primrosella | Quest 211

Quest 211

[Accidental Video | Open Action]

[Rosella is sitting in one of the quieter, more secluded parts of the beach, perched comfortably atop a fairly large outcropping of rock and silhouetted against the rapidly setting sun. Her hair drifts lightly in the evening breeze as she settles back onto her hands and crosses her legs at the ankles, apparently contemplating the view. Across her lap lies what appears to be a flute; nearby, on the surface of the rock, sits a somewhat tattered paper notebook and pen. The video is at the wrong angle to see what might be written in that notebook, but its pages are covered in jotted notes, arrows, and some heavily-underlined question marks.]

If so needed, only in need...but what makes one need greater than another? What makes it a need at all?

[Like everyone else in her family, Rosella has a bad habit of talking to herself when she's alone, and especially so when she is trying to think; this, apparently, is no exception. She glances down at the notebook at her side, shifting her weight and raising one hand to tuck a wisp of stray hair behind her ear, and then settles back into her position again.]

Coin and cloth...and stone. Stones, new stones. Old friends, new stones, dark places...

[There is a pause, and then a sigh as she lets her head fall back in exasperation.]

Oh, drat it all, I don't know.

[She makes a face accompanied by a low murmur of frustration; though the video is at the wrong angle to capture the expression, the microphone does catch the sound. Then, shaking her head, Rosella sits up and raises her flute, apparently tired of musing for the moment, and opting to play a little instead.]

[OOC: So! Strange things are afoot in the City these days, and it's bugging Rosella something awful. So, tired of hanging out in the Warehouse and thinking up a storm, she decided to get out and go to the beach to muse a little, just for a change of pace. Feel free to action her up if you'd like, and Network for everyone else! But be advised--she'll probably deny that she's got heavy stuff on her mind. She's trying her best to stay upbeat these days.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Chase seems to haunt the beach almost as much as the hospital right now, although with his workload picking back up after last month's... incidents, time at work has begun overriding anything he thinks of as leisure once again. Still, in the early morning or when a shift finishes early, this is often the best place to find him, making the best of summer while it lasts.

He hasn't been in the water but his hair is wet with spray, salt and sand flecking his skin, with his bare knees and calves having accumulated the worst of it. It's a far cry from the buttoned down (if brightly coloured) appearances he keeps up at the office, right down to the bare feet kicking up the beach as he jogs along the tideline. He doesn't notice he's in company until he hears it, looking up and around to find the source.]

[Rosella, for her part, ends up noticing Chase about two-thirds of the way through her impromptu performance, but Greensleeves is her favorite song and it almost seems an injustice to break it off in the middle, so she continues playing--albeit at a slightly quicker pace--and brings it to a light close before lowering her flute and raising her free hand in a wave.]

Oh, hello! Is that you, Dr. Chase?

[He raises a hand to her, crossing the sand to look up at her rocky perch before responding.]

This is probably a bad place for the 'just some guy who looks like me' joke, right? [He gestures towards the flute, or the hand still holding it.] Don't tell me that one's popular in your world, too.

Well, perhaps just a bit, now that you've already admitted it!

[She slides over closer to the edge of the outcropping as he approaches, letting her legs dangle off the side and replacing her flute securely across her lap once again.]

Greensleeves is the anthem of my father's court, so it's one of my favorites. I'm told it's not nearly so popular in other places, though--something about being stuffy and old-fashioned, I think it was?

It's old fashioned, but it's popular. When I was a kid the ice cream trucks used to play it to call people out.

[Leaning both hands against the rock he stretches his arms out, rolling his shoulders lightly.]

I assume it's not based on the same subject matter.

The words, you mean? It's about a lady in a green dress that broke the singer's heart, or at least it is where I'm from. But we don't use the words as part of the anthem, just the tune.

It's about a lady in a green dress. [Although the narrowed, sidelong look he gives her says there's more to the outfit than that.] Maybe it is the same. Shouldn't your court have an anthem... about the court?

[She catches that look and answers it with a slight, knowing smile; this is the anthem of her father's court they're talking about, after all, and some things are just better left unsaid and...casually overlooked.]

I suppose so, but it's tradition to have it the way that it is. It's been that way since before my father was king, even, and I think even before King Edward, too. Besides, it's a pretty tune, don't you think?

[Some things the doctor would never spell out to the princess too explicitly, even if she asked.]

It is pretty. Are you thinking about home?

Only a bit. It's more that I'm... [She casts a brief glance toward her notebook, a short distance away.] I'm trying to solve a puzzle, I suppose, but I don't have all the pieces, and the only ones I do have are ones I'm not even entirely sure about, anyway.

[Chase nods, though her notebook and its mysterious writings are out of sigh above him.]

Having all the pieces only matters if you're trying to match your puzzle to the picture on the box. If you don't know what the picture is yet, getting two or three right might be enough to help you figure it out.

[And, pause. Metaphors are contagious things.]

Does that make sense?

I think so. But I think my predicament is more that I know what the picture is, but only one or two of the pieces fit together, and all the rest are perfectly round. And now it's my duty to cut them to fit, and make them work with the others that I already have, and half of them are missing anyway.

