Susan is (as always) a woman on a mission.

It's much too cold out to spend hours in an unheated shed outdoors, so she's bullied entreated Lancelot to help her bring in box after box of papers from the one with the dog-house in it. Her favorite parlor continues to shape itself to her preferences - the lock from the day Lancelot was overcome by his traumatic neuroses is still there; too, the fireplace has grown larger, the seating more attuned to her preferred comfort level (a soft, enveloping armchair; a couch firm enough to offer appropriate support, and so on). Lately, she's transplanted an electric kettle to the credenza at the back of the room; the Mansion has since generated a wet bar dedicated entirely to tea; she's further supplied it with some fresh-baked biscuits. There's a corkboard in the corner propped on an easel where she's been compiling ideas for the first play, which is still largely contained to trying to guesstimate exactly how large a cast they should aim for based on how many people Nina might convince to act, rather than serve in behind-the-scenes roles. Slowly, she's moved some of the books cluttering up her bedroom to the shelves here - in truth, though this is a public space, she's started thinking of this parlor in particular as her room. She can't help but wonder if one day, a door will appear connecting it to her bedroom, thus completing her slow acquisition of it.

In any event, by the time she moves in the tenth or twelfth box, the room has generated storage along one wall: long, deep shelves perfectly sized to hold the boxes, bookended by built-in filing cabinets where she can place the papers once they're sorted. So she tucks all the boxes away on the shelves save one, which she places on the sturdy coffee table. Perhaps something inside will offer some clues, either about why they're all here or about what's to come. Today, the door is wide open; she will be glad of most company. In the meantime, there's a record of her favorite sort of music on the gramaphone the Mansion has recently provided this room, and she's swaying in time to it as she opens the box.


Typist note: this post is intended to cover pretty much any time between the body swaps and Dark! Feel free to have anyone stop by to rifle through some mystery silly papers with Susan... or to just chat generally.

Susan has been having the dreams with greater frequency, lately¹: Narnia ablaze as the dying stars sink into the sea, giant lizards and dragons ripping every tree and rock from the earth and rending the last of Cair Paravel's ruins into so much rubble, laying all that devastation onto the blaze and then dying themselves as the mountains crumble and the seas rise and leave nothing behind but an empty, starless black.

Nothing, that is, save an open door, and her family standing before it, watching the devastation, and then the door swinging shut.

I've been doing better she tells herself firmly, rising from her bed before the sun has even started to think about peeking over the horizon. The waning moon is hanging low in the sky; the waxing one has already set. She turns on all her lights against the lingering dark and watches them blaze merrily in her vision until she has to glance away, dark spots dancing in their aftermath. She still feels cold as a lifeless, dark world, but at least there's no denying that she isn't in one.

Then, even more firmly, she makes herself get up. She dresses warmly - those thick woolen stockings that join up at the waist (she has since learned they are called tights; the Mansion has been supplying ones lined in a thick, fuzzy material remarkably suitable for winter), a dress similarly appropriate for winter, her woolen coat and leather gloves. Her hair she braids down, not up, so that it's easier to wear a hat against the chill that is resting both deep in her chest and sharp in the morning air outside.

She grabs her longbow and her quiver in addition to the latest of her pile of books - it's good to have contingency plans - but instead of heading toward the range or the woods to seek out a place to sport with Little John, she goes to where she knows Lancelot practices in the morning, stopping only to fill a thermos up with tea. It is, she thinks high time to make good on her threat to watch him.


¹Thanks, Aornis!

When Susan wakes up, dawn is just cresting and she is alone.

This is not news. She often wakes up alone. But she'd hoped, despite Lucy's insistence that her visit was only for the day, that her sister might return. She hasn't, though, and Susan most continue on with her life.

She bathes, and brushes her hair until it's shining, and braids it into its usual crown. She can still feel the remnants of her brief assignation with Liu Mingyan as she stretches to pin her hair in place, and she presses her fingers to a mark on her collarbone for one thoughtful moment.

