kitchen_maid | Firgures Up Ahead Moving Through the Trees

Firgures Up Ahead Moving Through the Trees

Amy knew when she married Perry that she was never going to have what you might call a surfeit of privacy.

On the other hand, this is the first time since she was a very small girl that she's tried to fall asleep with an audience keeping watch over her.

There's a faint sliver of light through the doorway that Amy keeps opening her eyes to watch. X, Parker, Meg, Scorpius, and Bruce are in the breakfast room, just on the other side of the ever-so-slightly ajar door. ("You do not have to worry. I will hear you," X had said, when Amy had expressed surprise at how little the door is open. "Heartbeats are difficult to muffle. It is okay.")

Amy rolls onto her other side, which at least means that she can't see the light through the doorway.

On the other hand, she can now see the side of the bed where her husband isn't. Perry has removed himself to the seventy-third best bedroom. He would much prefer to be here, but he found it quite impossible to refute the logic of Parker and X.

"Helloooo, you're the King," Parker had said.

X had been slightly more diplomatic. "We will bring her back. You know I do not lie. And people will need to know where to find you. If there is an emergency. While we are gone."

Perry probably isn't sleeping any better than she is, Amy supposes. On the other hand, Perry probably isn't even trying to sleep.

Amy sticks her head under the pillow, but there's not enough air.

She rolls over again, takes a deep breath, and starts counting backwards from one hundred.

Come on, Amethyst. Just fall asleep.

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Scorpius is not eating all that much. He's too busy studying, frankly.

He's got the book the Court Historian gave him and he's looking through it for any hints or clues that he can.

(They've got princesses to save.

Er, well. A Queen, at any rate.

Oh, Merlin. It's a bloody fairy tale.)

He rubs at his eyes and casts a glance around the table. He leans over to Parker.

"Maybe I should have given her a sleeping potion?

"Er. Except - I mean, that could mess with the curse and, uhm - Never mind."

He goes back to studying the book.

Parker is sitting in the chair next to Scorpius with her feet tucked up, working on a cup of very strong tea.

Caffeine is your friend when you're pulling an all-nighter.

"Not a bad thought," Parker says in reply to Scorpius, "but probably better to try it without the drugs first."

Because...yeah. Parker's not a witch or a wizard, but a curse with an expired warranty seems to be tricky enough without adding potions, unless it's absolutely necessary.

"Don't worry. She'll get to sleep. She danced her socks off all night last night. I'm sure she has to be tired."

"And it might not matter if she's not asleep," Meg says.

She's been over a few books herself today.

"I mean, it sounds like the princesses however many generations ago weren't sleeping when they got caught in it.

"I think we just kind of . . . wait and see that happens."

(Oh, Alain is going to love this one when she gets back home.)

Bruce is sitting to one side, checking various small gadgets and fitting them onto a black belt. This is the first chance he's had to properly field test a few things, and there's not a chance he's going to in there without making sure everything's in proper working order.

He hates waiting and seeing what happens. But sometimes it's all you can do. So he'll just be sitting over here, quiet, doing what he can to prepare.

"Listening will be helpful, too," X offers.

"For us."

She has no idea what will help Amy sleep, or she would attempt to contribute there, as well.

As it is, she merely falls silent again. Waiting.

It is something she is very good at.

Maybe she falls asleep.

Maybe she doesn't.

Eventually, anyone listening carefully (or X listening normally) will hear Amy get out of bed. (To say nothing of the sound of a massive trapdoor opening in the floor, revealing a long flight of wooden steps.)

Amy pulls on her dancing shoes (the blue ones tonight) and heads down into the world below the palace.

Sleepwalking, trance, or otherwise caught in the spell, Amy is on her way.

Things have begun.

This waiting thing? Well. Scorpius can do it. Really, he can!

It just involves a bit of fiddling and foot-tapping, until -

" - Was that the trapdoor?"

He may be hearing things, being that he's been listening so-very-carefully, like X suggested, so -

Best to ask?

Parker had set her mug of tea aside when she'd thought she heard some movement on the other side of the cracked door.

Now she hops up and walks quickly on her toes toward Amy's bedroom.

(Not that there's any reason to tiptoe. If Amy is under a spell, it's highly unlikely they're going to wake her up by making a bit of noise.)

Looking like a rather alert barn cat, Parker pauses and listens.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I think we're off."

"Right, then," Meg says.

They're just going to follow to an enchanted queen down into a weird underground world no one knew existed this time yesterday.

What could possibly go wrong?

Meg is not really the logical leader on this particular adventure, and she is very much all right with that. She'll happily (and probably wisely) hang back enough to let people like Laura go ahead of her.

Bruce stands up quietly, and slings his belt around his waist. OK, so it looks a bit odd without the rest of the suit, but he can live with that.

'Lets go, then.'

He looks over.

'X?'

X pauses fractionally, flicking a glance at Bruce that's just quick enough to meet his gaze and hold for a second. Then she speeds up her pace, slipping past the rest of the party in order to take point.

Bruce can take rear guard. Someone needs to watch their back.

And anything or anyone that is waiting down through that trap door --

X will smell (and hear) them coming.

Her primary goal, after all, is to keep Amy (and her friends) safe. Spell-breaking is for the professionals.

It's hard to say if there are a great many steps leading down from the trap door or only a few . . . but then, that's a matter of perspective, isn't it?

The stairs end in a wood, the trees of which glitter with leaves of gold and silver and diamonds. It extends out around them in all directions, as far as the eye can see.

Amy does not pause or look around. She simply continues onto one of the many faint paths that crisscross the woods.

Where the others go, who can say?

Amy reaches a particularly large silver tree and turns sharply to the left.

