There's ice skating, later, although it takes a couple twisted ankles before the cobbler making the skates really has them down (thank goodness for Isabella's cordial) and there's hot beverages by frosty windows and there is sledding and there are songs in praise of Aslan sung through cold clear air. There is, in short, winter.
There's also Winter. James keeps visiting him and insinuating that she might like to join the picnic, next year; Isabella feels no such urgency and doesn't want to add noise to whatever data James hopes to collect from the exercise, so she makes no plans to go, busying herself instead with the emancipation of rebellious centaur foals and safety precautions in certain hunting grounds for speaking instances of prey species and the small health crisis caused by the discovery that the cornucopia can do cotton candy. Isabella practices harp and dances in the air on her air-walking shoes and when her old calligraphy teacher dies she takes over the class, showing small dryads and dwarves how to form pretty letters and decorate them.
The magic-detecting bracelets see use; Narnia proper is a bit picked clean but there are still a few things hiding in out of the way places where the Witch's followers couldn't dig them up, and more on the outlying islands. It is tremendous fun figuring out what they all do, and where they will best be put to use - most found objects, not being so customized for royal use as Christmas presents, find themselves turning the wells of small towns raspberry-scented or showing the stars on cloudy nights to centaur astronomers or rocking puppies to sleep or giving rides through the air to miscellaneous rodents. One or two objects seem to have no benign purpose at all, and after careful study they are destroyed.
Both monarchs are occupied with making sure the maps they have are better distributed, for the ease of the creatures who have reason to move about Narnia, or would if it were easier. Maps are alas not terribly responsive to up-to-the-minute weather conditions and some knights have to be deployed to rescue a party of tourist rabbits from a flooded bit of valley. Someone wants royal sponsorship for his book of the history of the Golden Age, beginning with the White Witch's defeat and going on from there, and he gets it. The rulers in question are epithized in this book as King James the Wise and Queen Isabella the Clever, which amuses the named parties very much. "The Golden Age" is published in time for copies to be sold in a little booth on Queensday, and a second volume is to be expected after a few more years have gone by and some more history has occurred.
Autumn concludes and its bright colors shrivel up and blow away.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2016-03-02 06:20 pm (UTC)There's ice skating, later, although it takes a couple twisted ankles before the cobbler making the skates really has them down (thank goodness for Isabella's cordial) and there's hot beverages by frosty windows and there is sledding and there are songs in praise of Aslan sung through cold clear air. There is, in short, winter.
There's also Winter. James keeps visiting him and insinuating that she might like to join the picnic, next year; Isabella feels no such urgency and doesn't want to add noise to whatever data James hopes to collect from the exercise, so she makes no plans to go, busying herself instead with the emancipation of rebellious centaur foals and safety precautions in certain hunting grounds for speaking instances of prey species and the small health crisis caused by the discovery that the cornucopia can do cotton candy. Isabella practices harp and dances in the air on her air-walking shoes and when her old calligraphy teacher dies she takes over the class, showing small dryads and dwarves how to form pretty letters and decorate them.
The magic-detecting bracelets see use; Narnia proper is a bit picked clean but there are still a few things hiding in out of the way places where the Witch's followers couldn't dig them up, and more on the outlying islands. It is tremendous fun figuring out what they all do, and where they will best be put to use - most found objects, not being so customized for royal use as Christmas presents, find themselves turning the wells of small towns raspberry-scented or showing the stars on cloudy nights to centaur astronomers or rocking puppies to sleep or giving rides through the air to miscellaneous rodents. One or two objects seem to have no benign purpose at all, and after careful study they are destroyed.
Both monarchs are occupied with making sure the maps they have are better distributed, for the ease of the creatures who have reason to move about Narnia, or would if it were easier. Maps are alas not terribly responsive to up-to-the-minute weather conditions and some knights have to be deployed to rescue a party of tourist rabbits from a flooded bit of valley. Someone wants royal sponsorship for his book of the history of the Golden Age, beginning with the White Witch's defeat and going on from there, and he gets it. The rulers in question are epithized in this book as King James the Wise and Queen Isabella the Clever, which amuses the named parties very much. "The Golden Age" is published in time for copies to be sold in a little booth on Queensday, and a second volume is to be expected after a few more years have gone by and some more history has occurred.
Autumn concludes and its bright colors shrivel up and blow away.
And then there is -