Meeting in the Chapel (2 Feb 2002) Alice goes on a secret mission. Note: Players other than Alice should not read this log.

It is night, the best time for sneaking about when the low light of torches and fireplaces won't call attention to Alice's smooth hands and face, or her relatively unstained clothes which she has been given by one of the maids of October's court. A carriage drove them through the streets to a house where Kuon's human self took them, so that he could explain the plan to Alice there.

"Your Highness," he began as he set out the clothes for her to change into, "it isn't known publicly that I've returned to Mirari, so I daren't go into the castle as myself, either in my normal shape, and my dog shape'd only make it as far as the stables, since they don't allow dogs inside, so I can only take you up through there before you'll have to leave me behind."

"There'll be three parts. You'll go up to the guards and ask to see Colin; he'll be my assistant huntsman, and he'll have taken over running things in my absence. Claim you're there 'cause you've brought one of his hounds back from the physicker, an' leave me with him; he knows my dog shape, and he'll give you a few things that he'll want you to take to the chapel. Look over this map here, and you'll see that you'll go in through the kitchen. Simplest to take the main corridor; it goes straight through to the other side, though it does run behind the feast hall here. You'll have to be most careful there not to draw attention."

"Once you get to the chapel, you'd best look like you're meant to be there, cleaning or whatever you've been assigned to. The Queen'll have been told by Father Crow that she should go and meditate there tonight, when the bells ring ten, an' that God may grant her answers to some of her prayers then." Kuon looks serious. "She's a troubled woman, she is, and there's no reason she shouldn't be. The Lords and Ladies're pressing her to choose April; there's word that people are thinking the only reason the Winter is dragging on so long is because we're Kingless."

"Well." Kuon looks out the window to bell tower that surmounts one end of the Palace across the street. "We'd best be on our way. Remember, you're a servant now; you're to be meek and not speak to any noble unless spoken to, an' then it's best you not seem too bright. Colin will make sure you're sent on the right errand; don't take any others, you don't want to be delayed o'erly much. You'd best pick a simple name to answer to. Colin an' Father Crow know you're a friend of mine, an' that it's dire important you speak with the Queen, but I haven't given them more than that."

Alice fidgets during the length description of what she's supposed to do. Its a lot to remember after all, and she knows its important, but she never was very good with "spy games." That's exactly what this reminds her of, one of the boys' sneaky games. But this game is real, and it's very very important. So she tries hard to think of what to do, and asks, "Kuon, how should I ad-... address the guards, the nobles, and ..." She fidgets again, pausing as the thought of meeting the Queen seems very daunting indeed. " ... the Queen?"

Kuon says, looking puzzled at first, "Guardsman, Lord or Lady, and-- oh!" He realizes that Alice means as a servant. "As a servant, you would address a guardsman as 'sir,' a nobleman as 'milord,' a noble lady as 'milady,' and the Queen as 'Your Majesty.'" He pauses, considering the list of addresses. "And should you encounter a knight, you might call him 'milord' as well."

The little girl beams. "Okay! I'll remember. I hope-- oh Kuon! This is scary ... you'll fare well though, won't you?" asks Alice as she turns to look at her sometimes-canine friend worriedly.

"I'll be more worried for you, dear girl," Kuon says, kneeling and giving Alice a hug. "But if you want to see the Queen without being seen, well, I cannot think of another way to do it." He looks rueful. "Just do what Colin tells you, Alice, and all should be well."

Alice scoots over to hug the Huntsman readily, visibly relived by the show of affection. Her smile returns and she curtsies as she draws back. "Truly, I shall be well. Do not worry o'er much, and tell Tommy and Agatha 'Hi!' when you see them!" She glances down at the clothes, wrinkles her nose, then nods. "I better get dressed. I'll try and think of a good name then."

"I should be greatly surprised if I see them before you do--" Kuon is interrupted as just then, a massive bell rings. Once. Twice. Thrice. Deep tones carry across the street, shivering down Alice's back, until it reaches nine, and then it falls off into silence again.

