ataraxionlogs | I get a little warm in my heart when I think of winter (CLOSED)

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I get a little warm in my heart when I think of winter (CLOSED)

CHARACTERS: Elsa and: Nuala, Elizabeth of York, Gwen Stacy (TASM).
LOCATION: Here and there.
WARNINGS: Magical Girls?
SUMMARY: Elsa makes some new friends.
NOTES: Catch-all log for a few people. Starters in comments. (Open log to come next month!)

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This is the location of the Xeno-genetics department, Elsa thinks. Probably, she should have left a message with the woman she’d talked to a few months ago, Princess Nuala. But she hadn’t attached her own name to that conversation, and if she just turns up here, then loses her nerve and decides to leave, it’ll be easier if no one is expecting her.

People on the ship are aware of her powers, here and there. She’d helped a woman when they were all lost (a woman who might not even have needed any help). She’s trying to make a dragon for someone as a surprise, but that’s slow going. For the most part, though, she’s evaded every kind of notice.

Now, more than anything, she’s interested in talking to other people who have abilities, and she’s interested in learning how they’ve come to live with them, and in continuing to refine her control over her own. That’s something she has to do carefully, so as not to freeze the entire ship.

She knocks softly on the wall next to the door.

Nuala's office within the labs isn't difficult to find, and it's the only one among them that doesn't, particularly, seem to be a center of work, per se - although that'll become clear only after Elsa opens the door, as Nuala invites her to-- "Please come in," --after the knock.

It's unlikely that she's ever heard of something like an open door policy. She has, instead, a be courteous and don't be removed policy; most people tend to manage with it just fine, at least those that actually encounter Nuala in her Xenogen office. It's a clutter of the paperwork that she and Charles persistently favour, and-- sewing, mainly. Her role in the department is largely ornamental, except for the occasions - rarer, lately - when she becomes useful with the magically-inclined who benefit from a gentler hand than Severus is capable of, but she feels strongly about being available, and so she spends her days there, regardless, staying abreast of what those more directly involved are occupied with and keeping herself busy with needlepoint and the network.

Elsa sits in one of the media libraries, looking through books on a reader, trying to decide what to try next.

The system is simple -- she realizes now that it must have been created to be simple -- but it was still so completely foreign to her when she’d arrived that it had taken her a while to understand how to use it, and much of that had been trial and error. Fortunately, it seems that it was also created to be difficult for an inexperienced person to destroy… unlike a real library, where books can be dropped and pages torn out. Her initial ineptitude had only caused problems for her, and wasn’t visible to anyone else. The library itself is comfortable for her, because it occupies a middle zone between her father’s library at home, now her own, and the ice palace she’d built for herself. Large echoing room, high ceiling, but still, full of books. Sometimes, if she’s honest, a little bit lonely, but not any more so than her room.

The books themselves are weird, though. The last one she’d tried had been a terrible sentimental novel about a boy and a girl from a place called Alexandria -- not to her taste at all, because they behaved so foolishly that it annoyed her. This new one, which appears to be about politics and war, looks more interesting, but she hasn’t decided whether or not she’ll try it.
Her attention is distracted by nearby footfalls.

A young woman close to her own age comes in, and she recognizes the face. They’d spoken briefly before. She smiles (a little shyly) and sets down what she’d been looking at, and says, “Hello. You’re Elizabeth, aren’t you?”

Her low voice echoes through the large, sleek room.

[Since I’m so late putting this up in comparison to when I’d planned, I’m assuming this happens before the feast announcement!]

The only grand libraries in England during her time existed in abbeys, monasteries—and her father's study. Books were rare and expensive, written and illuminated by hand. Mostly. When she had been small, the first printed books had begun to be produced; and they, too were incredibly expensive, and rare. But her parents had ensured that she, her brothers and sisters were all of them well-read as soon as they might. Her father in particular had devoted much time to sitting her upon his knee and reading her tales of Troy and Caesar and King Arthur, too. The fact that she was a girl had never stopped him from seeing to it that she had a most excellent education.

How she missed him. It might seem fanciful, silly or perhaps just plain sad, but books made her feel closer to him in spirit. They being the one thing which had connected them and dominated the time they had spent together so greatly. Even books which were read upon a reader, which she could neither touch or smell the crispness of the paper; it mattered not. And she often took time to sit in one library or another and read quietly, to feel that closeness when she missed her father the most. She could picture his handsome face light up at the prospect of having the tables turned as she read to him, instead.

Usually, this was something she did alone. It was thus a surprise when this time, there was already a young woman present. One she had not seen in a long time, but with whom she shared much more in common than the other girl might know. Her expression of surprise immediately shifted to a small but warm smile, as she moved to sit beside her.

