Marian in Ambergeldar

[kitchen_maid]

Amy ran into Marian when she took Mal -- er, Captain Sir Malcolm Reynolds -- back to Milliways after his visit.

And, after hearing about the goings on there, had invited Marian back for a short visit to Ambergeldar. (She would have invited Marian for an extended visit, especially as Marian cannot get back to her own world, but Marian has security duties, and Amy respects that. Still, even security members need breaks.)

After what happened with Mal, Amy gives Marian a letter of introduction, just in case she winds up in Loddingtop or some such place. And she takes the very simple and practical precaution of holding carefully and tightly to Marian's hand as they step out of the bar and into Amy's wardrobe.

"It's not, I fear, the most exciting first view of the kingdom. Do mind the shoes."

It's not the most convenient thing, having a doorway in your wardrobe. Things will get in the way of coming and going.

Once they're safely into Amy's dressing room, she lets go of Marian's hand. "Welcome to Ambergeldar."

Comments

[queenofmay]

Marian doing her level best, did not begin to laugh once, but walked along with the small girl. Letting her lead the way and speak of the fish.

"Perhaps, it simply means that every time they are getting a longer name. So they can be more like you and all of your family. I cannot speak fish, but they could even like receiving new names with each new summer. They have not seemed displeased with it, so far, have they?"

[kitchen_maid]

"Sometimes when they open their mouths a lot they don't look happy," Susan says. "Like this."

There is very earnest unhappy-fish-mouth demonstrating.

Up ahead, her mother collects is joined by a footman carrying a large basket and a blanket.

"That's the best picnic blanket," Susan says, abruptly breaking off her fish impression. "It's purple."

[queenofmay]

It saves Marian and makes it so she's able to smother out of a laugh beginning to escape, into her free hand. She is so sweet and earnest and flipping between things, childlike simplicity and importance to each new statement.

"Do you get to have picnics often?"

[kitchen_maid]

"It's a special thing," Susan says, shaking her head.

"With Mama. And sometimes Papa can come, too."

Susan pulls on Marian's hand and go skipping off to where Amy has stopped up ahead.

"Just here, I think, Charles," Amy says.

The footman spreads the blanket out in an open area near one of the formal gardens.

He sets the basket in one corner, bows, and goes.

[queenofmay]

Marian hurried up with her, ending up laughing this time. Starting to run, instead of skip, and instead, she scooped the little girl up in her arms. Stopping to turn in a circle short of the blanket.

And give her a sudden, very wide mockingly-afraid face, before falling down suddenly. Rather play-acted-ly, because she drops easily into sitting inside her skirts, and Susan never once even remotely is endangered toward falling on to the grass and not her lap of billowing skirts.

[kitchen_maid]

Susan is completely delighted and laughing by the time she has landed.

You, Marian, will do.

[queenofmay]

Susan gets hugged, laughing, smiling. And without really pulling herself from it, Marian realizes its the first time she's felt unrestrainedly joyful even for a few seconds in a very, very long time.

And she smiles over the girls head, letting her arms loose, so she can crawl away if need by, as she looked to Amy. "Thank you, again."

[kitchen_maid]

"Of course, Marian," Amy says, handing lemonade across the blanket to Marian. "And you're always welcome. Whenever you like, for as long as you like."

Amy has a ridiculous number of guest rooms.

[queenofmay]

"I wish I, or Milliways, could take you up on that more readily right now," Marian said taking the Lemonade, and careful of the tiny child in her lap. "But I will be glad to keep it in mind for later, when things are calmer."




She would be glad to get to know Amy more.

For several reasons, laced into others and several all her own.

[kitchen_maid]

"Well, the offer stands. For however long.

"Napkin, Merry," Amy adds, holding it out to her son.

The heir to the Throne of Ambergeldar has found the strawberries.

He's very, very fond of strawberries.

[queenofmay]

That much, and the red around his mouth, is very obvious. Marian finished the first sip of her lemonade and watched him with his napkin first, before asking, "Merry, have you ever made Berry Pies with them before?"

[kitchen_maid]

Merry shakes his head, eyes very wide.

[queenofmay]

"Perhaps, when I come back, when can convince your mother to show us the secret way to her grand kitchen, and I shall have you help me with one." Marian ruffled Susan's hair, as she added. "They were my very favorite thing when I was about your ages."

And for a great deal longer after, too.

[ordinary_sorts]

"Please say none of you are intruders."

The voice is deep and rumbling, and coming from somewhere very high up.

Then, of course, it's coming from somewhere much lower down, as a vast draconian eye blinks first at Marian, then at Amy, then at Susan.

"Only you will all keep changing colors, and I'd hate for a picnic as nice as this one to be spoiled."