Palace of All Seasons, Stables
This massive edifice of many columns and tall arched portals is joined in the back to low-slung wooden structures surrounding a courtyard of trampled dirt. The smell of hay carries from a stack in a large barn, but the earthy scent of many horses and dogs hangs over the entire area. Stone walls, crenellated, close in this area from the streets of Mirari which can be accessed through the postern gate.

Kuon's dog form leads Alice up to the postern gate, where two guards stand in front of a portcullis. Both wear tabards with the crowned rampant unicorn of Mirari, and carry pikes in one hand, which they lean against as if they were walking sticks. One glances over to the castle through the gate and then looks over to the other. "Guard duty, an' on a feast day," he mourns. "The wine must be flowing right freely in there-- eh? Ho, girl, what's your business here?"

The greyhound wags his tail and looks up to Alice alertly, awaiting her response.

The little girl in the slightly dirty maid's clothes smiles up at the two guards. "'ello sirs! I'm here t'bring this dog ..." She reaches down and rubs Kuon's head. "... back from the phys-cker. Colin's waiting."

Kuon wags happily. The guard scratches behind his ear with one hand, still holding onto his pike with the other, and peers into the dim light that limns Alice's face. "He did say sommat about having a dog ailing. What's your name, girl? Don't think I've seen you about before."

"S'Jill sir," answers Alice. She turns her attentions back to the canine beside her and reaches down with both hands to ruffle his fur all up. "He's been real good, wha'with bein' ill an' all."

The guardsman nods, still looking a little suspicious. "Well, Jill, I'm going to walk you in to see Colin, and if he says you've the dog he sent off, then that's all right. Mundy! Mind the gate, will ye?" The other guard nods to the first, who moves to the side and pulls a lever which starts hidden chains moving. The portcullis starts to grind upward slowly.

Jill looks up, blinking, and when she remembers Kuon's words, "It's best you not seem to bright," she blinks a few more times -- then nods agreeably. "Cert-lainy, sir." She leaves one hand on Kuon's back, as if to guide him, but more for the reassurance that he's still with her.

The portcullis clanks as it fully opens. "C'mon along then, Jill," the guardsman says, and leads the way into the courtyard. This late at night, there are few people wandering about, and a brazier sheds light over the wooden walls of the stables.

Guiding her canine companion along after the guard, Jill tries to keep away from the light of the torches, walking with Kuon closer so that she'd need walk on the further side away from them. She follows along quietly, normally being inclined to talk up a storm but for the moment distracted by what she needs to remember.

Colin, it turns out, is a greyhound standing on his hind legs, shoehorned into a dark green uniform with brown leather boots that go up to his knees. He looks up from where he has been brushing out the coat of a roan, ears perking toward the sound of footsteps. "Ah! What've you brought me, Halvorsen?"

"Jill, sir, with a dog she says she's brought back from the physicker," the guardsman replies. He urges the little girl forward into the light with her dog.

The girl lifts a hand to partially cover her face as she steps in to the light, blinking as her eyes adjust. "Hullo!" she greets the greyhound man. "Brought the dog; good s'new, right as true-dawn, jus' like you wanted, sir." She leads Kuon forward with her, guiding him with her other hand.

A moment of puzzlement, and then Colin realizes who the dog is. "Ah! Of course. Good work, Halvorsen. Yes, do come along, Jill, while I see Foxheart back to the kennels." The standing greyhound nods to the guard; the guard seems to take his word that the servant and the dog are who they seem and wanders back to his post. Kuon wags like a good dog, and then Colin has turned the job of brushing the roan over to a stable boy and is leading 'Jill' toward another wooden building, from which emits a very distinctively doggish smell.