Then she goes to her closet and throws open its door -

- and freezes.

Susan has spent several weeks trying, impossibly, to inventory the contents of this mansion from top to bottom. Ever since the undead rose, she's been looking for a bow. There's been nothing. She knows there's been nothing; she's checked in every nook and cranny to determine, without question, that there is absolutely nothing.

There are three bow staves lined up along the wall. Although her eye is unpracticed of late, she can tell at a glance that one is a longbow, one is a recurve, and one is composite. She's drawn to them immediately, lifting each one in turn, feeling the wood and - in the case of the composite - the horn, as well. Each is unstrung, but there are a selection of strings coiled and hanging from a peg above them. When she turns, there's a quiver full of arrows; upon inspection, their fletchings and points are varied, as are their lengths.

She trembles, aching with want. Dressing goes quickly, more quickly than she's used to - her nylons twist, and she struggles to attach the garters. So she discards the lot, and pulls on a strange, newfangled pair of woolen stockings that are made of a stretchy material that joins up at the waist. She pulls a warm dress over it - one with sleeves that hug close to her arms. When she goes to retrieve her favorite boots, she finds a supple leather bracer stored with them.

She forces herself to remain calm. Oh, she doesn't leave the supplies in her closet. After all, what if they disappear again? She places them all carefully on her bed, and then rushes to the kitchen for a light breakfast and to fill a canteen with tea. And then she's half-running back to her room, gathering up the lot, and taking it outside.

As she stands outside, near a shooting range clearly made for muskets, she learns that though her body has lost some muscle mass since her last adulthood, it still remembers how to string a bow. These are not bows for novices: They all have heavy draw weights, and she has to warm the longbow up with her hands before she can wrangle the string into its nocks at both ends of its limbs. Susan knows better than to dry-fire a bow. Still, once each one is strung, she situates the quiver at her hip and gives each bow an experimental draw or two, easing the string back into place once she has a sense of their draw. She is thrilled to find that she will need practice some before she can pull the longbow to full draw.

A fierce, wild grin spreads unchecked over her face as she fits her first arrow to its string.

Susan stares after the boy. Golden-haired with a sword to match, and a smile that held a sober weight under its brightness. He'd introduced himself as Magnus, and told some tall tale about gods and death and fighting wolves, and —

For some reason, this reminded Susan of Peter. The stories he used to tell, of swashbuckling adventure and fighting craven creatures that threatened his siblings. When she closes her eyes, she can almost see it: Peter, hair falling in his eyes, a sword clutched in his tender grasp. Too young; too horribly, terribly young to bear the weight of such battles. But then, they were already at war, and it grasped at them from all sides. Their worries could be made pretty and toothless when pushed into tales of that far-off magical land... oh, drat it, what was its name again!

Susan had made her excuses quickly. The boy - Magnus, not Peter - had seemed keen on chatting longer, but every word hollowed her out. There was a time when Susan could make small-talk with anyone about anything. Perhaps she still has the skill, somewhere deep inside her, but it has been set aside along with her pretty dresses and dates with handsome, blushing persons. She can no longer muster the energy, especially when her hands shake so fiercely she feels like they could shake the rest of her apart. Especially confronted, as it is, with finding herself in what does very much appear to undeniably be another world. It is unfair - unkind, even - that she should be able to travel the way her siblings loved to pretend about even into adulthood, while they're just dead. They get a horrifying, yet banal, fatal accident, and Susan gets what she supposes she is supposed to interpret as some grand adventure? She won't do it. She refuses. Being here is not a good thing, and she does not want it.

Her intent is to go to the Mansion's library and find a dry old book about something boring and uncomplicated. Something that won't eat at her, or reminder her of - of - of -

But her feet take her to the bar.

Well, then. When in Rome.



Content warning for NSFW in the following thread(s): Sagramore, Grantaire