Does he smell apple pastries?

[kitchen_maid]

"Norman!" cries Susan happily, abandoning her lunch to find the apple pastries in the basket. (This requires her to take everything else out, to make sure she finds them all, of course.)

"None of us are intruders, Norman, but you're very good to check," Amy says. "May I present Lady Marian of Nottingham? Marian, this Norman, the Royal Dragon of Ambergeldar."

[queenofmay]

Child scrambling from exuberantly from her, and balancing lemonade and food aside, Marian might have been a little surprised into helpfully not moving at all. He was rather . . . big. And talking, wasn't he?

As Amy had said. Marian seemed to gain herself somewhere in the middle of Amy's introductions, smiling a little, both because of and in spite of her own first reaction. Hands settling in her lap, at the base of her glass.

"Fair eve, Norman."

[ordinary_sorts]

"Susan!"

Norman does sound delighted about that, helpfully craning his neck in order to rest his head on his forelegs.

It leaves him at a fairly decent height for consuming apple pastries, provided the princess holds them up.

This accomplished, he lets his tongue flick at the air for a moment. Then the enormous pupil of one enormous eye seems to center on Marian.

"Nottingham. Nottingham. Hmm. Could you show that to me on a map? I've never been. Is it an interesting place? Are there caves?"

Oh. Wait.

The Queen presented this woman to him. That means human formalities.

Such a bother.

"Hello, Lady Marian. You wouldn't be another one interested in going dragon-diving, would you?"

[queenofmay]

Marian regarded the face, still trying to take in that she was talking to a dragon. Whose head was so much larger than her person even, no matter the rest of him. "I can not say that I am, as I do not know what it is."

"But, yes, there are caves in Nottingham" Marian said, with something of a note of amusement in her tone, predisposed to answer his first questions. "And, it being my home, I would consider it greatly interesting."

Also, entirely unsafe and quite unreachable for him from here, thankfully.

[ordinary_sorts]

"Are they inhabited, your caves? And Nottingham, too, I suppose. Isolation is dreadfully dull, and knights are always filling. Cows and sheep, too, provided no one screams when you carry them off. High-pitched voices hurt my head."

Norman curls his tail around his haunches, extending his tongue to very delicately take the first of the offered pastries.

He swallows before speaking again.

"As for dragon-diving, it's a sport of Countesses, not kings. I fly very high, and then I drop you, and then I catch you before you hit the ground. It does wonders for my claw-eye coordination, I must say."

[queenofmay]

That sounded positively terrifying. And given the completely unruffled way he says it, Marian glanced toward Amy, trying to decide if he meant it. And who did it. And why.

And, rather all of the sudden, what it would feel like.

Falling through the air only to be caught. "Truly?"

[kitchen_maid]

"I'm afraid that's a sport only for a very particular countess, Norman. Most of us lack Laura's constitution."

She smiles at Marian.

"I'm sure you know Laura. She's also from Milliways.

"She visits to go flying with Norman."

[queenofmay]

Marian nodded, catching the name, and what went along with it. There's an interesting surge of understanding and disappointment that mingled there. Marian's hands settling again at the base of the glass she was holding in her lap.

"She would like that," Marian said, quietly bemused. "I have only been flying once before, as dragon's are not common to my world. I had not known them to be real anywhere until a few years ago."

[ordinary_sorts]

Norman pauses halfway through taking up a third pastry, the little cake poised on the tip of his tongue.

Then he pulls it deep into his maw, swallowing without chewing.

"Dragons are hardly common, but we are most certainly present."

He sniffs, sending smoke-clouds out of his nostrils.

"Believing us not to be real shows a distinct lack of imagination. Particularly in your story-tellers."

A second exhalation of smoke through Norman's nostrils shows exactly what he thinks about that sort of ridiculousness.

[queenofmay]

Imagination is not something that most people in Nottingham flourish about. She would not say Nottingham is a place without it. Children still run and laugh and play at all sorts of games, in the villages and in the market.

But it is not nearly as prevalent as the sun shining all day.
And it is is far, far, far harder to find in their parents.
Mined gold, clung to tenaciously in their centers.


"I think, perhaps, that you are right. At least about needing more storytellers."

[ordinary_sorts]

"Well, of course I'm right."

Norman accepts another offered pastry.

"Honestly. No dragons. Impossible."

His muttering fades away into something that is manifestly incomprehensible to anyone that is not a dragon.

Then he sighs, his great sides heaving with a long exhale.

"I'm sure you could import some. Storytellers, that is. Or bards. They're noisier, to be sure, but they do scamper about very quickly."

Especially with a judicious application of flame. It used to be very entertaining.