^ [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]

"It's ever so good we're friends," she says, visibly pleased, and pauses to take another photograph. "I'm documenting the ants."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Is that a camera?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"It has camera-like qualities. It hasn't got film though; I've got no idea how to turn the images into proper photographs. Crowley says it's a telephone."

[onthewillowsthere]

"I don't know what a telephone is either," Galahad admits.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"No, of course you wouldn't. They're a fairly recent invention. Telephones are devices which enable you to speak to others with great distance between you - miles and miles and miles - and you haven't got to wait like you would with a letter. But," and she looks down at the object in her hands, "they look terribly different to this where I come from."

[onthewillowsthere]

"May I look at it?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Yes, of course," says Susan, and then she stills. "Just one moment." She taps on the screen a few times, and then passes the telephone over. It's open to the albums screen of her photographs. "I recommend specifically looking at the 'Regina' and the 'Arthropods and Detrivores' albums rather than, ah, any other photographs." It is, of course, for his own sake that she's recommending this.

[onthewillowsthere]

He nods. Considering the content of many of the Polaroids he and Claudius have taken for one another, he can at least imagine what Susan is sparing him. He touches the Regina folder, and is delighted when rows upon rows of photographs appear, each tiny square showing Regina engaged in some charming antic or sleeping in a particularly adorable pose. Indeed, his only complaint is, "They're so small."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Ah! I can help with this," Susan says, pleased to have sorted out some of the less-obvious eccentricities of the device. "If you tap one, it shall take up the entire screen, and then you can make it larger by dragging two fingers apart on the surface."

[onthewillowsthere]

Oh, yes, that works quite well. Galahad flashes her a quick, brief smile when Regina, lying on her back with her tummy raised to the sunlight, paws tucked under her chin, becomes maximized.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Isn't she so darling?" Susan sighs. "Just utterly delightful."

[onthewillowsthere]

"She's very beautiful and very charming," solemnly.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Isn't she just?" Susan sighs again, happily. "I'm ever so glad I found her. I say - are you going to turn into a cat again?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"I have thought of asking. I enjoyed it. If it isn't too much trouble for Queen Janet to do it again, I may ask her."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Between you and me, I believe she'd be thrilled," Susan says. "Now that she's sorted out how to do it in the first place, I imagine she'd rather like showing off her hard work and skill again. Next time we shall have to bring you to meet Regina whilst in your cat form."

[onthewillowsthere]

"I'd like that." He considers her comment. "She's very skilled."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Isn't she?"

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad looks up at Susan, studying her face. "Do you love her?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Somehow this takes Susan by total surprise. "What?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Queen Janet. You love her, I think." He shouldn't have been so imprecise with his question.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Do you?" she asks, still surprised. "I've not thought about it."

[onthewillowsthere]

"I noticed when I was a cat."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

With immense curiosity and a measure of trepidation, Susan asks, "What did you notice?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"You called her sweetheart, and then you were surprised. And when you were sad, you were glad she was there, but you were different with her than you are with me. I think--" He hesitates, aware that he could easily be misunderstanding, and in doing so overstepping. "I believe that it matters to you what she thinks of you, because you love her."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan presses her lips together and hums. Galahad was right about Lancelot, even though it took her some time to see it. He's a very perceptive man. But is he right about Janet?

She shall have to reflect on this at length. "Thank you," she says.