[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.

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[timebethine]

"At times ..." Laertes hesitates. He gathers himself as he slices bread and slides it into the toaster. "At times, I think I've tried to be a brother to my friends here. As though I could learn to repair the rifts between myself and my sister, if only I could make Annie or Galahad smile." With some self-deprecation, he admits, "I built a boat for Annie because I wished there was some grand gift I could give Ophelia--a token of apology that might make up for all the times I treated her as a child, and not a woman grown."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"That seems a perfectly reasonable inclination to me," says Susan, offering Laertes a soft smile that she hopes speaks of camaraderie. "When I see someone or something that reminds me of Lucy in particular, I either turn tail or lose my mind entirely with the urge to do things the right way, this time."

[timebethine]

"I know that feeling well," says Laertes, and he smiles in answer. "Tell me of her? Of Lucy?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh, she was the best of us," says Susan, immediately. The kettle is boiling again, so she adds hot water to her half-drunk tea and takes a fortifying swallow. "The epithet the Narnians gave her was 'the Valiant,' and she was bright and faithful and ebullient and good through-and-through. Lucy was everybody's favorite. Peter's, Aslan's... eventually Edmund's. Mine. Magical things always happened around her, perhaps because she saw magic in everything. It could be the dregs of winter, with everything gray and brown all over, and she'd still look at a slant of light through a broken tree-branch and say, 'Look, Su, doesn't that look just like a dryad's arm?' She had even less of a stomach for war than I did, but she was always first on a battlefield after the fighting stop with medicine and soothing words. She wanted to be a doctor or a nurse, if she couldn't have Narnia."

[timebethine]

Laertes takes in her story quietly, recognizing as he does that it's a tale of grief--that all of Lucy's wonder and compassion, all her bravery and faith are lost to this world. It makes the world feel smaller, and greyer, that a woman like Lucy should no longer be in it. "I should have liked to meet her," he says. "She sounds--" like the first robin in spring. Like a crocus pushing back the snow. "--she sounds well worth knowing."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"She was here, the day we all got our visitors," Susan says, neither her voice nor expression betraying exactly how she feels about that beyond the slightest press of her lips into the faintest of lines.

[timebethine]

Laertes lets himself process the implications of this. "From an earlier time in thy history?" he asks. "Or another future, where her death did not come to pass? Or ..."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"She was given a day pass from Aslan's - from, from Heaven, if you can believe that."

[timebethine]

Like Dante's Beatrice, thinks Laertes, although he knows better than to say it. He tries to imagine what it would be like, to know his sister dead and in Heaven--to meet her as though at the water's edge, after a long absence, and to hear her call out a greeting. To know he has chosen the path of present joy over immortal bliss, and they will never meet again on Earth or in Heaven.

He fears that, like Dante, he would flee without answering.

"Oh, Susan," he says, all compassion. "I know not whether joy or sorrow would have been the keener blade."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"No?" says Susan, and when she meets his gaze, there's the faintest flicker of an emotion in her eyes. "Nor do I." She starts sliding biscuits from the tray onto cooling racks. "Tell me about Ophelia?"

[timebethine]

A smile quickens on his lips. "I think she and Lucy could be friends," he says. "She has the same way of looking upon the world with wonder--she knows the name of every flower in the queen's gardens, and every herb in the field and every weed along the roadsides. She knows them not by rote, abstractly, but with the intimacy of dear friends. She can be sharp in her speech, at times--always clear and direct as a blade. She never learned the trick of speaking prettily when she had nothing to say, which in courtiers is thought an effervescent wit. They thought her rude, when she was a child. But ... I know not how to say it. I miss her sharpness. I miss how she would tease me, and chastise me, and ferret out my hypocrisies. I miss her."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"It does sound rather as if they'd get along," Susan says, hesitating a moment before setting her spatula down and going to rest a hand, briefly, on Laertes's shoulder.

[timebethine]

He turns to smile at her--then the toast pops up, and he nearly leaps out of his skin. Taking the toast out, he spreads it with butter from the crock on the counter. "Wilt thou take jam on thine?" he asks as he reaches for the marmalade for his own.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oooh, yes please!"

[timebethine]

"Thou canst command anything of me; marmalade is a mere trifle," laughs Laertes. He scoops a generous helping onto the second piece of toast, too, and then passes her the plate with eggs, toast, and bacon.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Cheers," says Susan, taking the plate and retrieving flatware and napkins to split between the two of them. A little wry, a little ruefully, she says, "I feel rather as if we've covered an entire range of topics appropriate to a maudlin conversation at midnight. Have you any cheerful things to share?"

[timebethine]

Laertes ducks his head. "At thine advisement, I've been reading on the properties of cells," he says. "Claudius's research tends toward the biological sciences, and mine toward the chemical and the physical--but though he's far beyond me, I hope to travel his road and thine at least a little way. It makes me glad to imagine each cell like a tiny scriptorium, with a monk at its nucleus scribing the secret language of our bodies in letters of acid."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Isn't that a darling image!" Susan exclaims, cutting into her egg so the yolk spreads across her plate and dipping a corner of her toast into it. "I rather like that."

[timebethine]

"There truly are wonders in the world beyond the telling--infinitely grand, and infinitely small," says Laertes. He reaches for his tea (gone fully cold by now, but he doesn't much mind) and sips. "My thanks, for helping me to see them."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Isn't science grand," with great feeling. She pauses to eat her bite of toast and, after swallowing, says, "I know neither of us are astronomers but I am rather looking forward to learning the night skies here."

[timebethine]

"I fear it will have to wait until springtime," says Laertes, with some regret. "I'd not make thee lie out in the snow to look at the stars."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Cold doesn't really bother me," Susan admits. She's been cold for seven months. The winter barely registers, in comparison. "But alas! If only there were a tower suited to such purposes¹."

¹Teeheehee?

[timebethine]

"Have a care," Laertes laughs. "This place may hear, and heed--I don't know why I cautioned thee; hearing and heeding would be ideal, actually."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I do believe this place hears and heeds me plenty," Susan says, trying some of the bacon and finding it to her liking. "You just have to be bossy with it in the right way. Brook no argument."

[timebethine]

"Presume thou wilt be obeyed," Laertes agrees. "Well--bend all thine iron will upon the question, and I shall take thy victory for granted."