally scandalized and delighted. "Oh, I do like the way you think. Have you got insight into aptitude because of your drama powers?"

[vineleaves]

That's a good question. "Probably," he settles on. Look, he can help just about anybody be a better actor, and he's fairly certain of his skill in casting, but whether or not that's because he's the god of Drama or just because he knows a lot about theatre is up for debate.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Then," eyes gleaming, "perhaps we ought to do just that."

[vineleaves]

"Well, if you don't have any other, ah, birthday festivities to attend to," he says with a grin, "Shall we go find somewhere to sit and work this over?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I've always got time for you, Bacchus," says Susan. "...And for logistics."

[vineleaves]

“Perfect! Ah, I can hold some of that,” he means the copious amounts of Birthday Surprises she’s holding on to, “if you want, while we walk?”

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh, I've got it, thank you," says Susan quickly. "I've just perfected the balance, you see."

[vineleaves]

"Well, if you're sure," he shrugs.

Given that the mansion has, on an average day, roughly 83947 different parlors, it doesn't take them long to find a good room with some nice comfy chairs around a table, and even less time to find a pad of lined paper and some pencils. "I think we should first make a list of everyone we know has said they'd for sure be in the show, and then if we need to add anyone we can go from there."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan settles everything carefully down. "Goodness," she says, and takes her notebook out of her pocket. "One moment, I've got the list in here somewhere--"

[vineleaves]

Dionysus, meanwhile, starts jotting down a list of all the characters they'll need to fill roles for.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Right," says Susan, once she's found the appropriate place in her notes. "More people indicated a willingness to participate than auditioned."

[vineleaves]

"I know," he says, clearly disappointed by this fact. "I wonder if they got nervous about it -- a lot of people are nervous about any sort of audition, you know." Which is why just posting up a cast list and hoping everyone agrees to show up to rehearsals is clearly the best option right now.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Do you suppose we ought to consider smaller roles for those individuals? Might it correspond to stage fright?"

[vineleaves]

"It can, it doesn't always have to. Sometimes people are very nervous about an audition, but being in the actual play, doing rehearsals, having that safety net of other performers on stage with them, it can help them not be nearly as nervous. I do think we should give preference to those who did actually audition though, it seems only fair."

Here he pauses, not entirely certain how to go about this next topic of discussion. "There is -- ah, there's one particular exception to that though--"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh?"

[vineleaves]

"Yeah, ah -- Luo Binghe," Dionysus says with a sigh. "He apparently used his powers to physically torture poor dear Claudius, over something incredibly petty. I think -- it'd probably be incredibly unfair to... several people, if we asked them to be so closely involved with someone who did something like that."

Not to mention the fact that Dionysus, as Claudius' god, doesn't think he could stand by and work with the man after learning about this.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan freezes. "I beg your pardon," she says, softly.

[vineleaves]

"I didn't know about it until a few months ago myself," he explains. "How I understand it is that Luo Binghe was able to somehow -- infect Claudius' blood with his magic? And in doing so he could cause Claudius to be in intense pain whenever he wanted, wherever he was. Which, I've been told he did, multiple times." The look on Dionysus' face as he says this is a mixture of worry, anger, and sadness.

"So, not to put too fine a point on it, but if he's involved, I won't be. I -- I can't do that to Claudius, even if I weren't his god."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Months?" Susan asks, horrified, as a few thoughts war against each other. "No, of course you couldn't, of course Luo Binghe shan't be cast."

Susan doesn't much care if people like her or not, but she does crave respect. She does fear ostracization. She prefers that people who dislike her do so accurately. She dreads inaccurate gossip that might lead someone to choose to exclude her from the conversation, generally speaking. To that end, she's loathe to jump on rumors unless it's something she can substantiate with her own experiences. And she has vanishingly few with Luo Binghe: one when she first arrived, which she barely remembers, and one when she was mourning her friend, which was naturally affected by shared grief.

But Bacchus is one of the few people here she's certain would neither lie nor attempt to manipulate the social environment to his personal preferences. There's Lancelot, of course; he prefers honest, straightforward dealings, and if ever there's a situation where he seems evasive or indirect, it's because he hasn't processed his own feelings on the matter at hand. And he's willing to put up with far more social ills than he ought. There's Galahad, who is measured serious and thoughtful and scrupulously honest in all things. There's the useless angel, who Susan assumes mightn't lie about anything, but who she still mistrusts as the depths of his uselessness might lead to misleading behaviors. And there's Bacchus himself, who is far too earnest to be dishonest. His flair for the dramatics overlays a genuine spirit. And, importantly, it's never used at the expense of others. He wouldn't spread rumors for the sake of some misbegotten end.

But months! And she hasn't heard as much as a whisper or whimper about this sort of thing. If she'd known - why, if she'd known, at the very least she might've prepared some meals for Claudius and Galahad whilst they focused on Claudius's convalescence. Multiple times?! Her brow furrows. Surely the only reason Luo Binghe walks freely around must mean that only Claudius and Bacchus know what he's done. Ought Susan have been told? Ought everyone be told, that they can be aware? They'd spread the word about Aornis as best they could last spring.

Shen Yuan is dating Luo Binghe. Her heart drops. She can't jump to conclusions about what sort of petty reasons Bacchus speaks of, but - "Someone ought to tell Shen Yuan."

[vineleaves]

Dionysus hesitates for a moment before he says, "I believe he already knows."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan's blood runs cold and for the first time, she curses the size of this world. There's no recourse for hiding from a partner if a relationship should go awry. She hasn't the faintest idea how a blood spell might work - though perhaps Janet would? Susan ought to ask - but if there's any way to ameliorate the effects, surely that's a start. Certainly someone as compassionate as Shen Yuan wouldn't remain in a relationship with someone he knew to torture another person unless he had no choice in the matter. Fervently, she says, "Then we must help him."

[vineleaves]

"I think he's safe," from the blood magic, anyway, if there's any other sort of wrongdoing going on Dionysus doesn't know. "I don't have all of the details yet, but apparently the plant bodies can be made into a -- sort of a vaccine for it, from how Claudius was describing it. Since Shen Yuan's living in one of the plant bodies now I assume he's going to be alright. I've offered to help in the efforts to grow more of 'em, for -- you know, any future need."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan cannot fathom Shen Yuan willingly being with a man who would torture - anyone, really but especially Claudius, who has done so much for him. But she wrests her focus to what Bacchus is saying, letting her worry simmer in the background. "Future need," she repeats.

[vineleaves]

"Ah, preparing for --" the inevitable, he almost says, because people do have a tendency to die, but he instead chooses to say, "any other tragedies."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"You're referring, of course, to Luo Binghe choosing to aggress on another member of our community unprompted," surmises Susan, grimly. "Must the inoculation be repeated, or is once enough?"