deepest_magic | the golden age

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

neverbeatme

"Mine's closer."

From:

deepest_magic

James's room it is.

From:

neverbeatme

"G'night. Merry Christmas."

Snuggle snuggle. Coziest monarchs.

From:

deepest_magic

The house, when they check, is gone without a trace, only empty fence marking where it once was. The fence comes down. On the assurances of Father Christmas, inhabitants of Robinsong put a cranberry bog there once the seasons have sufficiently turned to allow the installations of such things.

James authorizes an expedition of flying creatures to map poorly explored border territory, mentions the opportunity to Flit, and receives delighted routine reports from the adorably excited winged horse as the creatures make their way over the mountains and subsequent desert.

The population has been getting bigger, and a few different citizens have objected to it being hard to get water in a straightforward manner without running into everyone and their cousin doing the same thing. Isabella finagles an agreement between two river gods and a clan of beavers and soon there is a big lake where previously there was not much of anything except one tree belonging to a dryad (carefully replanted elsewhere out of harm's way), which provides more edge area to the water supply and makes it easier for everyone to go collect what they need.

(It's also a pretty good fishing lake, after a few months. Isabella goes and does this once out of pure nostalgia.)

James investigates the Narnian state of sex education after some dithering about that, and is told by this and that creature that "we have our own way of handling things, we [leopards/dwarves/dryads/satyrs/giants/centaurs/rabbits/unicorns/monkeys], and it is working quite well and we don't see what [lions/fauns/naiads/river gods/badgers/griffins/rats/winged horses/otters] could do with knowing our ways". The matter is dropped.

The schools are still running. Isabella's little knife proves to have quite the unrealistic arsenal when waved near leather or wood or fabric but her new interest this year, quite unrelatedly, turns out to be the harp, which a naiad teaches. She has a simple piece ready to perform on Queensday.

Christmas, as always, comes again in its time.

From:

neverbeatme

Late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, James gets a report from a worried knight who witnessed a snowslide at a small village she was passing by on her way home from a long trip. James coordinates her and the nearest other knight in assisting the villagers, and all together they manage to safely dig out the three homes and one dryad's tree that were buried in snow, but this involves a lot of James relaying messages between knight-pins and it's surprisingly exhausting work given that she isn't actually shoveling any of the snow herself. She hugs Queen Isabella goodnight and goes to bed well before midnight.

From:

deepest_magic

So Isabella sits up alone, in her own room, having coaxed her bookshelf into sheet music of a few favorite Earth songs which she's attempting to adapt for harp.

From:

pythbox

And here is Father Christmas.

"Merry Christmas," he says, handing her one small package. "Here is a little house that you can keep in your pocket. It can be tricky to unfold, but I am sure you will learn just fine. Your other present is waiting for you just inside the door - I heard you were learning to play the harp, so I found you one I think you will like very much."

From:

deepest_magic

"Merry Christmas! Thank you." Isabella takes the little house, but she is not sure how little it is so she doesn't unfold it in her room. She does unwrap it to find two squares of wood, hinged together; she leaves them stacked on top of each other on her desk and then goes to sleep.

From:

neverbeatme

In the morning, James finds a marvellously kingly cloak bundled up at the foot of her bed, and when she shakes it out a note falls to the floor suggesting that she wear it 'in case of weather'. Her other present, she is left to discover on her own; she pores over her magic map for a little while and eventually finds a restored seawall that should, if properly maintained, allow the creatures of Narnia better use of some low-lying coastal lands.

From:

deepest_magic

Well, that's good, then. Some Narnians wish to build mills there to take advantage of the wind and grind flour and spices. Off they go as soon as the snow melts. The monarchs settle a dispute over the use of a quarry they need for mill-related rocks but it otherwise go quite smoothly.

When some Isles voyagers have brought cocoa beans to Narnian shores and Isabella has coaxed an encyclopedia from her bookshelf with a loose explanation of how to refine them, there is at long last domestic cornucopia-independent Narnian chocolate. It is popular with several kinds of creatures, including centaurs, dwarves, and monarchs. Some of it doesn't temper right - the local chocolatier is still working on it - but liquid chocolate is still pretty good for some purposes.

For example, the purpose of royalty dipping fruit and cake into it and feeding it to each other. That's a purpose.

"We've been dating for about three years now," remarks Isabella, offering James a strawberry.

From:

neverbeatme

"Yes, we have." Nom. Smile.

From:

deepest_magic

"And it is getting increasingly difficult to not kiss you during public affairs. You'd think practice would help."

From:

neverbeatme

"You'd think! But it does not." She grins. "So. We've been dating for three years. It seems like it's going well. Want to get engaged?"

From:

deepest_magic

"How'd you guess?" Kiss.

From:

neverbeatme

Kiss!

"It's a mystery." She offers Isabella a return strawberry. "Never to be solved."

From:

deepest_magic

Isabella nibbles the strawberry. It's a small strawberry. She nibbles James's fingers too. "I love you."

From:

neverbeatme

James giggles. "I love you too. Let's get engaged, and subsequently married, and charm all the creatures of Narnia with our cuteness."

From:

deepest_magic

"They will be so charmed. They will not mutter disconsolately when they have to clean up after their quarrying activities, probably, because we will be so cute at them."