"Yes. And you are Elsa, as I recall, yes?" Her smile broadened, as she set her own reader down for the moment in favour of conversation. "I am most glad to see you again, my lady."

"Oh, you don't have to call me that."

Her diffident smile turned rueful. Titles didn't seem to matter here, and that had never been one of the ways she was addressed anyway, and insisting on Your Majesty would have been absurd for more than one reason. She'd barely reigned at all before running off to the North Mountain, and then, when she'd returned, she'd only had a few days to try to set things right before she'd found herself on the ship.

She rarely felt like a queen at all, except in that moment -- distant, now -- when she'd managed to save someone from her own creation, somewhere deep in the ship. Arendelle was far away, and then it was here... but it had been gone again for a while, and her father with it.

"But yes, I'm Elsa. It's nice to see you, too." She recalled a time, fairly recently, when Elizabeth had seemed upset. For now she would opt for discretion, put off mentioning it, so she reached for the most obvious conversational topic instead. "Have you managed to find anything good to read? None of this seems very familiar to me."

Elsa was not the first to gently prod Elizabeth with regards to her habit of speaking formally to people. Over the course of her stay here, she has struggled with it in her interactions with others as she has within herself. At home, whether or not she was actually a princess seemed eternally up for debate and at the whim of her Uncle. When it suited him, she was Princess Elizabeth. And when it did not, she was "Mistress Elizabeth", a girl with neither name nor status, lower, indeed than even a peasant. For even peasants had surnames. Thus far, she seemed to err more toward her upbringing as a princess of England and exercise formality with those she either did not know well or considered her betters.

Something she should, perhaps, change. She smiled sheepishly at Elsa, and inclined her head. "I am gladdened by your appearance of good health, Elsa."

By everyone's good health, really. That had not been a normal Plague or illness. No one died. Which was good, but also puzzling. Much like this ship itself. She at length moved to sit down beside the other girl, and shook her head.

"There is much here, but I neither understand nor recognize any of it, either."

The lifts are novel to Elsa -- she had been used to stairs, had never seen anything like this in her life. Now she uses them every day, but never without the kind of skepticism that colors most of her experiences on the Tranquility. She tries to disregard how unnatural all of these new elements that people have added to everyday life feel to her, but sometimes the oddness stands out. There are boxes that make food hot as if by magic (but not really magic), boxes that whisk people through vertical tunnels at what must be high speeds, letters with changing contents and talking images, and so on.

This time, someone is already in the lift when the door opens, and she steps in with them. The girl is young, without being a child, but what stands out to Elsa is how similar the girl’s hair is to her own, so blonde it’s almost white.

Neither of Elsa’s parents had had hair like that, and what had happened to Anna had made her assume that her own hair was probably as pale as it was because of her powers.

She had sometimes chafed at the manners that had been instilled in her since early childhood, but on the whole, they serve her well. It’s that politeness, as well as her curiosity about why the girl’s appearance might be so similar to her own, that causes her to smile her gentle guarded smile and say, “Hi. I don’t think we’ve met before. I’m Elsa.”

The ship is big enough, and the people on it are spread apart enough that Gwen isn't sure just who is and isn't around. And between the space flu and her propensity to bury herself in work in a desperate attempt to leave, she hasn't exactly been socializing all that much either.

It's getting easier, though, to relax a little. And she isn't sure whether that's a good or bad thing.

Nevertheless, Gwen echoes the other girl's smile with one of her own. Less guarded because that's just the sort of girl Gwen is.

"Oh - hi," she returns. "I'm Gwen. Where are you headed?"

"Hello, Gwen." Elsa seems to warm a little -- being on the receiving end of friendliness makes her a little bit more confident, and most people around here do respond well to any overtures she makes. "I'm going down to the first level kitchen to see if anyone is cooking anything. I'm trying to learn, but... well, I'm not very good at it." She finishes with a dry laugh at her own expense.

Her propensity is to cool things, not to heat them, but she doesn't seriously think that's why cooking has been hard for her. Instead, the trajectory of her life, the fact that she's never had any reason to expect that she wouldn't always have servants to take care of her every need unless she rejected them by choice, has left her fantastically ill-prepared to feed herself. Most of the other things someone might need to know how to do are irrelevant, but this one has turned out to be a problem.

There are only so many days in a row when she can stand to eat cheesy fish noodles, and she doesn't know how to make very much aside from that.

"Cooking," Gwen repeats, her smile shifting to wry and a little amused. "Yeah, not exactly my best skill either."

Which is a bit odd considering how natural chemistry comes to her. Cooking is basically chemistry, isn't it? And yet ...

"Do we have any really good cooks on the ship?"

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I get a little warm in my heart when I think of winter (CLOSED)

NUALA

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ELIZABETH OF YORK

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GWEN STACY

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