Jill smiles and follows along. As she walks, she turns her smile to Kuon, just briefly, before resuming her thoughts on what to do. As the kennels draw closer she sniffs, blinks, and pats Kuon once to get his attention as she stops outside. "S'best I oughta wait here. Can' be smellin' of dogs too much when I have more t'do inside," she tells the others.

Colin leads Kuon inside the kennels, stops to glance back toward Jill, an eyebrow raised, then resumes his course. She can hear some words being spoken inside, but they're too far off to be made out. Meanwhile, the stable boy calls to Jill as he walks around the roan to brush its coat out, "New, huh? Ain't never seen you around before. Where d'ya work?"

Jill, startled, turns around, then gives the stable boy a smile. "New, yessir. Don' come to the stables much 'cept on-a occasion. I like the dogs, I do, s'true," she tells the other child.

"I like the dogs, but I like the horses more," the stable boy confides. "I want to be a knight someday! If I do a good enough job on Kiell here, maybe one of them'll take me for a squire." He seems an ordinary sort of boy, with short curly black hair, and might even be a bit cute if it weren't so obvious he's been working hard all day from the smell that hangs around him and the stains on his clothes. Meanwhile, there are more words from inside, punctuated by occasional barks.

The roan whickers.

The other child nods enthusiastically. "I like horses too! S'big ones knights ride, would'a liked to take care 'o one, bu' I don't think I can yet. I jus' bet you know all about ev-ery horse!" she tells him, adding, "I jus' think you could be a Squire, yessir."

The stable boy seems flattered by this and starts to ask, "So, Jill, are you--" Just then, footsteps approach the door and Colin sticks his nose out. "Still here, lazy thing?" he says brusquely. "Well, feast or not, lords and ladies and whatnot, there's still work to be done around the castle! You're to take this, and this, and go clean out the chapel straightaway." He thrusts a mop and a bucket that sloshes with water into her hands, and there are some halfway-clean rags covering one side of the bucket. Colin then comes out of the kennels, walking toward a door at the top of several steps that seems to be one of the side entrances to the Palace, not looking back to see if she follows. The stable boy gives Jill a sympathetic look.

Bucket, rags, and mop in hand Jill, looks bewildered for just a moment, blinking, then smiles all the same and tries to give the boy a wave. "Don' give up on bein' a knight!" she bids him, then hurries along after Colin as fast as a sloshing bucket of water will allow.

"Don't fill his head with nonsense," Colin growls. "I want that horse perfectly brushed when I get back, you understand, boy?" The stable boy scrunches his face up and sets back to work properly.

"Yessir, s-sorry sir!" apologizes "Jill" as she lugs the unwieldy bucket up the stairs. The bucket is weighty by Alice standards, and she's never had to mop before.

In a whisper, Colin says to Jill, "Now, you'll be going into the servants' quarters here. Just take the left where you smell all the food; that'll be the kitchen. The big door on the right from there, that's the main corridor. It goes straight through the palace, and there'll be a few guards, but you just mind your own business an' they won't say anything. Only thing is, it runs right behind the feast hall, so mind yer manners, an' stay out of sight of the lords and ladies or they'll send you on all sorts of errands and you'll never be there in time. Chapel's last door on the left." He reaches up to open the door for Jill.

The little girl smiles up at the dog-man, nods again, and tells him, "My thanks!" in whisper. Without further delay she trundles on in to the servants quarters wobbling as she adjusts to the weight of the bucket, sniffing and wishing she could borrow Kuon's nose.

Colin pretends to swat Jill on her way, and then turns back with a loud grumble about lazy-bones encouraging stable-boys to get carried away with their "fancy-pantsy dreams" ... and the door closes behind Jill, leaving her alone in a hallway painted off-white, with golden sconces in the walls here and there showing pale yellow flames that light the smoothly polished wooden floor. There is noise and yelling from a large doorway ahead on the left, and many flickering shadows are cast in the archway of light on the opposite wall.

