Amy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kitchen_maid) wrote2012-08-11 09:00 pm
kitchen_maid) wrote2012-08-11 09:00 pm
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.
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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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.
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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."
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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.
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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.
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(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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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."
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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.'
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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.
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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
killeddestroyed 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?"
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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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"And I'm quite sure that Laura still knows where Amy is, but we don't know what she's headed toward. She could go through something we won't be able to open or follow her through. We probably need to stay close.
"Camouflage and keep moving. That's my vote."
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'We don't need to actually take a vote, right?'
He's a tad worried by Amy no longer being in sight.
'Let's just do it, and move along.'
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Civilians are occasionally very strange, even when they are friends.
So it goes.
"Okay," she adds, after a moment.
And then, attention transferring to Scorpius --
"Quick is better."
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Scorpius snaps to attention and hurries his way down the line, muttering the spell and bopping everyone over the head with his wand.
(A bit like a fairy godmother might do, really.
If gifts from fairy godmothers felt like raw eggs being smashed on your head and going down the back of your shirt.)
"Done," he whispers, as everyone starts to slowly blend in with their surroundings.
But then he tosses out another spell or two. A spell to muffle their sounds from outside ears, especially. Because what good is a Disillusionment Charm if they can still be heard traipsing through the woods?
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"Okay, let's go."
She's not too worried. She knows that Laura is a good tracker. But she'd really feel better if they were sticking close to Amy.
Parker squints a little, peering over the heads in front of her.
"Is it just me, or are the trees starting to thin out a little bit up ahead?"
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"I think they might be."
It's kind of hard to tell.
The lighting here is . . . odd.
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'Maybe.'
He's keeping more of an eye on the rear, really. He knows X has the front. This place is eerie; beautiful, but altogether too quiet. And the light reflected off the gold and silver leaves is alien enough to make him double-check what would normally be instinctive reactions.
'Lets step it up.'
His turn to glance to X.
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She will remember for next time, though. If there is a next time.
Then she meets Bruce's gaze, holding it for a second before she turns and starts moving again, following the scent trail that Amy left behind her.
"It will be more relevant when we are certain. The light."
And if people thought she moved quietly before, it's got nothing on how quietly she's moving now.
And that may be why, as she moves past him, she says to Scorpius, "Thank you."
Or maybe it's just because they don't have to worry about the birds anymore.
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They will arrive just in time to see Amy vanish back into the trees on the far side it it.
At the center of the clearing is a single massive tree with golden leaves.
While the rest of the trees in these woods are utterly still, the leaves of this one are moving faintly, as if it is caught in a breeze no one else can feel.
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Scorpius pauses, not thinking about falling behind or keeping up with Amy at the moment, to blink at it.
It's just rather pretty? In the clearing, with its leaves moving like that. A bit hypnotic, really.
(Think of what could be done with a tree like that!)
Scorpius shuffles forward, toward it.
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No way can that vaguely mesmerized expression be a good thing.
Parker makes a grab for the back of Scorpius' shirt. (She really doesn't want to have to explain to.....someone that she took him to Ambergeldar for a short holiday and then allowed him to get eaten by a tree.)
"Guys, I think maybe we shouldn't look directly at the....whoa."
The moving branches are kind of pretty, aren't they?
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Granted, that probably isn't going to work as a permanent solution, since she's not remotely wild about the idea of trying to move though these woods without seeing where she's going.
And even with her eyes closed, she's improbably aware of that tree.
Meg puts her left hand over the bracelets on her right wrist and focuses on the feel of them.
And still . . .
"That tree really wants to be looked at."
It's very tempting to do so.
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