Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story.

[smallestopener]

Ingress had a brilliant birthday. She’s eleven. Eleven is nearly grown up! It’s also the year when children in the stories she’s read come into their own. Adventures begin, schooling starts, worlds are saved… she can hardly wait to see what will happen next.

Her party earlier was such fun. Door was almost nice to Puck; Ingress had worried a little about that after she invited him. But he was very nice and charming, and Tom was nice, too, and Puck helped Ingress steal lots of roses off the cake while Havelock talked to Tom and Door, and it was brilliant.

She ate far too much icing sugar, but Tom had the peppermint potion waiting for her when the party was over. She feels much better now. And she’s eleven!

It sounds so good in her head. Eleven, eleven, eleven.

She should have asked Mary to stay the night with her, she thinks, as she tosses and turns. She’s never going to fall asleep, even with staying up past her bedtime. Tom and Door insisted she go to bed after she started yawning. They can be so silly sometimes.

She tosses one more time, and she thinks, again, how impossible it will be to go to sleep tonight. Her eyelids flutter and close. It is not long before she’s deep in dreams.

Comments

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[kitchen_maid]

"Tea and company," Amy says, busying herself with sugar and cream.

"Nice company," Princess Susan adds. She breaks her cookie in half and offers part to Ingress.

There are plenty of other cookies, of course, it wouldn't be a proper tea without plenty of cookies.

But that's not the point.

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[smallestopener]

Ingress takes the cookie, and she winks at Princess Susan.

Then she giggles, rearranging her skirts so as to fit on the hay bale a little better. It was easier to do so when she was six!

"There have tea in Valdemar, but they don't quite have tea like this."

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[once_a_queen]

"Worlds can be different, but you take what's important with you. I should think the denizens of Haven wouldn't mind learning something new. It was so at Cair Paravel."

She gazes into the distance a moment, but she's not sad. She's simply thoughtful.

"And it shall be for you, Ingress."

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[kitchen_maid]

"You can be quite at home in a land you weren't born in," Amy says.

"More than one, even.

"And you'll do brilliantly, wherever you go."

She leans closer, holding her left hand just in front of her heart, near the dreamcatcher she wears around her neck, light catching on her betrothal ring.

"And all of this will always be with you here, whenever you need it."

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[smallestopener]

Ingress glances down to her own chest where a locket rests. Tom and Door's pictures are inside, but her mother and father have pictures there, as do others dear to her, Amy included. She needn't open the locket to know this.

"Your heart holds a lot of things. I suppose that's why it's so big."

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[kitchen_maid]

"And there is always room for more," Amy says, reaching down to ruffle her daughter's hair.

"Hearts are even bigger than dragons," Susan adds, decidedly.

"Bigger and stronger," Amy says.

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[once_a_queen]

"Bigger and stronger than the southern sun," says Queen Susan the Gentle.

She hands Ingress a cup of tea, and the saucer does not even clink once. They are no longer in the barn; the tea is laid out under the trees by the greenhouse now.

"By the Lion's mane, dearest, thou art brave and true of heart. Take this joy wherever you go."

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[smallestopener]

When Ingress looks up from taking the cup and saucer, she is on her own under the trees. The breeze is cool, and her tea is hot.

She sips it and smiles.

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[queenofmay]

The trees glow with the warm golden light from the sky above them, and the wind in the branches whispers, shaking leave which are not emerald but almost seem to dream of being such an old, beloved shade.

There is a soft laughter coming from above her, just as a slow shower of the leaves shower down on the girl below the tree.

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[smallestopener]

Ingress twirls under the leaves, lifting her arms to touch them as they fall around her.

She laughs and looks up. "Who's there?"

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[queenofmay]

There is a rustle of skirts, and a second wave of leaves falling.

"Maybe it's you?" The voice is quiet and smooth and teasing.

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[smallestopener]

"No, if it were me, I'd see blue hair," she says, shading her eyes and scanning the leaves.

"I think you're Marian, instead."

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[queenofmay]

When is, just maybe, when a smiling face finally peers down at her.

And somehow the length of a gown that managed to both be perfectly fine and untangled by the tree and it's branches, and quite as there as it had appeared to have not been there during the first wave of looking.

"Perhaps, you are right. I do not seem to have blue hair."

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[smallestopener]

"I want to climb up with you," Ingress says. She shinnies up the tree with ease, and her skirts don't get in the way either.

"Hi!"

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[queenofmay]

Marian smiled brightly at the greeting, then reached out and cupped one of Ingress's cheek, with a light, soft curl of her fingers. "Trees should always be climbed, dear one. You never know what is hiding them."

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[smallestopener]

"Like friends," she says, and she shakes the branch above them.

The tree is bedecked with apple blossoms now, and the white petals flake down over both of them.

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[queenofmay]

Marian smiled, even as white blossoms mixed into her black hair.

"And other things, as well. It's important to go looking, for those things most hidden in places sometimes overlooked. Such wonders can be found in them."

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[smallestopener]

"Like butterflies?"

She giggles as the giant purple butterfly, the one she's been following floats by. Its antennae dip down in a bow to Marian.

"I have to follow her," Ingress tells Marian, her arms slipping around her neck. "I'm looking for Megwyn. And hidden things."

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[queenofmay]

Marian similarly lowered her head, a little regally, to the butterfly, and then hugged the little girl close, a kiss brushing across her temple and into her wind-rustled, apple-blossomed, blue hair.

"Go then, valiant one, and you will find all your heart seeks," is whispered close.