kitchen_maid | (no subject)

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Amy and Perry have a very long, very busy, very full, and very public day. The kind where you get home and your face is ever so faintly sore from the amount of smiling you've done. They were looking forward to having an hour for each other and the children, but the best laid plans of Kings and Queens are always subject to Problems Arising.

In this case, they returned to find a messenger waiting from Amber, with a letter from Prime Minister requiring His Majesty's Immediate Attention. Perry takes ten minutes to wash the carriage dust off his face, look in on the children, eat a sandwich, and then shut himself up in his study with his secretary the messenger and Lord Stefan. "No need to trouble you yet," he tells Amy. "I'll fill you in when I understand the gist of it."

Amy, therefore, has spent the last hour with her secretary, Duncan, overseeing the dispersal of the dozens of gifts collected on their tour of the town. Foods to the kitchens, toys the nurseries, flowers into water, odds and ends to various homes. Duncan has kept a neat record of what came from where, and he starts drafting the thank you notes that she will sign.

After an hour, Amy sticks her head around Perry's door, takes in the set of his shoulders and the expression on his face and decides to send word to the kitchen to delay dinner by at least an hour, and possibly an hour and a half. This will make for a late meal, but no one will want to start without the King. (Though they may have to, as asking for more than an hour and a half will throw the kitchen into a tizzy from which it can't easily right itself, as Amy knows from having worked in one.)

She pays her own very brief visit to her very sleepy children and then heads back to her rooms.

"The kitchen will delay dinner as you requested," Duncan tells her, when she arrives.

"Thank you. In the meantime, if you could ask them to send up some tea and . . . something. I don't really care what."

"Anything but lemon cakes, ma'am?"

"Yes, anything but lemon cakes," Amy says. "I'll take it on the balcony off my parlor. Thank you."

It's quiet and private and she can watch the sun start to set over the sea.

"Of course."

"Oh," Amy says. "And you might ask Lady Marian if she'd like to join me."

You learn, as a Queen, to take advantage of the openings in your schedule when they create themselves.

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She's pulled from nothing more than sitting, enjoying the quiet peace of a bit of time before dinner spent writing, after the long sunny, laughter-filled day. But she was glad to put it away at the offer when it came.

There's a gentle knock at the parlor door, before she slipped into The Queen's rooms, seeking the balcony. "Good evening, Amy."

Edited 2012-05-25 14:49 (UTC)

"Out here, Marian," Amy calls from just through the open doors at the far side of of the parlor.

The chairs on the balcony are very comfy and Amy has already kicked off her shoes and put her feet up. (Queens are so rarely allowed to go barefoot.) Marian will, the narration trusts, forgive her for not getting up.

There's a small table with a tea tray set up next to her chair, with another chair next to it, just waiting for a guest.

Marian smiled, with a breathe of laughter escaping her more in just air than sound.
"You look quite comfortable."

She took one of the adjoining chairs. "I'd feared I'd find you still under work, as Caspian said they've been keeping you both rather busy in all of your supposedly down hours even."

"My dear Marian," Amy says, amused and Cheerful, "Queens do not have down hours. Down minutes, perhaps, but never hours."

Amy's "free" time is carefully built into her schedule.

"Tea?"

"Yes, thank you," Marian said, brightly. She settled back in her own chair, amused for the movement more by the relaxed posture of Amy than the sea or the setting. "How was your day today?"

"Very, very full.

"And Perry is stuck in a meeting now, which means the evening may yet get fuller," Amy says, pouring the tea and reaching across the table to hand it to Marian.

"How was your day?"

There's a sympathetic shake of her head for the words about Perry, even as she took the tea cup. It did make sense for why dinner was pushed back, and why a time like this had suddenly availed itself of giving Amy a break. "Thank you. Hopefully it will not keep him from the evening entirely."

It had been lovely getting to see him with his wife and children. When it was possible, for the few minutes that were not meals and official occasions which took a lot of precedence on both their days.

"The afternoon was very nice. We took the children down to the beach for the afternoon," Marian said, with obvious fondness. "We only got back a little while ago ourselves."

"I suspect we'll know in the next, oh, half hour or so. If it's serious enough to warrant taking all evening, he'll send for me, as it will also be serious enough to warrant the Queen's attention."

In which case, they'll likely both miss dinner.

"And, yes. I noticed everyone was very drowsy in the nursery this evening. A day out tends to have that effect. They should sleep well tonight."

Whether their parents are working through it or not.

Edited 2012-06-07 02:17 (UTC)

"I hope you both your sake's it turns out not to be necessary tonight." Though she'd seen enough of how that went on a smaller scale with her father growing up, and both of them these last few days. It could go either way depending on what the issue might be.

"Yes," Marian laugh lightly. "It was a lovely ideas, and they seemed to have truly enjoyed themselves, if they tired themselves out doing in. They were angels the whole time."

"Angels?" Amy asks, slightly amused.

Don't misunderstand -- the Royal Children are exceptionally well-behaved. Truthfully, they are not allowed to be otherwise. (It's a dangerous thing, overindulged children who have some power and will have more.)

But . . . Amy would not quite say they are usually angelic.

"Really?"

"Well," Marian said, a little more bemused to her cup first before glancing back over. "There were no major issues of any kind?"

