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

[neverbeatme]

"...Are you that sure you can hurt me worse than I'm expecting?"

[jackfrostbite]

"Yes! This isn't a happy children's story. You are not protected by the power of your inward goodness. And I've not been—" He sighs. "It doesn't matter. You'll find out or you won't. I hope you don't."

[neverbeatme]

"I don't know where you're getting these ideas about my belief in the power of my inward goodness."

[jackfrostbite]

...He laughs. "That's fair."

[neverbeatme]

She smiles slightly. "I could bring you some books," she adds. "For something to do that isn't sit and think about how unhappy you are."

[jackfrostbite]

"Oh, as you please, your majesty," he says with a deliberate lightness.

[neverbeatme]

"It pleases me to do the best I can for all my subjects."

[jackfrostbite]

"Yes, you've made that clear."

[neverbeatme]

James sighs. "I'll just go get that map for you before you change your mind, shall I?"

[jackfrostbite]

"A wise king hath Narnia."

[neverbeatme]

She goes. She gets a map and a pen and some paper. She comes back and passes them in through the bars.

[jackfrostbite]

"Run along," he says, making no move to turn around and pick them up. "I'll be a while at this."

[neverbeatme]

"...I'll return in a few hours, then," she says. "And I'll see what I can get Isabella's magic bookshelf to cough up for you."

[jackfrostbite]

"I used to like Alice in Wonderland," he murmurs.

[neverbeatme]

This has the ring of self-destructiveness to James, and she can't quite tell why. Does he expect reading that book to be upsetting? Does he expect that she can't or won't actually produce a copy, and want to upset himself by asking for something he wants and then not getting it? Is it just how he feels about offering up even so trivial a vulnerability as the memory of a book he liked?

But she thinks the best she can do is probably to take him at his word.

"I'll see what I can do," she says, and goes.

[deepest_magic]

Isabella, meanwhile, is wrapping up a dispute resolution over the contents of a granary given a complicated will by the owner of the granary itself and some disagreement over how his heirs have to honor his deals with the farming creatures who stored grain there.

[neverbeatme]

James looks in on her, finds this discussion in progress, checks her mail tray in case she has received any important correspondence while she was speaking with the prisoner (she has not), and goes back to find Isabella again.

[deepest_magic]

Isabella has settled the granary dispute and sent the creatures home. "Hi, Jamie."

[neverbeatme]

"Winter's marking tunnel locations on a map, or at least is likely to be. He didn't want to start writing while I was there, for some reason. Also, he says he likes Alice in Wonderland, but I'm not totally sure that isn't some sort of subtle play to increase his own suffering for weird contrary Winter reasons."

[deepest_magic]

"Well, I don't see what harm a copy can do unless he, I don't know, mangles it to the point where the shelf won't take it back and generate a new one," says Isabella. "And that's a pretty minor harm I'm willing to risk if he wants one."

[neverbeatme]

"Yeah. If he finds some way to upset himself with it I can take that into account when I'm deciding what to do about future book requests."

[deepest_magic]

"I could go get it for him, unless you'd rather handle him on your own?"

[neverbeatme]

"No, go ahead," she says. "If you'll be all right. But I'm not sure how he'll take to being interrupted, so it's probably best to wait a few hours before trying to deliver him a book."

[deepest_magic]

"All right, this evening then."

[neverbeatme]

Nod nod.

...

Hug.