the first occasion

[deepest_magic]

The house just northeast of Forks proper is very big, quite abandoned, and really easy to just walk right in if you're of a mind to. There are signs that people have been camping in it while hiking, but currently it is unoccupied by visitors, squatters, or any animals larger than a squirrel. There's been a fair amount of furniture but fewer small possessions left behind: couch, piano, dining table, wardrobe, armchair, kingsized bed. It's in extremely variable states of repair.

Comments

[alicornucopia]

He hugs her, but says, "It would be best if you were back where you came from at once, I think, I can see you as far as the lamppost. Can you get to your own country again from there?"

[neverbeatme]

Hug.

"I think so. I'll try."

[alicornucopia]

"We must go quietly," advises Tumnus, sighing and getting to his hooves. "The whole wood is full of her spies. Even some of the trees are on her side."

He picks up his umbrella again and leads Elizabeth back as far as the lamp post.

[neverbeatme]

Elizabeth goes very, very quietly.

And at the lamp post, she turns back the way she first came, and proceeds through the trees...

[alicornucopia]

Trees trees coats coats coats door.

[neverbeatme]

Open door, still wedged that way by the chair.

She turns around.

She reaches, standing outside the wardrobe, into the wardrobe... and touches wood at the back, behind the coats.

She stands, staring at it meditatively, for a few seconds. Then she steps away, because she'd better hurry home, it's been—

—not even long enough for the angle of the shadows under the window to change.

So either not long at all, or very long indeed.

Elizabeth goes home in a hurry. She checks the clock. She looks in on Chris in her office and gets an absent-minded 'hi', from which she deduces that she has in fact been gone for just about long enough to bike to the abandoned house and back, and not to have had tea with a Faun and listen to his stories for hours in between, nor the day or days on top of that it would have taken for the sun to be at the same angle coming as going.

It's all right there in her mind palace, every detail she could store away, a whole new room tucked behind a wardrobe with notes about Fauns and winter and Christmas and the White Witch and the thrones at Cair Paravel. She doesn't think it was a dream. She doesn't think she imagined it. But all the evidence outside her head points to her having walked into that wardrobe, taken a very short nap with very vivid dreams, and then walked out again not five minutes later.

The problem continues occupying her mind for quite a while.

[deepest_magic]

Bella comes over the following afternoon. She has brought a deck of cards, because Charlie has just taught her to play cassino and she wants to see if maybe Elizabeth won't beat her one hundred percent of the time.

"Elizabeeeeth?" she calls, knocking on the door.

[neverbeatme]

Shortly, Elizabeth opens it.

"Bella! Hi."

[deepest_magic]

"Hi! What's up?"

[neverbeatme]

"Not very much," she says. "How about you? You brought cards. Do you want to play cards? I bet you want to play cards."

[deepest_magic]

"Learned a new game. It's good for two people, not like euchre."

[neverbeatme]

"Cool, c'mon in and teach me!"

[deepest_magic]

Bella comes in and teaches her!

[neverbeatme]

Elizabeth is a quick study.

She doesn't beat Bella one hundred percent of the time, though.

[deepest_magic]

Well, that's better than she was doing with her dad!

[neverbeatme]

"This is fun," she declares.

[deepest_magic]

"Dad taught me! It's better than most things he does in his spare time like 'watch sports' or 'go fishing', for sure."

[neverbeatme]

"You make him sound very boring. Is he very boring?"

[deepest_magic]

"Kind of? On paper? He's quiet and conventional and likes things simple, I guess."

[neverbeatme]

"Maybe I should meet him. Find out for myself."

(She'd definitely like to meet him - he might have more information about a certain missing person she certainly didn't find in the back of a wardrobe.)

[deepest_magic]

"Sure, I'd be curious what you'd file away about him."

[neverbeatme]

She laughs. "I'll tell you if I file anything interesting."

About Charlie, that is. Some of the information she's looking for, she fully intends to keep to herself.

"I could come over for dinner sometime, I guess? Does that sound like a plan?"

[deepest_magic]

"Sure. Do you like fish?"

[neverbeatme]

"I am fine with fish!"

[deepest_magic]

"You could come over tonight, then."