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

[deepest_magic]

"She won't stop looking until she has."

[jackfrostbite]

"Probably true. But depending on what exactly happens to you down here, it might take her a very long time indeed. And that, you do not seem to expect."

[deepest_magic]

"I'm very concerned about the possibility that you will kill me, but I can't do very much about it so I'm concentrating on possibilities in which you do not."

[jackfrostbite]

"You were ready to sneak past me into a dark tunnel with no knowledge of what awaits you there except that a safe path must exist because I used it to get here. Would you like to know what I think? I think you have something that will lead you to James or James to you, whoever manages it first. Without that, your chances in those tunnels are much, much worse than your chances with me."

[deepest_magic]

[jackfrostbite]

"And now," he says, "I must decide what to do about that."

[deepest_magic]

Isabella wraps up tight in her cloak.

[jackfrostbite]

Silence.

[deepest_magic]

Even if she came up with a clever diversion now it would have taken suspiciously long to come to mind.

[jackfrostbite]

"I don't want to kill you," he murmurs.

[deepest_magic]

"I don't want you to kill me either."

[jackfrostbite]

"I noticed that."

[deepest_magic]

"So we're agreed on you not killing me then, yes?"

[jackfrostbite]

"I don't..." He trails off and doesn't finish the thought.

[deepest_magic]

"...don't what?" she asks after a reasonable pause.

[jackfrostbite]

"It doesn't matter, never mind."

[deepest_magic]

Isabella's not so sure of that, but, well.

[jackfrostbite]

"Aslan's creature," he murmurs, wincing audibly over the name but not as badly as he did the last few times he said it.

[deepest_magic]

"You keep saying that."

[jackfrostbite]

"Yes."

[deepest_magic]

"Why?"

[jackfrostbite]

"Because you are. Because..."

[deepest_magic]

"Because I like his name?"

[jackfrostbite]

"I don't think it's the curse, that makes it hurt to hear it," he says, not quite answering. "I think that part is all me..."

[deepest_magic]

"Even for people who like it it's different person to person."