timebethine

Somewhere around midnight, a migraine descended on Laertes like a thunderhead, and he still hasn't come out from beneath its anvil. He's spent most of the day hiding in bed with the curtains drawn, feeling as though he's about to be sick--and that feeling's only grown worse as the sun has drifted sluggishly to a low apex in the sky.

It isn't until mid-afternoon that he feels well enough to make progress on all his plans. He needs to speak to SecUnit about its drones, to Dionysus about whether Avernus (that is her name, isn't it?) is a goddess, and to Nightingale about whether he can offer magical support in case their confrontation goes sour. He needs to talk with Claudius about what to say when he does speak to her.

So it is that he starts making his rounds through the mansion and its grounds, seeking out friends old and new, clinging grimly to the thermos of coffee that smells sickeningly strong but also helps drive back the pain. His face is wan, his eyes shadowed. He would rather be doing anything but this.

Laertes has at last managed to finish building the set of stairs and the adjustable gates for Szarka. The gates were complex, requiring him to measure and drill precisely so that the locking mechanism could hold them steady in the doorframe. The stairs, on the other hand, were simple, and he's taken the time to sand them smooth so that Szarka won't get splinters in her paws.

Now, if only she wanted to climb them.

He pats both knees again. "Up, Szarike, up!" She glances at the stairs, full of doubt and misgivings, then turns her gaze up at Laertes atop the bed and whines. Then, with a great leap and a scramble, she heaves herself onto the bed and ignores the stairs completely.

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.

Laertes doesn't do anything unusual after he encounters the fallen sheet of paper. He goes about his business; he shapes coil pots, he takes lunch with Sagramore, he does fencing drills until he's sweating and sore. All the while, his copy of the paper feels heavy and mordant, boring a hole through his clothes to burn his skin.

He has a date with Claudius to run through a few chemical experiments, and thus, he can be found waiting in their alchemy laboratory with his eyes trained on the door.

Laertes has settled on building a cross-draft kiln--but for that, he'll need to fire bricks, and to make bricks, of course, he'll need clay. He's finished sifting the clay he'd dug from the shore of the lake, and now all that remains is to get it into a state that will bear shaping and firing. The tool room had a couple of bags of sand and a smaller sack of bauxite alumina ready for use; those will help the kiln bricks to withstand the great heat of a long firing.

It's a grey day, and the scent of clay is rich in Laertes's nostrils. Smells always get stronger right before he has a migraine, and a part of him wants to call off this whole project and hide in bed to wait out the impending ache--but he isn't hurting yet; his vision isn't starting to shimmer yet. The wind off the lake is bracing, redolent with the rich, spice-and-rot scent of fallen leaves.

There's time enough to pull off his boots and socks, roll up his jeans, and dig in.

Laertes delights in the many spices of the Mansion's kitchens--he lost several hours one evening just opening every bottle and smelling it, acquainting himself with the differences between cardamom and allspice, sage and bay. Today, he is intent upon celebrating those spices with a baklava recipe he's found, and so he's roped Sagramore into serving as his sous-chef. While Laertes prepares the dough to laminate, he sets Sagramore to chopping nuts up finely. "This recipe saith walnuts," he says, "but another hath pistachios, and a third one walnuts and almonds mixed."

Laertes has spent all day bent over a cookbook, preparing a meal that he hopes a prince will have no cause to criticize. He's made flaky little apple and brie pastries with their crusts twisted in whorls, roast carrots swimming in honey sauce and garnished with walnuts; for the main course, he's been stewing a pot roast for hours. The entire kitchen smells of beef and and onions, celery and parsley and rosemary.

Now, as he arranges his bounty on the table in his rooms, there is just enough space for anxiety to score a touch. He knows full well that, if this night goes as he expects, he'll be taking Claudius to bed--and that will be a choice that he can never take back, if this long dream ends and he finds himself in Elsinore again. He knows that if there is a way that Claudius can use this tryst to his advantage, he will, even here in what might as well be Arcadia.

He shakes his head as he works free the cork of a wine bottle--sweet and red, of no vintage he can recognize. What will come, will come. He has no reputation here to protect, and that's perhaps the most freeing thought he can imagine.