the golden age

[deepest_magic]

When the party has died down, Isabella, for one, is well and truly exhausted. She explores the palace until she finds a room with a bed in it, and into this bed she flops, still in her clothes and holding her staff and carrying the cordial in her pocket. She sleeps late, because the party kept her up so late and she hadn't really slept the night before; but around noon, she stirs, and gets up, and goes looking for James and wherever her backpack may have got to. The backpack she finds in the great hall where the principal mass of the party was; some enterprising creature took both bags from the battlefield at Beruna up to the castle for them, and she only wishes she knew who it was. She takes her bag to her room and carries James's with her and continues looking for her friend.

Comments

[jackfrostbite]

Winter grins at her. It is not pleasant to behold.

"Do not doubt that I can find a more effective fire to throw you into," he says, picking her up again. "It was not in my original plan, but you make the option so tempting, with all this foolishness."

The tree catches, but he smothers the fire with a melting hand; the flood of meltwater puts out the bushes, too, on his way through. He stoops to pick up the lighter and flings it into the lake.

From there, he gets under cover of a tumble of tall jagged rocks, and continues carrying Isabella over his shoulder through progressively darker and tighter spaces until there is no light at all and she can only tell the location of the walls when an outlying arm or leg bumps into them. Some sort of tunnel, one must presume.

[deepest_magic]

"What if there wasn't room for your head to grow back?"

[jackfrostbite]

"Such as if I were crushed under an enormous rock?" he asks, crouching in the perfect dark to feel along a wall. "I tried that. I passed the next several years as a very flat, very uncomfortable pile of ice shards."

[deepest_magic]

"Have you tried jumping into a volcano? There's one on the Isles. It would probably evaporate all your meltwater on contact."

[jackfrostbite]

"Clever. But is the erupting volcano not eventually put out by the sea? When I locked myself in an oven I made enough meltwater to drown myself in - which didn't work either - and when I crushed myself under a rock I made rather a large pile of ice. I have not yet found a limit to how much water I can make."

He shrugs, and finds whatever he's looking for. There is a click and a slight draft. He carries Isabella a short way and then, presumably, closes whatever door he just opened, before setting off again along the new tunnel.

[deepest_magic]

"Swim to the bottom of the ocean. Pressure."

[jackfrostbite]

"A long time to spend half-dreaming in the dark, if that doesn't work either."

Either this tunnel is opening up, or he's getting better at not banging Isabella's extremities into the walls.

[deepest_magic]

"Electricity. We don't have it here but just rigging up something to generate a shock couldn't be that much harder than getting an oven."

[jackfrostbite]

"Could it not? How would you do it, then?"

[deepest_magic]

"I'd look it up first, I have books, but it involves magnets, I remember that."

[jackfrostbite]

"And here we come to the reason why I want to irrevocably enrage the King of Narnia."

[deepest_magic]

"You think James will look up electricity and try killing you with it?"

[jackfrostbite]

"Not in particular. But I think you have both demonstrated that you are clever people, and you have resources I do not. And of the two of you, the king would have put up a much harder fight on being kidnapped."

[deepest_magic]

"Why didn't you come with those creatures who attacked Cair Paravel if you wanted us to kill you?"

[jackfrostbite]

"When those creatures attacked Cair Paravel I was still trying very hard to kill myself and expected to have a far better chance to do it on my own than the defenders of the castle would in battle. And I'd hardly expect you to kill me after capturing me, especially not if it proved very difficult."

[deepest_magic]

"Is not being the Witch's assassin any longer so unbearable?"

[jackfrostbite]

"Would you enjoy being feared and loathed by every good creature in the world?"

[deepest_magic]

"You were already that. What changed?"

[jackfrostbite]

He doesn't answer immediately.

[deepest_magic]

Well, Isabella has no other pressing engagements.

[jackfrostbite]

Winter carries her through the mysterious dark tunnels for several minutes.

Finally he says, "I was... happy, under her rule. At least, you could call it happiness. I don't know a better word. But it was not a happiness I chose. And I find that now it is gone, I cannot choose to reclaim it."

[deepest_magic]

"And you don't want to - swim across the ocean looking for nations we haven't even contacted yet to see if you can get a job as a refrigerator, because..."

[jackfrostbite]

Silence.

[deepest_magic]

She's waiting.

[jackfrostbite]

An answer does not seem to be forthcoming, this time.