^ [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

[sporesprouter]

"Although, really? I don't think I'd like it if it were too predictable either."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"No, we shouldn't want it to get dull," says Susan, though she wouldn't mind a lengthy break from all the upheaval. It does get in the way of her agendas.

[sporesprouter]

Tress thrives in upheaval a bit more than she realizes, her own plans and diligence notwithstanding, so if her responding nod is a bit emphatic, it's to be expected in a way.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"What do you suppose the next nonsense shall be?" Susan asks, and then, "Do you suppose it would be diverting to set up a betting pool for predicting its nonsense? The winner might... oh, I don't know. The winner might select the topic of Grantaire's next lecture - I mean to initiate the lectures soon. Or perhaps you and I might bake the winner a prize."

[sporesprouter]

"If nobody guesses it, would nobody get the prize? Or would we just decide who was the closest?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan purses her lips. "Perhaps - nobody, but the next time the prize shall be doubled."

[sporesprouter]

"Oh, I like it."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Then we're in agreement," says Susan, pleased.

[sporesprouter]

"It's easy enough to be in agreement about good ideas."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"And between you and me, we've got a vast array of them."

[sporesprouter]

"More than a lot of people would in our place, anyway."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

This startles a little laugh out of Susan. "Why, Tress," she says, delighted. "I do believe you're right."

[sporesprouter]

Tress laughs in return. "I'd certainly hope so."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I didn't realize you had a conspiratorial streak," Susan confesses.

[sporesprouter]

"I did take part in a mutiny."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Yes, I suppose you did mention something to that effect."

[sporesprouter]

"That's at least a little bit conspiratorial, I think."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh, rather," Susan laughs.

[sporesprouter]

"It would have been better if it were a successful mutiny, probably..."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I don't know, I believe becoming captain eventually speaks to some measure of success."

[sporesprouter]

"That wasn't because of the mutiny, though, even if it happened pretty soon after."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Tress," says Susan, in the same sort of counseling tones she might have, at one point, used to talk Lucy through a thorny situation with her school-mates, "I do hope you don't take this the wrong way, but - you really oughtn't diminish your presence."

[sporesprouter]

"Oh. Yes, I suppose you're right. Old habit, really."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I don't mean to chide you, but many men would believe a woman who minimizes her importance. You oughtn't give them the ammunition."

[sporesprouter]

"I think," she says slowly after a bit of deliberation, "that I wouldn't care about the opinion of anyone who would think so anyway."