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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.

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"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."

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

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."

"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."

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.

"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."

"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?"

That's not exactly what he was referring to, but it's a good enough point. "Ah -- I'm afraid I don't know. I don't have all of the information about the specifics of it and how it works yet, unfortunately. My contributions to the efforts are going to be mostly in the gardening side of things, I'm not nearly as skilled at the science-y stuff."

"Then I shall offer my services," says Susan firmly. "It's the least I can do. Is Claudius all right? What else might he need?"

"I think just simply knowing you're there for him in this will be a big deal. It's -- it's something he was keeping secret from most people for a while, I think he was -- maybe nervous about telling people, worried they wouldn't want to help him. I mean, I don't want to put words in his mouth, but that's -- that's kind of the sense I got while he was telling me about it all."

"Oh, naturally." Has Claudius got someone to speak to about any potential traumatic neuroses? He's Susan's friend, and she likes him a great deal, but they're not precisely close enough for her to help him the way she does Lancelot. Perhaps she might share some readings with Galahad on the subject? And prepare a delightful little aspic dinner for Claudius if ever he seems out of sorts. And of course she shall speak to Claudius at the first opportunity. At the very least, it's high time they touch base again about organizing a social calendar for their community, and she can determine then how they might contrive some way to prohibit Luo Binghe from attending any number of events.

"Thank you for telling me," she tells Bacchus seriously. "Torture for any reason is unacceptable; torture for petty reasons is unforgivable. We shall take every step to support Claudius's needs in this."

"Thank you," he says, giving her a relieved and grateful smile. "I wish there was some better solution for all of this."

"Yes," Susan agrees, fervently. "We've got very little recourse for someone violating the tenets of polite society and appropriate behavior."

"We're incredibly lucky that the vast majority of everyone here gets along, if not well, then at least enough to be civil to one another. But -- as we see, not everyone fits into that description. And considering the percentage of residents here who have, y'know, magic and shit, it's really -- just -- not a great situation, I suppose."

"I'm afraid I don't follow that last."

"Ah, I just mean... We're two for two when it comes to people wishing harm on others having extra powers with which to do so. I figure it's probably down to the fact that so many of us, an unusually high percentage, y'know, have powers in the first place. Not that someone needs magic in order to harm others, but as we can see, it can certainly make things much worse."

Susan nods, thoughtful. "And I imagine there's little recourse for addressing the ills wrought by someone with extra powers."

"Especially not if it's something they can do from far away." Like Luo Binghe causing Claudius pain from wherever he wanted, or Aornis's ability to just up and change the memories of nearly everyone in the mansion without even so much as touching them.

"How vexing," Susan says; it's an understatement, and she sounds thoughtful.

"You ain't kiddin'."

"I don't like it one bit."

"I don't either," he sighs. Maybe, if he were a more violent god, he would have already done something to... deal with this, before it becomes a problem for Claudius again. There's probably some people who would say he should. But ... that's not who he is, and he can't bring himself to do anything while there's -- maybe not no threat, but no active threat, at any rate. "I know this isn't exactly the conversation you were expecting us to have."

"No, but I'm glad you've brought it to my attention. I'd prefer to know of such things so I might respond accordingly."

"I think everyone should know, honestly, if for no other reason than to keep themselves safe."

"Do you have any sense of who does know? Besides, of course, Claudius. And presumably Galahad?"

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