[Closed Post: Cinnamon Roll]

[timebethine]

A few days' recovery have left Laertes feeling refreshed enough to return to his baking, although not quite ready to dive into anything particularly complicated. Thus, he abandons the more complex direktørsnegl recipe he'd been meaning to try in favor of perfecting the humble cinnamon roll.

The days are getting shorter--even Laertes can feel it, though his sense of time is poor. He can no longer rely on the sunrise to wake him at a decent hour for baking, and so today he's up a little before the sun, kneading the bready dough by hand rather than using the paddle of the stand mixer in the hopes that the physical exertion will wake him up a little. It's not working particularly well; his eyelids keep drooping.

Comments

[timebethine]

"Why dost thou ask?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I -" The look that Susan gives Laertes now is somewhat helpless. "I suppose I'm trying to conceptualize it."

[timebethine]

"Hast thou never been in love?" Laertes asks, surprised. He'd thought that her relationship with Lancelot was fairly obviously one of mutual love, but perhaps he'd erred in that judgment.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

If Laertes had asked even a week ago, Susan's reply would be an easy 'no.' Now she's not so certain. More to the final bit of sugar as she tips it into the butter than to him, she says, "I suppose that's another thing I'm trying to sort out."

[timebethine]

"I had never been in love, before him," says Laertes, returning to his buns. "Never even considered it. To have been in love would have meant to be close to someone, and thus to expose them to my father's scrutiny."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Yes, that does rather sound like Polonius. "And that would have been -" Susan cuts herself off before she can say 'disastrous.' "Uncomfortable, I gather."

[timebethine]

Laertes nods. "The first time I traveled alone to France, I was seventeen or eighteen," he says quietly. "No--I must've been seventeen, because it was in summer, and my birthday is in November. I thought me that, for the first time in my life, I would be able to be mine own man. A few of my fellow-students wanted to go out for drinks and billiards, and invited me to join them, and I confess, I was eager to prove myself their equal for sport--they were a rowdy crew, but very joyous, and teased each other so readily about flirtations and who had the worst facility with Greek. And then ..." His hands falter. "And then I came to the tavern where we were to drink, and there I saw my father's retainer, sipping an ale in the corner. I turned on my heel, and spoke not three words to any of those fine young men for as long as we studied together. I knew then that there was no place I could go where my father's hand did not extend."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

No wonder this man behaves occasionally like a spooked horse, if he was never able to relax into the company of others! He's poorly socialized. "How utterly stifling," Susan says, brow furrowed. "I'm sorry to hear it."

[timebethine]

"All of which is to say--take heart, if thou hast not yet known love. Love hath its own season, and can no more be stayed than summer. There may come a day when all the disparate stars shape themselves at once into constellations, and the sky takes on a new and dearer aspect." He shrugs. "Or there may not. It's not for me to say."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan has been doing quite a bit of reflection on the matter of love ever since Lancelot told her of his feelings. There's ever so much she's trying to understand. Thinking out loud, she says, "I don't know whether I've ever been in love." She sets her bowl aside for the moment - the butter and sugar are creamed, and she has a suspicion that focusing on measuring the next ingredients will enable her to distract herself from the conversation. "In Narnia there were many bids for my hand, but I was more focused on ruling and it felt inappropriate to seek a romance for any reason but diplomacy. In England I took many partners, but vanishingly few more than once." And here emerges her latest sticking-point: "I had some... special friends, but I could not tell you if I truly did feel just friendship or if grief has clouded my memory of something more."

[timebethine]

"Grief--for Narnia?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

And Susan draws the bowl back in front of her! She decides to zest the lemon directly into it, in firm, no-nonsense strokes, focusing sternly on not allowing her hands to shake. "Grief for my family," she says, simply. "Narnia isn't the loss I spoke of, at the feast."

[timebethine]

Laertes feels as though he's falling, as though he's missed a stair in the night and is tumbling headlong. "This is the end of thy tale, then--oh, Susan, I'm sorry."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"The end of my tale?"

[timebethine]

"Didst say that thou wouldst finish it," he says. "Chapter and verse."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Ah! Yes, nearly." She mixes the lemon zest into the butter, and then pauses - the next step is smashing hazelnuts with a rolling pin, and that's rather noisy. "There was an accident. I avoided it; they were all wrapped up in some attempt to save Narnia. Lucy asked me to come and I told her to grow up, and then... five months later I arrived here."

[timebethine]

"An accident--didst thou lose them then?" He imagines a ship dashed against a reef, brigands waylaying travelers; he does not know enough to imagine a branch breaking, a cry for help behind an arras. "And hadst been grieving them those five months?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan, however, is remembering, in this moment, what becomes of Laertes and his family in Hamlet. There's no pain of fellow-feeling on his face, so perhaps he doesn't know, himself, what was to become of him in Denmark. She watches him for a moment, then startles, realizing she's left his question unanswered. "A railway accident," she nods. "Trains are - vehicles, faster and more powerful than anything a horse might draw. It took my siblings, but also our little cousin, Eustace, and my parents, and the kindly old professor who watched us during the Blitz."

[timebethine]

Everyone. She speaks of it so matter-of-factly; she has had a long time to come to grips with her anger and grief, but he cannot imagine it doesn't still burn like a wound. He cannot imagine losing everything and not wanting to tear the world apart. "I'm sorry," he says again, uselessly. "Thou hast a will of iron, to forge a life for thyself here after so much sorrow."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

It's hazelnut time! Susan takes the rolling pin and sets about crunching the nuts, albeit a little less aggressively than she could - it's more of a press than a smash. "I've always been remarkably stubborn," she says, wry. "I was rather lost when I got here. I think ultimately being removed from my surroundings has been helpful. But perhaps you can see how my social skills might have... atrophied."

[timebethine]

"I think we both had more practice in how to slip an intimacy than how to strengthen one," says Laertes, a little wry. "May I help thee?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

At that, Susan laughs. "Oh, rather," she says, and then nods. "Do you mind terribly stripping the thyme leaves from their stems?"

[timebethine]

"Gladly--all of it?" He starts with the woodiest piece of thyme, which he pinches between thumb and forefinger and scrubs free of leaves. Its delicate green branches are trickier; they break under his fingers more than once, leaving him to pluck off the leaves from the stems by hand.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan glances over - she's really getting her back into crushing the hazelnuts; they're nearly done. "One more sprig should do it."

[timebethine]

Then Laertes dutifully strips another sprig and sweeps all of the little leaves into a small bowl, setting the bare stems in the compost container. "Is there more thou wouldst have of me?"