{ pfsb } by the fireside

[for_tradition]

A fireside – the proper kind, with the scent and crackle of flames as they transmogrify the passive energy of wood into heat and light – is something one just really can't have without wood to burn. 

The swimming fish are an added bonus, but really don't lend much to the ambience beyond novelty. 

It's very pleasant to sit by this fireside, real or magicked up as it might be, while ferociously taking notes. The warm, flickering light of the flames reflects off Abigail Pent's smooth brown hair and the silk of her skirts – the rich brown of excellent milk chocolate, struck through with gold – and illuminates her neat, slightly cramped handwriting. So engrossed is she that when the waitrat arrives with her ordered tea, she doesn't notice until the creature gives a polite half-cough, half-squeak.

Glancing up, she peers myopically at the proffered tea set. (She is wearing two sets of spectacles, but forgotten to put either over her eyes. One sits lightly on her hair, the other hangs around her neck off a cord of brown silk.)

"That doesn't look right," she tells the waitrat. It certainly is tea, but the stunted white pot and small, handle-less cups don't look at all like the bone china she'd expected.

She looks about, searching – ah. Getting to her feet in a rustle of fabric, she accepts the tray from the waitrat and makes her way over to the table she'd spotted, where a tall, slim young man has received a bone china tea service and plate of iced biscuits. "Pardon me," Abigail says, smiling as she approaches him. "I believe our orders were switched."

Comments

[for_tradition]

"Spiritual energy," she revises, and studies him with intent brown eyes that go just a bit too long without blinking.

"Not necromancy?"

[lightamidchaos]

Very simply, he explains, "I am not a necromancer. I am a cultivator, but not of that path."

[for_tradition]

"Ah," she says, understanding. Her cup makes a tiny clink as she sets it back on the saucer. "Another thalergetic adept."

She says this the way other people might say: Christmas.

[lightamidchaos]

Lan Wangji gives her a mildly surprised look. "Another?"

[for_tradition]

"Yes, I met one here, earlier," Abigail says, comfortably. "Fascinating stuff. But then everything has an opposing side, doesn't it?"

[lightamidchaos]

He nods, at that. "All things seek the harmony of balance."

[for_tradition]

"It makes you wonder where the fulcrum is, doesn't it?"

She gives him a warm smile and reaches for the rest of her little cake. "These are lovely, by the way."

[lightamidchaos]

"Osmanthus cakes," he says, and silently indicates her teacup with an offer to refill it. "I am glad you enjoy them."

"I am not certain it is as simple as a single fulcrum for all things, but perhaps many small points of balance to achieve a harmonious whole."

[for_tradition]

"Oh, not all things," she tells him, nudging her cup and saucer forward so he can easily reach them. "But thalergy and thanergy, one could study how the one shifts into the other until they're blue in the face. I'm certain plenty on the Sixth have."

[lightamidchaos]

"Not only among them," he observes.

Six for the truth over solace in lies, he muses, as he lifts her teapot and refills her cup with unconscious grace. "They are all scholars, then?"

[for_tradition]

"So much so that 'Scholar' is an earned title among them," Abigail tells him, accepting her cup and saucer back. She leans an elbow on the table and her chin on her palm and gazes at him with clear, bright-eyed interest.

"With the way you dress, I'd have thought you were of the Eighth... and they do love their rules and formalities on the Eighth. They'd have been better off with someone like you rather than that ninny Silas Octakiseron, though."

[lightamidchaos]

It is not an unfamiliar comparison, as it happens.

"Mn," Lan Wangji says, setting her pot aside and refilling his own tea separately. "I do not know Silas Octakiseron." Certainly they have never met, at least. "Gusu Lan has many precepts to guide our disciples in proper behavior and right action. But we are far from perfect."

[for_tradition]

"Well, he isn't someone I'd call social."

She tips cream into her tea and swirls it in with the silver spoon, then taps the spoon clean against the edge of the cup's mouth and lifts her tea for a sip. "And he's always been a bit too concerned with the righteousness of the Eighth... another iced biscuit?"

She offers the plate out with a smile.

[lightamidchaos]

He knows that neither Harrow nor Gideon thinks highly of the man. Listening to Lady Pent, Lan Wangji wonders for a moment if it is similar to how he knows others have regarded him-- unsocial, cold, unfeeling, overly concerned with discipline. The once-perfect disciple of Lan.

He tries not to let the complexity of his emotions wash over and drown him at the thought, and pushes it aside.

"Thank you," he says, accepting. It is not excessive to have only two, he thinks. "He was not the cause of your ... state..., was he?"

[for_tradition]

"No," she tells him, smiling and pleased as he takes a second biscuit, though she's watching him closely. "The Eighth has their biases, but not against my House. Silas and Colum even came to our dinner party."

Abigail sets the plate down and considers him with the frank appraisal of a societal equal and the warmth of the egregious busybody with an over-active maternal instinct. "You seem concerned, Hanguang-jun. Why is that?"

[lightamidchaos]

This man and - he does not know the name, but suspects Colum must be Octakiseron's cavalier - had attended a dinner party and still he is considered not social? Lan Wangji despairs of himself for an instant, and in the next is blindsided by her question.

He hastily sets the little cake down on his own plate and stares helplessly at her. "I - I was only thinking, that what you say of him does not sound unfamiliar."

[for_tradition]

"No?" Abigail asks, encouragingly.

"In what way?"

[lightamidchaos]

"I am not especially social," he admits, unsure what else to do. It isn't gossip if one is speaking of one's own self, surely. "Among other things. I do not wish to trouble you, Lady Pent. I apologize, for the distraction of my poor self-control."

[for_tradition]

"Why, Hanguang-jun," she says, smiling but no less sympathetic for it, understanding striking like a match. "No apologies are necessary at all. I hardly know you well enough to say, but simply the fact that you have enough self-awareness to be concerned that you might be like Silas Octakiseron suggests to me that you are like him in only the most superficial ways."

[lightamidchaos]

"You are gracious, and kind," he murmurs.

[for_tradition]

"Both of those and more, I hope," she says, smiling back at him.

"And it's not that Silas is a bad person, exactly. The Eight's methods are a little... well... they find it beneficial to instill a sense of, shall we say, personal distance. And Silas is still very young, and under far more pressure than he has realized, I'm sorry to say."

[lightamidchaos]

"I am not familiar with the Eighth's methods," he tells her. "As for pressure --"

It slowly begins to sink in, finally. How the heirs of all the Houses were assembled at Canaan House. Lady Pent describing herself as a scion of her House. The tragic loss of the children of the Fourth.

His mouth snaps shut.

[for_tradition]

She looks at him, inquisitive. "Hanguang-jun?"

[lightamidchaos]

"I would not wish to trouble you," he murmurs. "If by asking I do so, I apologize. Did you... meet your end at Canaan House?"

[for_tradition]

“You do have good information,” she murmurs. “I suppose you must have heard it from the Ninth; I’d heard they were here. Yes,” she continues, more briskly.

“At Canaan House, in pursuit of Lyctorhood. Murdered summarily by…”

Her words drift off and shakes her head. “You know, I still can’t remember.”