And back to their monarching. Issuing proclamations and cutting ribbons to open bakeries and consulting on the second volume of The Golden Age and making proud, delighted speeches to their subjects on holidays and feasting and mediating and dancing and exploring and coordinating and rejoicing and enforcing and mentoring.
Years go by; Isabella doesn't picnic with Winter after all, although she occasionally considers it and occasionally visits him during the year, a little less often than her spouse does. Presents accumulate and are put to efficient use. Staff leave to care for aging relatives or start families or open businesses and have to be replaced; there are always guests to entertain, crafts and stories and skills to learn, food to taste, beautiful countryside to take photographs of - they've been to see most of the country in broad strokes but there's always some waterfall or glen or plateau or copse that has escaped them to go see the next time they go traveling. Always new subjects to meet - there are adults, of some species, who have never known unending giftless winter, who have always when saying the word 'Queen' meant Isabella and followed with 'and King', who have never gone to bed hungry or cold or afraid.
When the Queen and King, clever and wise, are solidly in their mid-twenties, it's maybe about time to address the question of heirs. (And of course the part-and-parcel question of, well, children - Isabella sighs when someone gives her a baby dwarf to hold, introduces her to a leggy centaur foal -) A question about it is in Isabella's notebook with a handful of others for the coming Christmas. Discreet researchers have been put to the question. No results yet.
For unrelated reasons they're visiting Tumnus in his old cottage, which he still lives in when he's on vacation from his work as their royal clerk. They're having tea, and little sausages, and toast with a fishy spread on them, and a plate of cheeses, and vegetable soup that makes the air smell like rosemary. It's terribly cozy.
They're just about to say their goodbyes and go home to the summer palace when Tumnus's cousin-in-law knocks and asks if Tumnus has - beg your pardons, your majesties - seen her grandchild lately? It's only the boy's gone missing. Nobody can find him anywhere.
This is the sort of thing one sets Knights to, and the nearest Knights are the monarchs themselves, and they don't have to be home before dark with Isabella's scepter. They mount up their horses and go looking, calling the little faun's name.
They give the lamp post a good, cautious berth, as soon as it's in sight swinging wide of it -
no subject
And back to their monarching. Issuing proclamations and cutting ribbons to open bakeries and consulting on the second volume of The Golden Age and making proud, delighted speeches to their subjects on holidays and feasting and mediating and dancing and exploring and coordinating and rejoicing and enforcing and mentoring.
Years go by; Isabella doesn't picnic with Winter after all, although she occasionally considers it and occasionally visits him during the year, a little less often than her spouse does. Presents accumulate and are put to efficient use. Staff leave to care for aging relatives or start families or open businesses and have to be replaced; there are always guests to entertain, crafts and stories and skills to learn, food to taste, beautiful countryside to take photographs of - they've been to see most of the country in broad strokes but there's always some waterfall or glen or plateau or copse that has escaped them to go see the next time they go traveling. Always new subjects to meet - there are adults, of some species, who have never known unending giftless winter, who have always when saying the word 'Queen' meant Isabella and followed with 'and King', who have never gone to bed hungry or cold or afraid.
When the Queen and King, clever and wise, are solidly in their mid-twenties, it's maybe about time to address the question of heirs. (And of course the part-and-parcel question of, well, children - Isabella sighs when someone gives her a baby dwarf to hold, introduces her to a leggy centaur foal -) A question about it is in Isabella's notebook with a handful of others for the coming Christmas. Discreet researchers have been put to the question. No results yet.
For unrelated reasons they're visiting Tumnus in his old cottage, which he still lives in when he's on vacation from his work as their royal clerk. They're having tea, and little sausages, and toast with a fishy spread on them, and a plate of cheeses, and vegetable soup that makes the air smell like rosemary. It's terribly cozy.
They're just about to say their goodbyes and go home to the summer palace when Tumnus's cousin-in-law knocks and asks if Tumnus has - beg your pardons, your majesties - seen her grandchild lately? It's only the boy's gone missing. Nobody can find him anywhere.
This is the sort of thing one sets Knights to, and the nearest Knights are the monarchs themselves, and they don't have to be home before dark with Isabella's scepter. They mount up their horses and go looking, calling the little faun's name.
They give the lamp post a good, cautious berth, as soon as it's in sight swinging wide of it -
- and it doesn't help -