Room 227, Monday Morning

[thatsmysword]

Last night, Henry had dragged Hans to the preserve on the pretext of hunting-- not that they'd gotten far with it, but still. It had kept Hans away from anywhere he could do further damage, and put him at ease besides; for all his airs, Capon really did seem most settled in the woods, far from the rest of the world.

But as Jane had said, come midnight, he'd vanished. Just like that. Left Henry there, staring at the fire they'd made, once again lost in a world he didn't understand, all by himself.

He hadn't slept well upon return to his room. There were the usual nightmares, of course, but also a worse restlessness that kept crawling into his legs and moving them about. By first light, he'd sat back up - as quietly as he could - and grabbed his journal out from under the bed. He flipped past several pages of scratch (paused, briefly, over Pious, Timmy, Reeky) and pressed flowers to an empty one, and set his pen to the top.

Sir Hans appeared as if out of nowhere this week's end, and returned just as quickly. I was able to share some of my pri predit troubles with him and he esr spoke of his worry I would not make it back--

He was getting handier with the writing the longer he kept this journal, but he'd still be quite a while that morning, just filling the page as he tried to pull all the ends of the past few days from memory.

After a few hours, he got up to open the door and let some fresh air in, but he remained pensive.

[[ open ]]

Comments

[thatsmysword]

Henry's pen stopped scribbling. Just as well, really. He'd been at it for a while. He cast a glance in Erasmus' direction and managed something in the vicinity of an amused snort. "Are you?"

[stringstothesoul]

"Not technically," Erasmus admitted. "But effort." Bah, effort. "What're you up to?"

[thatsmysword]

"I'm trying to record the events of the weekend," Henry admitted. "Seems the easiest way to make some sense of all that goes on around here."

[stringstothesoul]

"Oh." Erasmus yawned and sat up. "Do you listen to the radio thing?"

[thatsmysword]

"The one run by the squirrels?" Henry asked, blinking at him. "No, why?"

[stringstothesoul]

"They talk about the stuff that happened the day before. I don't know how accurate it always is, I mean, they're squirrels that can somehow write and run a radio station. But I thought it might...help or something?"

[thatsmysword]

"I suppose it wouldn't hurt to listen to it and see if I forgot anything," Henry allowed. "The past few days were eventful."

Though admittedly that may just have been because of the drunk nobleman ordering him around.

He thought about it for a moment, then closed his journal. "Did you have a good time of it? I never did get 'round to asking."

[stringstothesoul]

"I did! It was great to see my parents," Erasmus told him. "And my dad helped me with a problem I've been having." He didn't want to get too into the magic details with Henry, lest he freak him out.

He was also trying not to think about what his dad and Mistress Vess might have gotten up to recreationally.

"Did you have a good time? With your...friend?" Erasmus hoped he was Henry's friend, and not just his liege or whatever the word was.

[thatsmysword]

Very brief arch-enemy turned unwilling liege turned best friend somewhere along the course of a chaotic hunting trip and an extremely eventful night of drinking at a bathhouse-- you know, it was complicated.

"Well, Sir Hans is a pain in the backside half the time, as you may have noticed," he said, "But in the end it wasn't too bad. Just needed a moment to find his wits again after the journey, however it worked, that was all."