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.

"Oh my God," Kade murmurs when Susan shows up at his door, knocking briskly. It's quiet, practically subvocal, but she can still make out the words distinctly. He wipes his hands on his trousers and extends one. "Susan Pevensie. Hi! I'm Kade. Kade West."

"I know," she says, glancing at his hand for a moment and then shaking it. "You're our tailor. I'm afraid I've been delinquent in introducing myself." She's been busy, but in the wake of all of the Mansion's most recent spat of strangeness, she decided it was high time that she conspire to meet him. She needs some sort of change-up to her days, which have become rather routine and increasingly feel uninspiring. Not that she wants more Mansion-driven mischief, just that... it was nice, to have a little adventure, once she set her worry for Lancelot to the side. "But you worked wonders for Lancelot's wardrobe."

A bright grin flashes across Kade's face as he takes in her pointed tone. His teeth are extremely white and, frankly, unsettlingly straight. "You want I should give you a makeover, too?"

Susan glances down at herself. She's back in mourning black, one of her everyday dresses. It feels more comfortable than color, sometimes, but... in truth, she misses being eye-catching. "If you'd be so kind," she says, briskly. "I haven't got a particular look in mind. I'll try whatever you think might be interesting."

Kade's smile broadens. "You're giving me a blank check?"

"I shan't wear it if I don't like it."

"Of course, of course," Kade says, and opens his door wide. "C'mon up. Tell me about your Worlds. I'll get you all sorted out."

---

Three days later, Susan decides she might as well try debuting the first outfit Kade selected. It's all black, so it seems a good gateway to the more colorful options, especially as she's not convinced of trousers - she's ever so used to the skirts and garters and stockings she defaults to day after day. And, she finds, as she checks the outfit in her mirror, it's strange to wear a top with meagre built-in supports but no brassiere. The red heels he chose, though... those, she loves. He'd recommended curls and a bold lip with this look, but she doesn't like the fussiness of curling her hair and instead leaves it loose and smooth down her back.

She can't deny that she looks phenomenal. The trousers, though they feel uncomfortably tight, look flatteringly as if they're painted on. She has, delightfully, gained some weight since arriving here, especially now that she's off her grief diet, and her figure is truly striking. The top is on the verge of indecent, with a low neckline and sleeves that fall off her shoulders, and she considers throwing on the jacket Kade suggested just for some degree of modesty across her decolletage... but that would go against her purpose of trying something exciting and different and new. So she shrugs, leaves the jacket on the edge of the bed, pats the spot where usually she would have her pocket and her notebook, fetches a handbag so she might still carry her notebook along with her (she wants a change, but that's no reason to be unprepared!), and sets out, Regina at her heels.

Susan has no way of knowing this, but anyone who's been to Earth after the late 1970s will recognize that Kade has put her in a perfect recreation of Sandy's greaser outfit at the end of Grease.



People who will find this hot and/or striking and/or familiar in some way are obviously welcome, but also anyone who wants to touch base after the AU days and/or meet Regina are encouraged to tag in too!

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.

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.