"And however much of the beach mysteriously ended up in Caspian's hair will surely fall out before the christening." Surely it must. Surely. There could be no other way.

Edited 2012-06-18 22:48 (UTC)

Amy raises an eyebrow.

Eloquently.

"I am not going to ask," she decides.

If Marian and Caspian want to get sand in their (or each other's) hair, that is entirely their business.

"Anyway, there'll be hats for tomorrow."

She does keep occasionally hearing something about that. Hats. "what kind of hats do you wear to a ship christening?"

Not that she's worn a hat for any non-christening event before either.

"Well, I will be wearing a tiara," Amy says, Cheerfully, studying the tea tray and selecting a small scone flavored with dried fruit.

Lovely.

"I've asked the Royal Milliner to stop by tomorrow morning with some selections for you, all very fashionable and appropriate, to be sure. You needn't worry at all."

It earns a small chuckle. "I shall not ask you and trust in the Queen and her Royal Milliner, then."

Beat. "I have to admit I am curious to see what it will be and be like, as hats are not a fashion where I come from and they sound far more fun than sadly obligatory here."

"Oh, make no mistake, my dear Lady Marian," Amy says, with a mock severely Regal expression, "they are absolutely obligatory for some events.

"But not sadly so."

It was good to see her smiling and laughing. Nice to know there was something so truly silly and surprising waiting around the corner, for those who would get it and those who were giving them. Yet that it would be such an important thing. A joyful turn to events that never had this kind of edges in her home.

"What other events does everyone here wear hats for?"

Edited 2012-06-28 01:45 (UTC)

"Anything outdoors, in the daytime, that's a bit formal, really," Amy says.

"Garden parties, that sort of thing."

Amy winds up in a tiara for most of them, though she has an impressive collection of hats as well.

"Back home, they don't do anything like this."

Serious dresses and stuffy events, yes. Not that those were meant to look like they might be social, but are just reasons for the Sheriff to intimidate the peerage as well as the populace. Was it back in her girlhood, that last time Nottingham even saw a Garden party?

But not eccentric details that seem curiously both serious and silly in turns.

Nor is the comparison one she wants to brood on at present. Not with the sea before them, the laughter of the afternoon behind her, with the pleasant company of a friend, in a brand new wold, and a cup of tea in her hand. Home can wait. A little while longer.

"What kinds of things have they made for your events before?"

Edited 2012-07-13 11:48 (UTC)

"Fish all you like, my dear Lady Marian," Amy says. "I have no intention of spoiling the surprise."

What would be the fun in that?

"Don't worry. They'll have any number of delightfully suitable choices for you."

None at all, of course. And why ruin any bit of one.

"I suppose you are right." But suppose is titled just a little, with a fondly giving-in smile. "Even though I was asking more for the sake of the tradition."

That was one of the best things about being in Ambergeldar. A whole new world spooling out everywhere.

"But--" Came brightly, right on her other words. "--I think you are right, and that it can wait. Then, on the other side, I can ask any questions I might have left about the whole thing."

Edited 2012-07-20 03:50 (UTC)

Amy laughs. "Never confuse the fashion with the tradition, Marian. You'll look hopelessly out of date.

"And thank good the one changes. Fashion can, at times, be very silly."

Of course, one of the great advantages to being Queen is that Amy can do a great deal to change it when she likes.

Marian laughed, making sure to keep herself even and her cup balanced, easily able to agree with that one just based on what passed through courts and trickled down into Nottingham at times. Obvious and cheerful, she asked, with a small gesture of her cup.

"Alright, if it can't be about hats, what is one of the sillier, memorable, fashions that's come and gone more recently?"

"Oh, heavens, let me think. I don't really pay that much attention."

To some degree, she sets the fashion, and to another degree, she is beyond it.

"There was a period last year when birds were quite in vogue. It started simply enough, with embroidered birds on handkerchiefs and the like, and then sort of just spiraled, until Lady Marcela arrived at a ball in a gown made all of feathers, and shed dreadfully as she danced, and everyone wound up slipping on feathers and sneezing all night.

"After that, I might have said that I thought the fashion for birds was very silly to one or two carefully selected courtiers, and, well, that was the end of the fashion for birds."

Marian raised her hand to her face, the curve of her fingers resting at her lips listening to the description through an amused wince. "That sounds terrible. At least you stopped it before there were live birds being used in any sad, strange fashion next."

"Oh, I doubt it would have gone quite that far," Amy says, with an amused smile of her own.

"Droppings."

No one wants to be a Court covered in bird droppings.

That one actually gets a laugh, fingers pressing in, shaking her head.

"At least we can be glad for the keeping of those sensibilities."

"Small favors," Amy says. "You do learn to appreciate them.

"Sunsets, too," she adds, with a nod out toward the water in front of them.

(This balcony does have the most exquisite view.)

"Look at that."

It truly does. The water a world of golden fiery refraction. A beauty that never seemed to grow old or common for each new one collected. That tugged at the heart, making you believe in the magic and peace that could still be found in the quiet close of the world ending every single day. With silent, spectacular glory.

She watched, letting it expand her own heart, and relax her shoulder ever the more, from a day that had so little stress to it. The endless blessing this trip and these people had graced her with. With a soft, quiet breath first, to the dropping sun, she glanced over, only partially, adding with a smile.

"And dear friends."

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