As "Jill" begins her way down the hall, she begins to whistle the Song of Thorns as she is wont to do, but she quickly covers her mouth with the back of her hand and stops, remembering she's not supposed to draw attention to herself. So she whistles it in her head as she goes along, peering in to the first door on the left and sniffing a little when she reaches it.

This particular room seems to be ... a coat closet, judging from the many hanging cloaks and jackets on hooks, and boots of various sizes on the floor. There is no one inside, and it smells of wet people and critters.

For a moment the girl wonders at all the different types of coats a castle might have, and thinks it might be interesting to see, but decides she really does need to hurry along and so leaves the coat closet alone for now. She continues on down the corridor looking in this room and that, but being especially careful to find the kitchen -- that's where she's supposed to be.

The second door on the left is a storeroom, the first door on the right leads into another corridor with more doors on either side, and the third door on the left is the large doorway that Jill noticed on her entry, from which comes a smell of roasting meats, pork and venison and chicken and duck, and wine and freshly baked bread. It all smells so good, and it's been a while since her dinner earlier in the afternoon.... Servants bustle in and out of the room, carrying out fully laden platters and bringing back partially devoured dishes which some of the servants are picking over for their own dinners.

A large pot-bellied cook, nostrils flared up rather more than a human should be and seeming just a bit porcine in coloration, catches sight of the young girl and motions her over. "You! Try this meat pie. Edward says that it is too bland, that the nobles will throw it back out to us, but I say that it is perfect! What do you say?" Edward must be the thin baker nearby, rolling his eyes upward.

"Really, Ben, asking the help to judge cooking? You might as well ask a cat to tell you the fine points of embroidery, or a horse to judge dancing," Edward carps back. "We are dealing with nobles of educated palates here, not simple servants who have probably never tasted anything more complex than vichyssoise!" He turns a supercilious look toward Jill.

Jill looks up as someone calls for her, and laden as she is with heavy bucket her reaction is a bit slow. "I don' know how milord an' miladys'll find it, no sir, jus' came from the stables an' everythin's goin' to taste like dog-smell," she explains, nodding as she finishes. "Terr-bly sorry sirs."

Ben looks disappointed. "Well, along with ye then, girl. You!" he calls to another of the servants who has just entered. "C'mere and taste this meat pie for me! Spicy enough?"

"S'cuse me." The little girl continues on her way after being dismissed, and she tries to sort out the location of "the big door on the right" through all the busy peoples. "Pardons me." It's supposed to lead in to the main corridor, and that's where she's supposed to go next, she remembers. "Mop 'n bucket comin' through."

At one point, the mop handle catches the handle of a pot that's been left to cool off on top of a table, but just as it is about to topple off, Jill notices the dragging on the mop and reaches up just in time to steady it and slip the mop handle out. Crisis averted! And then there the main hallway is, ahead of her, and a maid bustling through with a tray of sugared pastries, dressed in far nicer clothes than Jill's, though her apron still conveys the appearance of kitchen help. Glass globes along the main hall each contain a shimmering yellow flame that casts light over the surroundings.

Alice pauses for a moment to stop and take in the view of the large corridor, bigger than it is of just about every kind of corridor she has even been in. It really is very pretty, to be sure, she thinks as she continues on along down the massive extensive length of the hall. She tries to be as unobtrusive as possible, resisting the urge to talk to everyone that comes -- especially anyone who looks like nobility -- and keeping a eye out for the door to the feast hall as well as the last door on the left where the Chapel is said to be.

The hall is ... long. At one point, there are double doors, easily as large together as a barn door, and they are opened out into a vast hall filled with lords and ladies in all their fineries, and someone who must be the Queen sitting at the head table just out of Jill's perception within the hall, for they are toasting Her Majesty, and the dawning of a New Day. These doors are in fact only on one side of the hall, and more double doors farther down must be the other side, leaving Jill to the realization that you could probably fit a Lot of People in that hall.

