^ [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

[onthewillowsthere]

"Whether you were all right. Whether something was wrong."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan tilts her head. "No," she decides, after a long few moments of reflection. "I have lied purposefully about my feelings, but I believe the only lies I've told about my feelings due to a lack of understanding have all been by omission rather than by explicit statements. Such as not telling Miriam - a friend of mine from London - that I loved her."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Why did you choose not to tell her?" momentarily following this thread away from his main question.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"No." Susan shakes her head again and attempts for greater precision. "That was the lie of omission. I didn't come to understand my feelings until after I arrived here."

[onthewillowsthere]

"I understand. Although you didn't understand your feelings, you didn't attempt to define them either, so she was not mislead by your words."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Precisely. And the times I've lied about my feelings were primarily because I did not wish to discuss them. Many people don't care to confront the depths of one's grief, for example, and so I would often downplay the specifics after I lost my family." Susan tilts her head. "I do suppose in the years I forgot that Narnia was real, I was honest about my feelings, but my feelings were built on inaccurate data."

[onthewillowsthere]

He nods. What Susan is describing -- the ability to pretend something matters less because other people would prefer it that way -- is an ability he's never had, but he sees it in Claudius, who reads the tenor of a conversation like reading the direction of the wind and adapts himself accordingly, regardless of his true feelings. Lately he's done better at not shaping himself into the most palatable version of him, but Galahad still worries.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Why do you ask?"

[onthewillowsthere]

He hesitates, then says, "Magnus lied to me about his feelings. But he also did not understand himself."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Before she can stop herself, Susan asks, "And did he bother to try to think about them first?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"I don't know."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"My apologies," says Susan, immediately contrite. As has been soundly established, she never apologizes for anything unless she both truly, genuinely means it and is prepared to confront any underlying emotions or concerns. "I oughtn't speak poorly of your friend to you."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad considers this. Magnus is someone who feels and speaks more than he thinks. That's what vibes are, isn't it? Is it speaking ill of Magnus to acknowledge that he didn't think about his feelings before he mislead Galahad? Magnus is Galahad's best friend, but that doesn't mean Galahad is ignorant of his faults.

"It's all right," he tells Susan.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Still, Susan shan't bring up her myriad issues with Galahad's friend, even though she's still infuriated that he asked so much of Lancelot. "Thank you," she says.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Thank you," Galahad says, meaning for her input on the question of hidden feelings; he trusts her, as a friend and a fellow scientist, and he's grateful for her openness.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"You're terribly welcome, of course," says Susan, whipping her phone out to take another photograph, this time of a brightly-colored beetle. "I don't suppose you'd have any interest in helping me sort out some parts of a social calendar for when the weather gets much colder, would you? Just the parts that would be enjoyable to you, naturally, not the large-scale events." She's noticed, of course, that he can be a bit of a wallflower and prefers not to be the center of attention or stay overlong in large gatherings.

[onthewillowsthere]

"I would like to help you." He's back to sketching a marsh plant he doesn't recognize.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I'm terribly glad to hear it," says Susan, now leaning in to inspect the beetle in full. "I thought perhaps you might have opinions on the lecture series - I say! What a curiously-shaped carapace." She takes another photograph.

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad at once turns to look. "Is it a tortoise beetle?" It has the slight transparency and flared edges of a tortoise beetle, but they don't typically prefer this sort of habitat. "Have many people volunteered to lecture?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"There's been a reasonable assortment," Susan says, now retrieving her notebook from her pocket to check her notes on other beetles they've found. "Grantaire has indicated a willingness to speak on any subject at any time, naturally. Do you suppose it's an Earth beetle or one from a different world? The patterning in the center seems quite queer."

[onthewillowsthere]

"I have a collection jar," reaching into his messenger bag. It's difficult to determine whether the beetle is not of Earth simply because of the sheer number of possible species, and the best way to do further investigation is to bring it back to the laboratory. He can collect a plant sample as well.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh, perfect!" says Susan, pleased that he's always so delightfully prepared. She sets her notebook and telephone to the side and moves to assist, easing a hand behind the beetle so she might urge it into the jar.

[onthewillowsthere]

The beetle, thus hassled, scuttles into the jar, and Galahad, with the tiny pair of snippers Claudius gave him for clipping herbs from their garden or small-stemmed plant samples to bring home, cuts a sprig of the host plant before sealing both in the jar.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I do wish we had a device that could detect soil information as effectively as Lan Wangji's counterpart did last spring," Susan says, as Galahad closes the jar. Her attention is split between the movement, and the marshy ground from which the plant is growing. "We hadn't the sea at all when he took his readings."

[onthewillowsthere]

He nods; Lan Zhan had done in one afternoon work that could have taken weeks. "Perhaps he'll return."