^ [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

[sorrowandsorrow]

Janet goes with it willingly, leaning in for a heated second or several to make it a really, really binding contract. When they part, she's still smiling just a little. "We're never going to find another present at this rate. Yeah, yeah, I'm the present, I know."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh, very well." Susan draws back, with only a little reluctance. "Do you know, I've got a good feeling about Thomas's old office."

[sorrowandsorrow]

Janet fakes a dreamy little sigh. "God, he was hot. Let's check it out."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

So Susan leads them around the side of the Mansion and off toward the lake. She doesn't, for once, walk with purpose: it's a gorgeous day out, and she has a beautiful woman on her arm.

[sorrowandsorrow]

Janet doesn't object to some meandering. It's Susan's not-birthday, right? If the mansion wants to give Susan something, it will. Or maybe it won't. That's none of her goddamn business, apparently. Maybe she'll never crack this stupid place. Maybe she's stuck here forever, like Laertes was saying. At least there's this.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan isn't particularly committed to finding new gifts on a day that she hadn't even expected to be her birthday, but as she walks, her earlier conversation with Galahad starts really plaguing her thoughts. That won't do at all. She glances sidelong at Janet, debating the best way to distract herself. Picking up her pace? Pulling Janet into a little copse of trees for a deeper series of kisses?

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Do I have something on my face?" Janet asks, eyeing Susan right back. She's not overly worried about whatever it is.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan startles, then smiles. "The sun," she says, airily. "I'm afraid you're a terribly striking woman."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Tell me something I don't know," Janet drawls.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan would, at this point, consider Galahad one of her dearest friends. She's taking a page out of his book when she says, primly, "Roughly one-third of insect species are carnivorous, and a vast majority of those hunt."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Whoa," Janet says. She didn't know that. Susan nailed the assignment. "One-third? They eat each other? Huh."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"A good many do, yes."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Good for them," Janet says after a moment. "It's a bug-eat-bug world."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"In more ways than one."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"What do the ones who don't hunt do?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"They might exist as parasites or decomposers. Carrion beetles, for example. One needn't hunt if one goes through one's larval stages on a carcass."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Gross," Janet says, with a little laugh, "but I guess a beetle's gotta do what a beetle's gotta do."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Indeed." This little aside about insects has, at least, given Susan an opportunity to get hold of her own thoughts again, thank goodness.

[sorrowandsorrow]

Janet's dating a nerd. This would be more surprising if she hadn't gone to an entire college for massive magic nerds, she guesses. Nightingale's old house is visible at the end of their path now.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Do you know, I hadn't thought I'd develop a passion for insects," Susan adds, as they approach the little office. "Ethology generally deals with rather larger animals. I suppose Karl von Frisch did his study on honeybees, but... none of my professors dabbled in that side of things."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"I guess Galahad is rubbing off on you," Janet says, with genuine fondness for them both. She's a weirdo magnet. "Do you have a favorite bug? Is that a thing people have?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I imagine Galahad might. I haven't got one."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"I'll ask him next time we do an ice cream tasting."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

They're at the lakehouse, and Susan asks, "How often do you have those?" before opening the door firmly. As usual, she calls out hopefully, in the off-chance Thomas has returned, but the room is just as she left it last time she checked: the tea service is fully-stocked and a bottle of Thomas's favorite whisky sits next to it; the furniture is arranged to his preferences. It's been a week or two since her last visit, and some dust has settled in the intervening time, but the light is bright through the windows, shining on the little shelf with its collection of what she assumes must be magical objects and books.

There is, however, one change: a package on the desk.

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Delivery for Queen Susan," Janet says, sotto voce because it feels appropriate, maybe even necessary. Into the quiet, frankly lovely room, she adds, at a more usual volume, "We taste ice cream once a week."