Scorpius wishes he could leave the spell-breaking for the professionals, too. He is still a student, after all!

But, a spell does have to be broken.

He shrinks the book and stuffs it in his pocket - he hopes Sir Harold won't mind and claim mistreatment; he will put it back the way it was! - and follows the others down the trapdoor and into the woods.

(Woods that the goblins of Gringotts would love.)

There's all sorts of paths to take and there's nothing in the book about which is the right path.

Luckily: "She's left footprints."

Which are soon in danger of being wiped out because there's something dusting them off the path ahead.

"Okay. That is just creepy," Parker says, watching what looks like the handiwork of an invisible broom.

And likely to get creepier before all is said and done. It's a good thing she doesn't wig out easily.

Parker vaguely thinks that maybe she should have grabbed a weapon when they were getting ready. But then, it's not like she knows how to use a sword or a mace or anything like that.

Probably better to just stick with her wits. They're sharp enough.

"Don't worry," she adds, reassuringly. "Laura will be able to keep track of her."

"And probably everything else in these woods, if it comes to it," Meg adds.

Laura is like that.

"And it is creepy, yes. Beautiful, but really creepy."

Meg reaches out and snaps a twig off one of the golden trees along the path.

"The trees are alive," she says, after a moment's examination. "The leaves are metal, but the twig is wood, and it's green."

For whatever that's worth.

Edited 2012-06-21 16:53 (UTC)

'Just stay together,' he murmurs quietly, from the back.

Because X is fast, but if they get seperated and have to be tracked down, there's no guarantee of what might happen while they're waiting to be found.

He tries to keep Amy in sight. A little difficult from the back, and he's looking around all the time to check there aren't new threats arriving from within the trees. A few trunks get small black devices stuck to the side. If they do happen to get lost, a couple of explosions might lead them back on track. Or deter anyone following.

X's nostrils flare slightly as she tracks Amy's scent across the now clean-swept ground, slipping past invisible sweepers as if they are entirely irrelevant.

(Right now, for X, they are.)

The click-whirr coming from several of the golden tree-tops is less irrelevant, if only because X does not know if they are dangerous yet. This may explain why she pauses, crouching for a second to pick up a sizable pebble and hurling it into the tree's uppermost branches.

Several bronze-and-sapphire-colored birds dart out of the tree, wings whirring loudly as they struggle for lift and settle, instead, for gliding toward the forest floor.

When they land, they do not explode. They do sparkle, though, even in the low light.

And they're still making that click-whirr sound.

Amy keeps walking, occasionally turning, her pace completely constant and utterly consistent.

She doesn't react to any of the sounds following her through the woods -- the voices or the snap of the twig Meg broke or the click-whirr of the birds in the trees.

The woods around them begins to grow a bit denser, the trees themselves are getting larger, their leaves motionless but glittering in the sourceless light.

Amy seems to know where she's going and the forest certainly welcomes her. Scorpius is starting to worry the forest might not be so welcoming to the group that follows after her.

Especially if they keep touching things.

Er. Not that Scorpius is a stickler for restraint and caution. He's actually the sort to push the big red button and the like, just to see what it does, even after being told what it does.

But - the birds? Are the birds following them? He thinks the birds might be following them.

"Uhm.

"I don't suppose anyone has any bird feed? Or spare parts? I don't know what mechanical birds eat."

Maybe they eat intruders.

"Nuts and bolts? Eyeballs? Got me."

Parker eyes up the birds with deep distrust. Oh, the things Alfred Hitchcock could have done with these guys.

"Maybe they're like surveillance? Or a warning system?"

"Of course, that begs the question of who or what they might be warning. Which is not exactly a 'happy-place' sort of thought."

She really should have grabbed a weapon. A mace is basically just a glorified baseball bat, right?

"No, it's really not, Parker."

It's not even kind of a happy-place sort of thought.

Meg casts a sidelong glance at the birds. There's a small, quiet, and a bit quasi-hysterical part of her brain wondering if they're going to start cuckooing the hour.

"Maybe if we ignore them, they'll ignore us?

"I mean, they don't seem to be bothering Amy. Maybe if we look like we belong here, they'll assume that we do."

'Or maybe they won't.'

Bruce is not all that comfortable with leaving it to guesswork. He pulls a couple of small, metal items from his pocket (all shaped like bats, but he's kind of hoping the others won't see that), and tosses them down on the ground as if they were food.

At least one of them takes a peck at it. Maybe they are just hungry.

'We could just destroy them, if it'd make you happier.'

X looks back over her shoulder at that, head tilting fractionally as she studies the hovering birds.

Then --

"There is a way to distract them? That we could also use to destroy them."

Beat.

"If it is necessary."

Her voice is definitely not pitched to carry much beyond the distance between herself and Bruce.

There is no sense in warning the birds, if they are about to become problematic.

This pause is half as long.

"It will be more useful if it does not prevent us following Amy."

Does Bruce have a remote-triggered detonator? Does Scorpius have a spell for that?

These questions and more are the ones that X does not voice. Probably because words are difficult.

And 60% of her attention is on Amy -- and Amy's trail.

Destroy?

Scorpius knows the birds are only made of bits and pieces, but -

Isn't everyone just sort of made up of bits and pieces?

(He ~~killed~~destroyed a broom once. An old broom. But - That's enough for him. These birds...)

"Er - We don't - That's not - I don't think, uhm - I know a spell!

"It could camouflage us. Maybe they won't see through it?"

Edited 2012-06-27 11:43 (UTC)

"For all we know, they're just here for decoration, just like the trees."

Unless the trees are primed to attack, too. In which case, Parker's going to be a little more worried about them.

"If we can camouflage quickly, great. But we don't want to let Amy get too far ahead of us."

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