namesthesky | authorized borrowing

Aya is little used to having the opportunity to set her own priorities, but she likes it. She's not hurting for any material resources, and the organization of the attic would produce those more than anything else; and she has this entire bookshelf closer to hand. So the attic, which may or may not contain ghosts, languishes; and she steadily works through the book collection. Right now she is on the third in a series of myths from the old religion; this volume is about Aelare, the trickster.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

namesthesky

"You're more excited than I thought you would be about me doodling you a fox."

From:

anotherbreeze

"It's sweet," he says. "It's - for me, about me, and nobody told you to, you just decided to do it because you wanted to."

Which is apparently rare enough to be this exciting.

From:

namesthesky

"I don't know that I'd say it's about you. It's about something you said you like."

From:

anotherbreeze

"I don't mean it's a drawing of me, exactly. But it's what you said, it's about something I like, something that's important to me - I don't get many gifts like that."

From:

namesthesky

"Hence the attic full of things you don't care about, I guess."

From:

anotherbreeze

"Yeah."

From:

namesthesky

"Well, now you have a fox."

From:

anotherbreeze

"I do! I have a copper-coated fox. I love it."

From:

namesthesky

"Maybe I'll draw you a magpie to match."

From:

anotherbreeze

"I'd love that too."

From:

namesthesky

"Clearly. I don't think I have ever managed to make anyone this happy before in my entire life."

From:

anotherbreeze

"Aww," he giggles. "Well, now you have."

From:

namesthesky

From:

anotherbreeze

From:

namesthesky

Aya starts giggling helplessly.

From:

anotherbreeze

Which sets him off too.

Between giggles, he says, "I want to make you a cake! Do you want a cake?"

From:

namesthesky

"My very own cake, wow, maybe, sure!"

From:

anotherbreeze

"I'll make you a cake!"

And he jumps up and disappears out into the hall, presumably in a kitchenward direction.

From:

namesthesky

Aya laughs some more.

She looks up a good description of an Aelare-magpie in the book, sets out inks, and gets started.

When she's got its outline (beak, wings, claws, long barbed lizard tail) all composed on the page how she likes after ruining her first attempt with an unsalvageable splotch of green, she decides to wander down the stairs to see what kind of cake is in the offing.

She catches the toe of her sandal on a stair, halfway down, and goes tumbling, hands flying up around her neck to protect her head but not doing too well themselves in the process.

She lands in a heap at the foot of the stairs, dizzy and bruised, and checks herself for anything worse. Her lip's bleeding, her ankle hurts badly enough to be sprained but she thinks not badly enough to be fractured, everything else seems to just be battered soft tissue. She gets up, succumbs to vertigo and shuts her eyes, grabs the banister, and decides to go up, not down; she can lie in her bed, back in her room, and he will probably make sure she doesn't have to walk anywhere for a while.

She realizes she's got the wrong flight of stairs when she trips, again, two steps from the top, and her arms fling out to try to catch something, and they do.

The right flight of stairs only has the wall treatments to catch.

The wrong one has a painting on the wall.

It makes an awful noise when she grabs it, and comes off the wall and cracks its frame on the landing.

Aya lies sprawled with the wrecked picture frame a few inches from her face and fills up with fear as though standing under a faucet of the stuff.

Edited Date: 2014-02-27 11:26 pm (UTC)

From:

anotherbreeze

Meanwhile, a successful baker is on his way back to his rooms.

He's surprised when he finds Aya gone, but not worried. There's places she could be - the attic, the servants' quarters. He puts the cake down on a little table in the little room. It is a good cake. He's proud of it.

From:

namesthesky

Aya makes judgments as quickly as she can while her head is still spinning.

She crawls - carefully, backwards - down the wrong flight of stairs. She finds her wrong turning and climbs - carefully, forwards - back up to the suite.

She does stand well enough to get at the door handle and let herself in.

From:

anotherbreeze

"...What happened to you?" he asks, startled.

From:

namesthesky

"I -" Ow, her lip isn't happy about that; she tries again. "I went downstairs to see how the cake was going. Fell, got dizzy, got lost, fell again - there's - a damaged painting -"