[And that makes for such a ridiculous extension of the metaphor that she can't help but laugh, tipping her head back to regard the sky for a moment before looking back to Chase.]

And I know that didn't make much sense at all, did it.

[Laughing, for any reason, seems like a good thing when it comes to Rosella in recent... well, it's been months, hasn't it. Chase can't quite remember the last time her smile wasn't weighed down by something. So he smiles too, pushing back a little way to look up at her.]

I think I can follow. You're trying to make what you've got make sense when you put it with the rest. Can I come up?

Oh, yes, please do! [And she moves back and over a little, clearing some room for him to hop up. She'd picked one of the larger outcroppings in the vicinity to do her thinking upon, and there's more than enough room for two.]

And even if I don't get anywhere with this puzzle of mine, it's still a nice night for getting out and thinking. Summer's gone by fast, hasn't it?

Summer always goes by too fast.

[Well he doesn't quite hop but gets a footing on a lower part of the rock and pulls himself up on the heels of his hands, twisting to get a seat next to her. Now he can see the debris of her thoughts, over to the other side.]

Especially when you're on schoolies. December was always over before it began. Now I take most of my time off in the winter.

You had summer in December?

[She looks intrigued, and perhaps a bit tentative; Chase does like to make jokes, and it's not unusual for them to go over her head, so she's not entirely sure if he's teasing her now, or if he really means it.]

Then it must not be unusual for you at all when the City reverses the seasons every year, mm?

[He does mean it, although the opportunity to confuse someone with honest facts isn't something easily passed up. Take Caspian and the platypus. But Chase's humour has been on the wane recently, and speaking about home softens his edges still more.]

It's one of the few times it feels normal at all. What shape is your world, do you know? Mine's round, like a ball.

[Arm resting on his thigh, he curls an empty hand around the outlines of an imaginary globe.]

Is it really? That must make it very hard to stay balanced on. [A slight grin.] Ours is flat, of course. And Daventry is on a continent close to the middle of it, so we're not too near the edges or about to fall off or anything like that.

Have people sailed to the edge?

[Not that he's doubting you, Rosella, just your world's level of self knowledge.]

Our ball has a tilted axis, so it rotates like this [And his hand twists to show, while he raises the other fist, balled up into another planetary force] around our sun. When it's on this side of the sun, this part of the ball is closest and hottest. Six months later it gets to this side, and the other part of the ball gets its summer. The city here is just biased toward the first side of the ball.

Well, if not all the way to it, then they've certainly gotten very close. But there are monsters that live far out the deepest parts of the oceans, and it's dangerous to go if you aren't sure where it is you're heading to. And of course, there are always people who go off looking for the Land of the Green Isles and things like that, but those sorts of expeditions are usually never heard from again, so.

[She watches this explanation closely, trying to imagine a ball big enough to hold a whole world of people without any of them slipping off down the side--not an easy prospect.]

You really mean to say that your whole world moves around that way? My goodness, do you have to tie everything down to keep it from breaking as it goes?

I see.

[Perhaps too knowingly. Of course he doesn't know the geographical layout of her world, only that it's a fairytale and fairytales can be anything they want without rhyme or reason (well, sometimes with rhyme). He gives up his makeshift strophysics lesson, folding his hands in his lap.]

And nope. Everything on the surface of the earth is caught in it's gravitational force. We're moving along with it, so we can't see or feel any movement. I've flown from the top of the ball to the bottom, and you can't even tell you're flying in a curve. I'd take a bet this City is on a curved world, too.

Now that sounds like magic if I've ever heard it. Really, I can't even imagine what that must be like.

[But the mention of the City and its nature gives her pause, and she shoots a look out over the ocean toward the setting sun. There's a barrier out there somewhere, she knows, even if it can't be seen. Is this really a world so big that there's no discerning its curve? That would mean that there's much, much more out there besides just the City...and perhaps, then, that's where she'd manage to find some answers to her questions, after all...]

What makes you say that? About the curve, that is. How can you tell either way, without seeing it for yourself?

[It's going to take another demonstration. Chase leans in, bumping his shoulder with hers and smiling as he stretches his arm out ahead of them, hand straight to form a long, flat plane.]

Can you see to the end of my fingertips?

[After a minute to check, he curls his fingers under, holding that invisible ball again but with his palm facing down.]

And now? You can't see beyond the curve. Now, look out at the ocean.

[She tilts her head a bit in response, watching closely despite the fact that she's really not sure where Chase might be going with this.]

I think I see, yes...

[Her brow furrowed, she does as he instructs, turning her attention to the ocean once more.]

Watch one of the boats, next time there's a curse. We can't sail past the horizon, but they get far enough. If they get smaller and smaller they're still fully visible, the earth's flat. If they look like they're vanishing from the bottom up while they're getting smaller, it's because they're tipping over the curve.

[He pulls his knees up, toes curled over the edge of the rock.]

I spent a long time watching boats, the weekend you were a pirate.

Quest 211

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