Certainly impressed, "Jill" blinks several times at both the sight of the Grand Hall itself as well as the thought that far inside where she just can't see is the Queen. The latter is what makes her more nervous, and she reminds herself that if she wants to really meet the Queen, who is maybe-possible-could-even-be her mother, she had better keep going. So tries to scoot on down past the open double doors and stick close to the opposite side of the hall away from the feasting lest she be seen.

Apparently Jill is indeed successful in this endeavor ... because she comes across a lord in the hall who is moving down its length, away from the feast hall and apparently toward one of the side corridors. He looks the very model of the handsome prince from the fairy tales that she has read, with blond hair slightly curly where his hair drapes over his shoulders, dressed in white with a gray wolf-fringed cloak over his shoulders, a thin sword with a golden basket-hilt hanging from his belt over his hip. He wears a golden circlet, slightly visible from this vantage point, but from here, Jill cannot make out his face or the expression he might be wearing. He does not seem to have noticed the servant carrying bucket and mop behind him.

Trying to place who he might be, and definitely noticing his circlet as well as his hair, "Jill" cannot help but feel he's Someone Important -- and more so, someone she shouldn't be seen by. He might even be of House April -- maybe even Lord April himself! She pales at that as she remembers all the things Kuon and the others told her about Lord April and how people do lots of bad things to be king. So she stops, looks around, and tries to find a place where she can either hide out of sight 'til he moves on or at least obscure herself as she feigns adjusting the bucket in her hand and hides her face.

There is a tight moment in which the apparent Prince pauses, looks around ... but he apparently sees nothing unusual down the hallway, not having glanced fully around. The look on his face is tense, not at all one celebrating a new Dawn. He continues down the hallway for a short while, then turns down the side corridor.

Much relieved at the man's passing, Alice releases a held breath, and thinks that spy games are very very hard. She thinks Tommy would be very-much-a-lot-better at this sort of thing. Not wanting to be seen by any other person, the "servant girl" continues on her way.

The side corridor has several doors on both sides, but the door at the far end is glassy and offers a view of a moonlit garden. There is a brief scent of winter on the air, and then Jill is past and continuing toward the end of the main hallway. The golden globes cast faint shadows of her on both sides of the hall at once.

Alice thinks that the garden would be very pretty if not for the thought the man might be there now. The scent of winter makes her believe he stepped outside, and she doesn't want to think too hard on him and just how bad he might possibly be. The stories Kuon and the others told her were plenty enough for the little girl. Her thoughts drift from the man she thinks of as the "Prince" to where she is supposed to be going, remembering she needs to find the last door on the left.

The servants thin out on the far side of the main hall, and then there it is, the last door on the left, or twin doors with panels of stained glass set into them in the picture of Jesus (or one would guess the haloed man is such) standing before an oak tree, a lamb and a lion at his side. There is a vague scent of incense and old dusty things about this end of the hall. The hall itself ends a short distance further, in twin large doors and a coat closet on the right side.

It must be the Chapel; it sure looks like a church, thinks Alice. A fan of angels, who happen to congregate in statue-form around churches, the little girl has seen both the churches in Ainigton and several more besides. With that expertise in mind she nods. Yep, this is probably the Chapel. She walks over and puts the bucket down so she can carefully open the door.

And lo, the door opens smoothly. With not a sound from the hinges of brass, the handle turns with barely a snikt from the mechanism being opened. Before Alice is the chapel of the Palace of All Seasons, which is in fact far more modest than the feast hall had been: an aisle going between wooden benches on the left and right, enclosed pews near the front, an altar of gold and white linen, and stained glass windows of angels and saints lit from inside by candles everywhere. Rows of candles sit to the far front. There is a red carpet of some satiny material running down the center, but other than that, the floor is a silky-smooth polished wood that reflects very nicely.

Verily, this is beautiful, thinks little Alice as she hauls the weighty bucket in to the room. It almost seems too pretty to have a dirty Alice and a yucky mop and bucket inside, and the girl cannot help but think any moment now someone will tell her to "go wash up, young lady," or "you're tracking mud on the nice floor." But no one does, and so once she overcomes her awe of the place, she trundles off in to a corner near the door and sets her bucket down as she ponders how exactly one mops.

The angels and saints seem to have no advice for Alice on that particular subject.

Despite the angels not being up for suggestions, Alice is quite happy to make up for their lack of conversation with some of her own. She murmurs hellos as she notices a few angels near her, pardoning herself for intruding, and then she gets to work. Memories of Ainigton come to her and she remembers her brother mopping a few times. He never let her come in the room when he was doing it, and she never did except the first time when he tried to mop her. That wasn't very nice. But at least she thinks she knows how mopping goes now. She puts the swab-end in the bucket, lifts and lets it drip a bit, then puts the end to the floor and pushes a little. She also thinks there's some part that requires you to play the mop like a guitar, but maybe that was just Gabriel being weird.

Time passes as Alice acquires some familiarity with the business of mopping -- it seems to leave rather large puddles behind -- and then there are footsteps approaching the doors to the chapel. At just this moment, Alice seems to have completely surrounded herself with puddles of wet floor.

Alice frowns as she hears someone approach, uncertain as she is who it might be -- and made even more worried by the results of her attempt at mopping. At some point there was supposed to be drying, but that hadn't quite happened yet. So she fidgets as she thinks, glances at the bucket and notes the rags, then decides she can probably clean up the water with those and so hunkers down to pick two up after laying the mop handle down. From there she kneels and begins scrubbing and soaking up the water with a towel in each hand.

Handily, this means that Alice is now ducking out of sight behind the wooden benches, but unfortunately that also means that she doesn't have a direct view of whomever has just opened the doors and entered the room. Footsteps walk down the carpet for a short distance and then pause.

Thinking she should probably see just who it is, and finding kneeling in water is pretty uncomfortable, the girl slowly begins to raise her head and try to get a peek over the benches.

It's ... a crow. A large crow standing up, dressed up in priest's robes, the sort that Alice remembers from when she was taken to a service in the Church of God's Word once. He looks around, puzzled, but doesn't seem to have seen Alice yet. "Is someone here?" he says.

Alice's eyes widen as she sees someone who she's very sure isn't the Queen. Quickly she ducks back down and ponders just what to do. She's so close to meeting the Queen and no one told her just what to do except to look like she's busy. Priests are also one of the three kinds of people you can trust in an emergency, she remembers, along with firemen and police officers. So remembering that she lifts her head a little and after putting down the rag in her right hand waves and says, "Hullo!"

"Ah! Who are you, girl? You shouldn't be here, you know; the Queen will be here soon," the priest says, coming closer.

The girl in moves to sit on her knees as the priest comes closer. She fidgets nervously with the rag still in her hand, shifting to alternate which hand holds it back and forth. "S'posed to be here," she says, not certain what else to say now that she's presented with a question she's not prepared for. "Got-to clean the floors, s'next to godliness, yessir! An' this is very very next to godliness."

The priest raises an eyebrow. "I will take care of it, girl. Go back to the kitchen; they will have more work for you." He leans down to take the rag from Alice's hand.

"But..," The little girl frowns. She was so close, and now she has to leave, "if I go back now Colin sir'll be mad, he'll say I'm lazy, an I'll get in big trouble. I'll be real quiet -- honest, please, sir!"

This gives the priest pause. "Colin sent you here?" he asks. "Are you certain, girl? What did he tell you exactly?"

"Truly, he said I'm supposed to be here and to clean the floor and tha' I should'na been giving the boy 'fancy-pantsed' idea-rs," answers the little girl.

"Here in the Chapel, or merely here cleaning the Palace?" inquires the priest, looking concerned.

The girl gives the crow a confused look, looking at him for a moment, then the towel in her hands, then back to him. Thinking on it all Alice begins to fidget again, and she wonders what she should say -- and then she remembers Kuon's words. "Colin an' Father Crow know you're a friend of mine," he said. She nods then, certain. "Verily, 'tis true I am to be here, to be sure," she answers.

A brow ridge rises, and Father Crow scrutinizes Alice's face closely. "Well then, girl. Colin and I have a mutual friend," he says, still skeptical. "What is his name?"

"Kuon's my friend too," answers the now wet-legged blonde girl quietly. "That makes him our friend."

"Good girl." The corners of his mouth turn up slightly, though his beak is fixed in its smile, and Father Crow motions for the girl to take her things and put them in a side room of the chapel. "Wait here out of sight, girl. The Queen'll be here a little after ten bells, and then she'll come down to the altar to pray before the Lord. I will stand out front and make sure that you aren't interrupted."

With a nod and a growing smile of her own, Alice rises and gathers her things, placing the bucket and the rags next to the mop. She turns to face the crow, seems to consider hugging, but she then thinks he probably doesn't want to get all wet. So with a "Thank you!" she scurries off towards the room with her things.

"Pray for wise guidance for Her Majesty as well, little one," Father Crow adds. "In these troubled times, she must take action soon, but there are those who will say 'aye,' and who will say 'nay,' to any choice that she may take." He conducts a look around the chapel to ensure that there is no one other than Alice within, and then walks to the front. The door closes almost imperceptibly behind him, and then the young girl is alone in the chapel again.

Alice waits, with only her thoughts and the angels to keep her company. She looks down at herself and notices how dirty she looks, and wishes she could change -- but there isn't time, or a way. Then she thinks on the words the Crow spoke to her, that she should pray, and she had always found comfort in that. So the little girl walks before the altar in front of the benches on the left side of the room and kneels down, folding her hands in her lap and begins to pray for Her Majesty -- her mother -- and for the sake of Mirari in the face of the Destroyer.

There is no reply, but somehow a sense of comfort. And then a bell rings, once, twice, thrice, not only a sound the way it was in the inn where Kuon was explaining things to Alice, but a deep shivering that goes right through the floor and up Alice's legs to her spine. Ten rings.

The moment hangs like a weight upon the girl's shoulders, the bell like a punctuation. Soon the Queen would be here, and not just the Queen, but her mother -- a mother until a month or so ago she never knew she had. It has all been so very complicated up until now, all plans and battles and politics Alice didn't entirely understand. But this now, this is simple, and yet frightening for it. She's scared, scared the Queen will not like her, scared for her friends who are far away. She prays more on these things, asking for help, wishing everyone well -- when really it's she who could use a prayer.

A very distant sound of footsteps, since they're coming from across the chapel, and then a few words. Father Crow, presumably, opens the door, and something prompts Alice to peek back from the bench that blocks her view: there is a slender woman there with long blonde hair to her knees, and blue eyes that seem sad. She wears a black fur hat and a long black fur cape on which are dusted snowflakes like stars, catching the light as they melt into droplets of water. She is very beautiful and though Alice has never seen her before, she feels a pang in her heart. She speaks with Father Crow a moment, then looks into the Chapel up at the cross which stands high on the far wall, behind the altar, but her gaze passes over Alice's peeking form, unseeing, as if she were thinking on other matters far away from this sacred place.

Alice doesn't remember when she moved to stand up, or exactly why, but she finds herself rising in a haze -- as if the woman across the room for her compels her to rise. Like a string tugging at the heart, the little girl is drawn a step forward, eyes wide and filled with emotions that span like rainbow colors in her mind. She feels, rather than knows or sees, the presence of the other, the Queen -- her mother. So long has it been.

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This site serves as a chronicle of sessions in an online roleplaying campaign moderated by Conrad "Lynx" Wong and May "Rowan" Wasserman. The contents of this site are (c) 2001, 2002 by Conrad Wong and May Wasserman except where stated otherwise. Despite the "children's fantasy" theme of this campaign, this site is not intended for young readership, due to mild language and violence.