[OTA] a Few Threads Hold Us Together

[cipherspeak]

There was little he, personally, could do about the latest discovery just beyond the Outposts - maybe if the script had been in Aramaic, he might have been of some use - so he'd ordered rubbings and lured Fin into productivity with chocolate and coffee. Then he'd slipped past Hadyn to go talk to the engineers about how the constant quakes were effecting the structural integrity of the castle. That was, he thought, something he knew at little more about; if your job in the military had been in explosives, it usually helped to know how much C4 it would take to bring a building down.

Not that he explained to the chief engineer the provenance of this particular knowledge.

After he'd done all that, he supposed that the general consensus was that he should have some tea and get back in bed. He was in his office instead, but at least the papers stacked next to him weren't reports to sign off on. They were completed watercolors, on a particular theme. Sketches from a few parties this year - Victor and Zoe at the Berthier wedding, Hadyn and Zoe dancing at the Spade ball - and more private moments as well, of the four close friends and Ben Mackinnon. Sophie Berthier, too, and some of the bride's other close friends; there was every a painting from memory of Lasandra Adare. She and Zoe had been friends, as Elisha remembered. She might have been the other bridesmaid if she hadn't left.

He was sewing the watercolors into a book with heavy silk thread, and the last picture to be in the little book of memories was less an actual event and more something he imagines would happen. Zoe in the dress he'd asked to see the week before and Victor in the formal kilt that matched the one waiting in Elisha's closet. He'd finished it the day before, before Hadyn got home.

It had seemed like a good thing to paint on Valentine's Day.

Comments

[jokeswithknives]

"I won't." True to her word, she sat the apple in the window and went back every few minutes for another bite, taking care to keep it away from the pretties the King was sewing.

But she watched with interest, seemingly captivated by the flickering of the needle and thread. "Who's it for, then?"

[cipherspeak]

"Zoe Kattalakis and Victor Fox," he tells her as he starts working holes into the paper. "Wedding bells, you know. More fun than trying to pick out a crystal pattern that goes with a china pattern that goes with a flatware pattern." Registering wouldn't have been a thing with those two even if it was a thing in the Deck.

"Have you been working on anything lately?"

[jokeswithknives]

Weddings, eugh. Juliette snorted lightly, returning to the window to coil atop the bench sill with her apple. She shrugged, taking another bite of the crisp fruit, saying after swallowing, "Mm, not really. Paper got wet."

No, don't be silly, I didn't want a notif.

[cipherspeak]

They happen with distressing frequency , and thanks to being King, Elisha is invited to every damn one of them.

He looks up, though, raiding an eyebrow. "On purpose or accidentally?" Out of the corner of his eye he can see Q uncurl from his perch and start forward to bother the newcomer, but it's not like he could stop him anyway.

DW, your cuzzin LJ is gonna get you in trubble....>.>

[jokeswithknives]

Juliette watched the cat with passing interest, answering, "Accidentally." She reached fingers down to wiggle for the kitty, adding, "I fell in the creek."

Granted, she'd been walking on a thinner-than-it-looked tree branch and it'd broken under her, toppling her right in the freezing cold water, but eh, details.

[cipherspeak]

Q circled her, eying her for weak points giving her a thorough examination before batting at her ankle.

"Oops," Elisha says dryly as he keeps sending the needle through paper. "If you need a fresh supply, I've got plenty in the studio. Watercolor paper, mostly. But a couple of sketchbooks."

[jokeswithknives]

The little Joker grinned at the kitty, rotating her foot in play. "I can have some? Promise not to hurt it." Well, this time. And a book would be just peachy, although she'd have to keep up with it more than she did random sheets of paper...hm, this was going to take thought.

[cipherspeak]

"I've got plenty to spare, since I usually use canvas these days." This book was an exception to the rule - that and when he was giving lessons to Eileen and, he supposed, Juliette. Though Juliette was less lessons and more handing off paint and paper and hoping that destruction was pretty minimal.

[jokeswithknives]

Her grin was immediate, crunching more on her apple and batting at the kitty with her booted foot. But not to hurt, mind. No, kittens and puppies and horsies and birdies and even hedgehogies were all friends to the little Joker.

"Thaaaaank you, 'lisha," she caroled, gently scritching behind one of Q's pointy ears.

[cipherspeak]

Q flings himself at the enemy her shoe, and then slits his eyes up in pleasure when she finds the sweet part. This particular ruler of the Deck? Completely easy.

"You're welcome," he says, and adds a bit dryly, "you're welcome to enslave his lordship there whenever you want, too. It might help with his ego."

[jokeswithknives]

Juliette giggled, tossing her apple core in the wastebasket nearby. "Dutchie likes kitties. But they don't like him all that much. Sad-sad-sad." But she'd absolutely do it, kidnap the little lordlet and pack him off for funs and adventures.

[cipherspeak]

"Cats don't like anyone who doesn't worship them as they deserve. Unless they want to be perverse about it," he adds. See: Q and his undying love for Victor Fox.

"Maybe if Dutchie let Q use him as his loyal steed."

[jokeswithknives]

Juliette's mouth quirked in thought, then she shrugged. "Milordy Q might not like the hay smell. Make him sneeze?" She snickered at the thought. "And he'd get his pretty lil' pawsies wet, too. So dirty!" But she tickled the kitten a bit more, fingers gentle.

[cipherspeak]

"Oh, he'd never make a barn cat, not anymore." Elisha smiled a bit, though, remembering. "He was a street cat, once upon a time, though. I found him when he was just a kitten." In a pile of rubble in a place he liked to pretend he'd forgotten the name of.