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

[pythbox]

He smiles, and turns to James.

"For you, James son of Eve, well, your project to restore the old mills and granaries of Narnia was very well begun, and now you will find it is very well finished; and I have left you a writing-desk in your office which will always have just the materials you need when you sit down to write."

[neverbeatme]

"Very nice. Thank you!"

[pythbox]

With a last acknowledging nod, he's off.

[deepest_magic]

"I wonder if your desk is as thorough as my bookshelf? Fancy colored ink? Protractors and compasses?"

[neverbeatme]

"I bet I at least get fancy coloured ink."

[deepest_magic]

Bella opens her little package. It contains a lighter, made of engraved brass with flowers and vines much like her crown's twining all around it. She flicks the cap open, and spins the wheel, and gets a little white flame. Close, open, spin: green. "Cute." She opens her shoes. They're soft-leather turnshoes, white with green beading, and when she puts them on she can step quite confidently into the air until she touches the ceiling and giggles and steps back down.

[neverbeatme]

James applauds.

[deepest_magic]

And Isabella bows. "Thank you, thank you. I unwrapped them myself."

[neverbeatme]

Giggle.

[deepest_magic]

These shoes allow Bella to stand a couple inches up from her usual height so that she can more easily kiss James.

[neverbeatme]

Ooh. What an excellent use for these shoes. James approves very much.

[deepest_magic]

"Merry Christmas," says Isabella when her mouth is free, and then she heads to bed, discovering halfway up the stairs that she can sort of skate if she tries.

[neverbeatme]

James likewise goes to bed, and in the morning she investigates her new writing desk and finds coloured inks and compasses and protractors and variously elaborate royal seals and pens and pencils and inkwells and all manner of paper and envelopes and scroll cases and—this is a good writing desk. Even though after she has been pestering it for half an hour she finds that some of the things she asked for first have disappeared while she wasn't looking. Maybe it can only provide so much stuff at once.

Although it obviously should politely refrain from disappearing any paper that has been written on, she tests this case immediately and finds that all writing done at the desk does indeed persist, whether left with it or taken away. It will even tolerate having its utensils briefly borrowed, but any pens and so forth taken as far away as the next room will return to the desk the moment they are left unattended. Still, even with its limitations it is a very good writing desk.

[deepest_magic]

Isabella comes and checks it out after breakfast. She likes it - what a nice desk! - and then they have things to be getting on with. Even a low-population kingdom like Narnia (one point three six million speaking inhabitants at the last census; they should do another one) there is always something to do.

In mid-April the monarchs are invited to the incorporation of a new town in the hills; creatures are finally willing to live within walking distance of the White Witch's palace again. They plan to call the town Robinsong and are a mixed population of animals and things in the general category of griffins-and-so-on.

So the king and queen saddle up their horses and take a leisurely route towards the site of Robinsong to appropriately bless its existence.

When they've paused for lunch, mid tromping across a great field of grass and wildflowers, having last seen another soul twenty minutes ago when they passed a rabbit who bowed but didn't care to engage in conversation, Isabella finishes her peach and flops on her back in the clover, watching clouds scull across the sky.

[neverbeatme]

James flops down beside her, makes a social calculation about likely effects should someone happen to see them, and concludes it is safe to reach over with one hand and interlace their fingers.

[deepest_magic]

Eee! Handholding.



"Do you think about Earth much?"

[neverbeatme]

"Sometimes. I run through all my old files every so often and spend some time remembering things, just because I think it'd be sad if I forgot about things like offering to put cheeses on little rafts for your dad, you know? But it doesn't really come up these days unless I think about it on purpose."

[deepest_magic]

"Heh. Cheeses on rafts. I'd forgotten about that one. ...I suppose we're just missing like Winter. He stayed long enough for time to move again back there. Maybe they'll condemn the house or something since it seems it eats kids."

[neverbeatme]

"...Which might mean they destroy the wardrobe, which might mean we couldn't get back even if we wanted to... not that I especially want to, but I can imagine being desperate enough to try it, if something went White-Witch-level wrong and there was no actual solution to be found. I guess at that point the fact that the wardrobe might be gone wouldn't stop me."

[deepest_magic]

"I'm not sure they'd have a reason to destroy the wardrobe in particular? They'd have to go into the house to find it in the first place. I'm just imagining the door boarded up, maybe a sign, I don't think they'll torch the place on such a flimsy suspicion. Anyway, there are probably other ways to travel. It'd be too weird if that were the only one. I bet Father Christmas could turn something up if nothing else, although depending on the timing he might not be quite prompt."

[neverbeatme]

"My childhood interest in exploring places where other kids disappeared is how we got here in the first place; a sign would do the opposite of help. No guarantee that they'd be that sensible about it, of course. For that matter I guess we have no way of knowing how long it's actually been on Earth since we left. About a minute there to an hour here means about a week there to a year here, so probably at least a few weeks, but I don't exactly have a precise measurement of the difference and I don't even know if it stays the same all the time."

[deepest_magic]

"Yeah. Do we even know how long Winter was here before we showed up?"

[neverbeatme]

"Not very precisely. With the number of years he was gone on Earth, though, it should've been a long while... longer than the White Witch actually reigned, I think, if the time difference is always exactly the same. So I guess it isn't. Maybe, I don't know, maybe the wardrobe or whatever affects these things will make long visits short if you return quickly but gives up on you after a while if you stay indefinitely. In which case we've been gone for years, probably."

[deepest_magic]

"I guess we could ask Father Christmas but it probably counts as a present and we don't actually want to go back. For one thing, it would be really hard to explain why we're in our teens now."

[neverbeatme]

"Chris could handle it, but then I'd still be some teenager on Earth instead of a King of Narnia. I'm in a much better position to do useful things as a King of Narnia."