Open Post: What a yarn

[sporesprouter]

There's still quite a bit of winter yet, according to the calendar, not to mention whatever Dark is, and Tress got an idea for a project fairly recently. It's appropriate and it gives her a chance to stretch out a skill she hasn't really gotten an opportunity to use in a while.

So she's in a cozy parlor, sitting curled up in a big comfy armchair right by the window, a basket of yarn at her feet, and she's knitting. It's still too early to be immediately obvious what it is she's knitting, but she's moving with the easy confidence that indicates it's definitely not a new craft she's just now decided to take up.

Sometimes, after all, it's nice to go back to something old and familiar.

Comments

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"That's very thoughtful," Susan says, pulling a broken tin toy from the box and setting it on top of the binder. She offers: "I switched with Thomas."

[sporesprouter]

"It really was such a terribly awkward event, wasn't it?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh, very," says Susan. She thinks for a moment. Lancelot isn't a secret, though she shan't share Lancelot's personal business and traumatic neuroses with anyone. Still, she might as well admit - "More for Thomas than me, I think. He woke up next to Lancelot." A pause. "Did you wake up with Claudius, then? If you were Galahad?"

[sporesprouter]

Tress is only barely acquainted with Lancelot but she very much understands that awkwardness. "Oh, goodness." She shakes her head, though, at the question. "I thought I had, at first, but Claudius had also switched, so I woke up with Aziraphale in Claudius' body."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"My condolences."

[sporesprouter]

She shrugs. "It was... well, after everything got sorted out, it was fine."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"At least it's all behind us."

[sporesprouter]

"And thank goodness for that. Hopefully whatever comes next is a little less... embarrassing."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan latches onto this topic. "What do you suppose it shall be?" she asks. "The next thing, I mean. I think we haven't a hope of guessing, in truth, but I also expect it might lessen the sting to make a betting pool of it."

[sporesprouter]

"It's hard to say. The fact that the swaps happened in two batches throws a whole new wrench into things, because it didn't fit the pattern. It makes me wonder if it's an indication that something that's already happened will get an encore."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I was led to believe that it was also queer that the undead followed the truth compulsions so closely," says Susan, thoughtfully. "Has there truly been a 'pattern' at all?"

[sporesprouter]

"It was strange, yes, although the truth compulsion day was only the second event here, so it was less notable until they continued on without a followup. Even then, though, the zombies were only a few days later, not a couple weeks. There's definitely a pattern, even if it's not a very strict one."

She frowns thoughtfully. She doesn't have her notes to hand, not expecting to need them, but she's gone over it recently enough, especially after the oddity of the switch, that she knows without having to look it up. "The events occur about a month apart, with margin of a week or so on either side. It's about a thirty day baseline, although it's never been exactly thirty days, so the average shifts from event to event. It's odd, though, because the first swap was only twenty days after the language translation, which made the second swap thirty-three days afterward, almost like the first one was bumped a little early so the last one could be closer to the rough timeline."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Well, Susan is obviously tremendously impressed! "You've taken careful notes on the subject," she says, reaching for her own notebook and flipping it open to the relevant pages. "You believe there's an element of purpose to the events?"

[sporesprouter]

"It would almost be more unbelievable to think there isn't a purpose to them, but I can't even begin to imagine what that purpose is other than just to keep us occupied."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"What elements do you think they might have in common? Besides being largely horrid, of course."

[sporesprouter]

"Well, none of them have affected everyone, so that's interesting. They're all also things that we couldn't have just done ourselves. Almost all of them have caused a direct change of some kind to the people being affected..." She frowns thoughtfully. "They're quite varied, aside from that, though."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"No?" she asks, surprised. "Not even the truth compulsion? Not even the undead?"

[sporesprouter]

"Certainly not the truth compulsion. I wasn't affected, anyway¹. You can probably make a case for the zombies, but there were enough people out fighting them that anyone who just stayed inside really wouldn't have had it affect them to any real degree. Unless, I suppose, they wanted to go out but couldn't."


¹ Or she was but is too honest in general to actually realize it. (Hello, one single solitary Glorf-bean.)

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I see," says Susan, thoughtfully. She sits back and regards Tress. "Do you suppose we're organized enough to handle whatever might come next?"

[sporesprouter]

She pauses again, mulling that over. "I'm not sure that organization has much to do with it," she says slowly. "Not that it's not helpful, because of course it is. But if we work under the assumption that there is a force behind this, call it mansion spirits or anything else... well, so far that force hasn't offered up anything we can't handle. But if they somehow decide to, they'll know about whatever preparations and organization we've done, so they'll be able to account for that."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"So you think of it as having some sort of sentience?" Susan asks. "I rather think whatever it is hasn't got any higher-level thinking ability at all. It seems to me to be pure dumb happenstance."

[sporesprouter]

"It all seems kind of... intricate, for pure dumb happenstance. I might be wrong, obviously, but I don't think I am." She frowns thoughtfully. "Lan Wangji has the ability to communicate with spirits through his cultivation. When he first got here, he used that ability and got a response. He said it was just laughter before falling silent. And it would be consistent with what it seems might be happening here. The house, or whoever's behind it, is keeping itself amused, sometimes at our expense."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

But Susan isn't convinced. "My sister once told me of a house she visited," she says. "Populated by invisible hosts, and with queer things inside. A book of spells, for example, with pages that would only turn one way, and which tempted her into awful things." Oh, how she wishes she'd listened to Lucy more closely when Lucy told her of the Dufflepuds! But by the time Susan came back from America, she'd quite put Narnia far from her mind, and had only been cross with Lucy for making up more silly stories. "She said the house was terribly frightening, and the hosts, though merry with their provisions, seemed threatening. She came to realize they were all rather silly in the end."

[sporesprouter]

"Oh, I very much don't think it's out of the question that our hosts will turn out to be rather silly in the end. But I think there's at least enough evidence of actual hosts with some sort of intelligence that it should be at least considered when working on theories. It just... seems like more than random happenstance."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"If there's any intelligence there, perhaps I shouldn't goad it," Susan says, thoughtfully. "I shouldn't want to be punished for impudence."