^ [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]

"Logic is a matter of perception, though," says Susan, "and reality needn't adhere to your expectations to be true."

[tallyyoungblood]

"I guess not," Tally says. "Sometimes my own brain is totally not trustworthy. Obviously."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I don't expect anyone's is."

[tallyyoungblood]

"But yours hasn't had anything done to it."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Not externally, no. But the human mind is still fallible." Susan hesitates, then summons up all her courage, and says, "Freud spoke of repression and the unconscious, for example. I struggle with my memory."

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally's instincts tell her to scoff and dismiss Freud, who she knows was a bogus sexist Rusty scientist, but she puts aside her fallible mind for a moment and pays attention to Susan's hesitation. "You do? Are you saying... you forgot something important?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Upon occasion, yes," wryly.

[tallyyoungblood]

"But what do you mean specifically?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I mean that my memory is fallible," says Susan, with finality. She isn't interested in getting into the gritty details.

[tallyyoungblood]

"Okay, fine, be mysterious, Susan-la."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan gives her a flash of a grateful smile at that. "I'm afraid I shall."

[tallyyoungblood]

The smile makes Tally feel not totally disappointed about not getting to hear whatever Susan forgot. "Still, it's good to remember that I'm not the only one with a bogus brain sometimes."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"You certainly aren't. I'd wager any number of people here have got some issue or another."

[tallyyoungblood]

"That's what happens when everyone's got ugly minds," Tally says. "I think I like it."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I do wonder why you call it an 'ugly mind' when by your reckoning it seems to be the pretty minds that have got the bulk of the problems, where you're from," Susan muses. "Unless 'ugly' is a placeholder for 'organic,' I suppose."

[tallyyoungblood]

"They are ugly, though. Anger and insecurity and jealousy can be ugly in a way pretty emotions aren't." Tally stops and thinks about it. "Ugly doesn't mean, like, problem-having. It means messy."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Then why align 'ugly minds' with 'having some sort of issue?'" she asks, curious.

[tallyyoungblood]

"Pretties have issues, but they don't think they do," Tally explains. "Or, you couldn't tell if they did, if you were a pretty."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I see," thoughtfully. "Thank you for explaining."

[tallyyoungblood]

"Any time, Susan-la. It's your birthday present." Tally grins, to show she's joking.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan gives her an amused look. "Well, then. I appreciate it."