houseofcards_rp | In Ur Garden; Up Ur Tree

Entry tags:

In Ur Garden; Up Ur Tree

Sophie learned her lesson during the Arcana incursion. She'd spent far too much time buried in old tomes. On more than one occasion, she'd had to be carried to bed. So now, she paces herself. She gets the same amount done as she searches in vain for mentions of past magical failures--at least they have jumping off points--but she makes time to take the occasional break and clear her head.

That still doesn't explain why the 8 of Diamonds is seen outside scrambling up trees.

Curiouser and curioser.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Sophie would be a good Jack, Avery thinks; it's a shame she hasn't got any real say in the matter. Silas will listen to her opinion, but ultimately it will be up he and Säde.

She just hopes they decide soon; it's a bad time to be down one Face Card.

"Treehouse trees? Oh, for Sitara?" She grins a little at that, looking at the one they're sitting in. "My dad tried building me one when I was about five. I think building projects have, generally speaking, gone better."

Sophie hasn't given much thought to Jack, other than hoping the position gets filled soon. She doubts Cadogan will be offered it (even though he deserves it) so long as Sade is in charge. Maybe Claudia Chareut. It would make Mme. Chareut ecstatic and Claudia worked closely with the king. She tugs her skirt down over her knees (a futile gesture) now that she's sitting on a limb and not climbing willy nilly.

"That's right. She's shaping up to be a bit of a tomboy. I spent half my childhood ~~hiding~~ up trees. I would have adored a tree house. I'll have to enlist someone's aid to build it. The thought of Adrien with a hammer frightens me." She smiles. Adrien possesses many qualities, but she doubts construction ability is one of them.

"How are things with you?"

"It's not a bad thing," Avery says. She'd been a terrible tomboy, in truth, climbing and fighting and pretty much never wearing skirts if she could avoid it. "Aren't there a few carpenters in the Castle still? Hans, I think. He's supposed to be good with his...hands."

Are puns better or worse when they're unintentional?

"Things are..." She begins. "Fine, I suppose. Mr. Bernard and I aren't seeing each other anymore." She hadn't mentioned it to anyone yet.

She slants a sharp glance at the Ace before letting her gaze slide away. "...oh." She and Avery had been the up-and-comers of their year, eyeing each other, always aware one might wind up challenging the other. It made for an odd relationship. Still, she admired the other woman for her ability to remain true to herself.

"I'm sorry it didn't work out. Friends still?" That had been important to her, at least: that she and Ben remain friends.

"I think so." She did the breaking up, so really - she has no reason to be sad about it. But she is a little, even if she didn't love him. It was...nice, after all. "It's hard to tell, though, until we talk again. He went off-Deck."

He'd probably be gone for a while, too.

"I suppose that's not always important. It'll be awkward at first." She shrugs. "Maybe not. It was for me and Ben. I don't think he really understood why I felt it necessary to break things off until later. It worked. It was...comfortable." She smiles.

Nice that over the years she and Avery had gone from possible adversaries to people who could talk, although very different people. "How are you doing?"

That's exactly how it was with she and Davin. It worked. It was comfortable and it wasn't like she'd been in love with him. It hasn't been love and mane Avery had found that sad in the wake of everything that's happened.

"Busy," she says. There were eight missing Diamonds. "All of your family is accounted for?"

"Thankfully." The entire ridiculous number of distant cousins and aunts and uncles who'd neglected them once they saw no profit in them, as well as her sisters and her own newfound family are all safe and sound.

"Yours? No climbing in and out of mysterious buildings?"

"Dad likes to say his adventuring days are behind him, but I think Mom had to tie him to something." She wouldn't be at all surprised, truthfully. "Either way, neither of them have gone looking. Neither have I, other than once with Her Majesty."

Her amused smile at her description turns into a sharp look. "Did you? What did you find?"

Maybe somewhere, somehow she'd get a direction for her research.

"A few interesting things," Avery says, her voice thoughtful. "It seems like the houses disappeared when people were in the middle of...still living in them. Dinner had been on the stove."

She pauses. "And the books...they were classics from Outside."

"Modern? How peculiar. I thought--well, probably like most of us, that the buildings were coming from Arcana lands. What languages were the books in? The same one? Electric or gas stove, or--"

She makes a face. "I came out here to stop thinking about all this. It's interesting, though. I suppose some enterprising Arcanum--Arcanist? Trump? Anyway, no reason why they couldn't have newer books, but I always had the impression most of them didn't visit Outside often. I know Christophe wasn't familiar with TVs or video games." Assumptions would be the death of her.

"They were all in English, which was the other odd thing. I doubt it's really the Arcana native language, you know?" She didn't remember the history of the tarot, but the Deck had been French once. English was more commonly spoken as a common language now, but it hadn't always been the case.

"All classics, though. No Harry Potter, not even Lord of the Rings or A Wrinkle in Time."

"A purist?" Her look grows far away. "Copyright dates would be interesting to know. They could be Arcana buildings, still. The inscriptions on the artifacts were in Old French and other Romance languages.

"Do you ever wonder what happened to the original occupants? Someone, somewhere is experiencing similar problems unless there's more of a temporal problem than we know."

"That would involve going back in, and I'm pretty sure I can't get away with that one," Avery says. She's not even sure where the protests would even begin, but probably with Silas.

"Do you think time travel is possible, Sophie?" There were just so many....oddities.

"Goodness! Don't even think of doing that. I'm not sure you and the queen should have explored the buildings even before we knew they weren't safe. You could--" She shrugs. "We can't lose anyone else, especially not leadership." Not now, not ever.

"Anyway, Einstein's Theory of Relativity proves time travel is possible, though I doubt the human race is anywhere near traveling at the speed of light. As for other types? I honestly don't know. Before the Arcana I'd have said an entire castle couldn't appear out of nowhere...."

She drifts off thoughtfully. What had anchored the Arcana's castle to Deck lands? It hadn't been as stable as Deck structures, but something had kept it here. Was similar magic bringing these new buildings?

"I'd be tied down, pretty much immediately, even if I just suggested it." Still, it was a shame the couldn't. Maybe they could look over the stash of confiscated objects.

"It was the strangest thing," she says, setting that aside for just now. "It was like they'd left in the middle of things, years and years ago. There was a chicken soup on the stove, but it was nothing but bones."

"Sounds like Bermuda Triangle legends." Should she look up mysterious disappearing buildings in history? No. Silly idea. She still thinks they must be coming from the Arcana. Then again, the Deck exists. The Chess Set exists. How many similar places might there be?

More than just them, assuredly. Perhaps it was another world no one had heard of, or maybe some of the Arcana were more connected to Outside than it seemed. She couldn't know, and that's what frustrated.

"My dad said that coming here was a big like falling into the Betmuda triangle, so that might not be so far off."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

In Ur Garden; Up Ur Tree

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject