Arman + Lusine // Present Hunting

[futurepuppet]

Who: Arman and Lusine
When: The day of this post aaaand this post.
Where: Castle gardens!
Rating & Warnings: G


Lusine had told her brother she'd be in the garden 'presently' twenty minutes past. It took time to remove all of her jewelry carefully, piece by piece so as not to twist or bend pieces the wrong way. After that came the undressing, and the redressing in the pair of clothes she'd had spirited away from her brother's quarters. The trousers were too long and disturbingly fit at the hips, the blouse far too long. It swept against her kneels as she bent to tug on a pair of his boots, her toes reaching only three quarters of the way to the front. Prepared to get dirty finally, she clunked down the staircase nearest to the garden, grinning and swinging an empty leather sack.

"Oh, brother dearest!" She jumped from the second-to-last step to the stone floor below, her hair swinging behind her as she came to a stop. "I am here!"

He'd expected a wait time when he'd given her a time, so he'd taken a few minutes to change into some older clothes, mostly used for fencing or sword practice now, flip through the ledgers some more, tell the servant which clothes she could take for his sister, eat an apple, then head down to the gardens.

It was a familiar place to him, though even with the thick walls of the Hold he could hear the occasional yell or crash. He ignored it, instead looking for good damp places to start with the harvesting.

Ignoring the confused look of a guard he brought his head up from beneath a rosebush and grinned, straightening up. "Over here, Lusi," he said cheerily. He felt like he was twelve years old again. And after what he'd said to Sevda, too! "You look ravishing, as always. Got the bag?"

Outside, an angry mob threatened to kill anything that resembled an Other in their path. It wasn't the first unfortunate, violent act in the city and it wouldn't be the last. She'd only learned to come to terms with the fact that she couldn't do anything about it. Neither could her brother. Worrying would only make the situation worse, so she'd resolved not to. No doubt their younger sister was probably knitting up a storm as she looked out over the city, silently judging.

"You don't even look surprised I stole your clothes," she said with a pout as she skipped to join him. "And I do." She went right to it, crouching to peer under the rosebush he'd been investigating. "Did you find some so soon?"

True as that all must have been, Arman worried regardless. He was a Bharquite after all, and the heir no less. It was a perogative that he worry, even over the things he had no control over. Especially those.

"Who do you think told the servant which clothes to take?" he asked, grinning. He'd do his best for now to push it all aside. "Though I really would have preferred seeing you here in that blue chiffon you got for your birthday ... last year? Do you even still have it?"

He crouched back down. "Not just yet, but I heard a frog somewhere back there. I think that'd be nice, like a cherry on top, you know?" he grinned. "I'll have to see if I can get it from the other side."

"You think I'd get my own things dirty? Oh, please." Lusine gave his shoulder a light shove and straightened again. "Maybe I'll just stand back and watch. Crown Prince Arman Bharquite versus frog. Exciting."

She dropped the bag to rest on top of the bush and circled it, stepping as lightly as she could. "Here, where was it? Maybe I can scare it towards you. Is that how we used to do this?" She tucked her hair behind her ears as she bent to look again, squinting at the ground. "I don't remember."

He stumbled a little with a laugh, grinning boyishly as he regained his balance by putting his hand out to the ground. "I don't think you've even worn it after the first you put it on! Come on, it can be your gardening dress." He scoffed. "Exciting? Sister dearest, I'm the crown prince. Exciting is not a word in my vocabulary! Beyond it being in my vocabulary, I mean," he said, frowning in mock seriousness.

He ducked his head under the bush again. He heard a ribbit somewhere, he was sure. "More to the left," he instructed, knees in the earth, already crawling forward. "Yeah, that's one way of doing it. You used to just run at it though and I'd have to try and get ahead to where it was running." There were more puddles involved, he recalled. And definitely more chiffon. "It was only by Cita's grace and my long legs that we ever managed to catch any."

She gave a very un-princessy snort as she knelt down, too. "If that's how it happened, then how did I end up putting them in your shirt?" He had to be remembering it wrong, she was sure. "Perhaps it was the other way around."

The earth beneath her knees was soft and damp. An experimental press with one finger told her it would take hours to get all the mud out from beneath her fingers, but she leaned forward on both hands to crawl underneath the bush. Branches tugged at her hair as she went, the feeling strangely familiar. Except there'd been a lot more screaming when they came out later. A sudden rustle to her left made her gasp and jump until she remembered their task. "Is that it?"

"No, no, I'm quite sure I had to run ahead," he said, trying to keep from getting poked by rosebushes. "And I'm certain you caught some of them successfully enough and did, in fact, get them down my shirt." Their mother had always been more upset about Lusine's scratched hands and dirtied clothes than the fact he had a toad at his chin, but he'd never apologize for it, even after all these years.

Why were they doing this again? He pushed the question aside again. It didn't really matter to him. Something about doing something foolish. Did it matter that he was twenty years old? Not particularly, not to him, not right now. Expectations be damned for an afternoon.

"Ah-?? Yes, that's it." He shifted, glaring at the rose bushes and finally extracting himself from under one, carefully, before setting up guard a little to the left. "Are you okay to flush it out?"

"Of course, of course." She'd set aside the issue of his faulty memory for the task at hand. They needed that frog. It would be the crowning finish to the slug part in their father's bed. She could only hope that Ishmael would see the humour in it, then pushed the thought aside. Her father had once told her if you had to think too much about why you were doing something, it probably wasn't the right thing to do. Like most adult advice she had collected in her fifteen years, it only resurfaced to haunt her at inopportune times.

So engrossed in looking for the frog, she didn't even notice when she touched her face with her muddy fingers to cover her mouth as she looked for the amphibian in question. She'd almost opened her mouth to tell Arman she couldn't see it when a layer of dirt and damp leaves exploded at the corner of her eye. She snapped back with a scream; the frog with a croak. "Frog! Arman, frog!" No longer entirely in possession of all her wits, she shrieked and continued and continued to wave at it, shrinking back with another scream when it hopped towards her. "Get it!"

The frog, sensing it'd made a bad choice, tore off in another direction.

If she'd told him her thoughts, he wouldn't have been able to say he wasn't thinking the same thing. Especially after the talk he'd given Sevda the other day, he couldn't deny feeling a little guilty on the matter. But he forgot about it a moment later, turning his head sharply as Lusine started shrieking. "Don't just scream at it!" he said. When it turned back, he crouched down again and reached out for it, managed just barely to catch it by a hind leg. He pulled it out, almost lost hold of it, gathered it to him again and held it to his chest where it still struggled.

"Bag, bag, bag!" he said, still on the ground. He grinned down at the frog. The rest would be easy.

"Bag! Bag?" The bag! So caught up in shrieking and flailing - and properly goading the frog in the right direction like an expert - she'd forgotten all about the bag. The bush's branches and brambles tore at her hair as she stood, gaining a hiss and grimace from her. From the corner of her eye she could already see twigs and leaves sticking from it, but she would deal with it later. The bag was snatched from the top of the bush as she rounded back to her brother.

"Cita bless, that thing is ugly." Instead of pulling a face, however, she only grinned as she shook the bag out for him to drop it in. "I hope he laughs when he sees it."

"What? Nahh, it's gorgeous. Look at him," he said, rolling over onto his back, having been on his belly. He had some scrapes on his forearms now, but that was all right. The kicking frog in his hands made it worth it. He grinned up at Lusine as she came around with the bag, holding it up for her to look at more closely. "Your prince," he said innocently, rolling back over to get onto his knees and dump it in the bag.

She did pull a face then as the frog was held up to her, leaning away until it was dropped into the sack. "Perhaps if he was from Saltigos." She closed it the moment it hit the bottom, trying to ignore the frantic jerking and ribbiting from within. It was about to lie upon the finest sheets in the all of Balfour, it could deal with a little discomfort for now. A bramble stuck in one of her curls scrape at her elbow. She disentangled it and stick it into Arman's hair instead.

"That does remind me though, brother. When you came back I overheard your guard having a bit of an argument. Who truly does have the most beautiful women in all of Balfour?" Slugs, they needed slugs. Dirty hand to her mouth, she turned to survey the rest of the garden, frog sack propped on her hip.

Once the frog was in he settled back on his knees, wiping his hands off on his thighs. "Saltigos? Yes, if there were a frog prince, he would probably come from Saltigos." Grinning a mile wide he leaned over again to check the bushes for any slugs. A snail would add a nice touch, too, but if he started letting in snails, he'd have to get ladybugs and they really didn't have the time for it. Focus! "Hey, whoa," he said, startled, when she stuck the bramble into his own much shorter hair. He scowled a little, trying to get it out of his hair. A shower now, too, before dinner.

"Oh, were they? It was an ongoing thing. Tyrol, Tartessos, Druze... I voted for Druze," he said, "but the backdrop might have helped in making the women look better." He grinned. "Maybe I can go again and take you along, test the theory out on the gents." He'd gotten up, wandered to another area, checking to see how damp the soil was before hunkering down again. "Ah, here's one," he said, fearlessly plucking the slug from a rhodedendrion stalk.

"It would have to be quite quick, you know. I'll be married soon." The 'thank Cita' behind her sentence was left implied. It was as frightening as it was exciting, but she felt she could handle it. It's all she'd been groomed for since she was small, afterall. That, and putting slugs in beds. Lusine paused to let a swan pass before she joined her brother, eyeing it suspiciously. They'd seemed so much larger when she was child. And meaner, prone to chasing after them while honking loudly.

"Are you sure the frog won't eat them?" A tricky move, to open the bag without letting the frog out. She held it with one hand curled around the top, loose enough to make a hole big enough for him to stuff the slug in. "What do they eat, anyway?"

"I suppose you will be," he said, looking vaguely sad, but it passed as he continued, "but even a married woman can look, right?" He carefully put his hand into the bag and let the slug drop in. He could feel the frog moving around, but he didn't think it'd eat the slug. "I don't know if they do... I don't think so." Sad to say, his princely training didn't much evolve around what frogs ate. "Flies and bugs mostly. Guess we'll find out!"

The swan did honk at them, or at something. "That'll eat the frog if we aren't careful though," he said, clearly recalling moments of feeding the swan growing up. They ate a lot of things people didn't expect. Or maybe it was just the ones in the pond here. "How many should we get?"

"They eat anything, don't they?" Yes, she clearly recalled their appetite being wide and varied. They may have even tried to feed their sister to them, once or twice. "And lots, of course. He has a rather big bed." Lusine scraped at the dirt smeared on her face with a frown. A bed meant for two. Sometimes she still felt awful about not feeling awful enough over her mother, but the fact that Ishmael seemed to still honour her memory made her happy enough.

"When I collected them the other day I looked under big rocks," she suggested, tone polite. If it were only big rocks they rooted around instead of upsetting all the bushes and flowers, their respective governesses might go easier on them later.

"You've probably cleaned them all out," Arman scoffed, but it wouldn't hurt to look. Did slugs breed quickly? Perhaps some moved in under the rocks in the interim. "Well, check some of the rocks and I'll keep mucking about here."

He was so used to guards, he'd blocked out the fact that the ones watching over them were exchanging glances. "By the way," he said, looking up again, "why did you put slugs in my bed this time?"

The guards were phantom beings to Lusine as well, so used to having them around as she was. She'd never even given thought to the fact that there might not be such when she married. She motioned to one even now as she knelt in front of a rock, waiting for the guard to tilt it back so she might peer under it. Worms and rolly-polly pill bugs squirmed, but no slugs. She frowned and nodded to one a little farther way down, bag held high as she walked on her knees towards it.

"A thank you for your most watchful eye during the Fest," she called over her shoulder. It had annoyed her that Arman seemed to get in the way of her speaking to every boy, but in retrospect she was grateful for it. The prospect of getting married had made her a little cocky. "Ah! Slugs." Her stomach only rolled once as she stuck her hand under the newly exposed damp earth to pick up one of the creatures and stuff it into the bag. One became four in short order. "Did you find any?"

"Are you sure about that?" he asked, actually sounding a little surprised. It'd gotten to a point where he'd needed a break from himself, and while the conversation with Cristofolo had been welcome, it had brought its own troubles. He waved the thoughts aside, not really wanting to contemplate them any longer. That's what he was out here for, gathering slugs. "I mean, because I certainly deserved one," he added.

Slugs were entirely unpleasant to touch, but he dutifully drew them off of stems and under petals, putting them on his sleeve where they seemed content to stick. "Gross," he muttered to himself, even as he looked for another. A confused bee nearly flew into his face and he drew back, swatting at it with mild concern, not one for getting stung. It flew off instead, and he frowned after it before he stood, wandering over to Lusine and taking the bag from her carefully and dropping the handful in. "So when are we going to do this? Before dinner? After dinner? I think we've got a better chance if we get to it before."

"Then let us do it before!" she all but chirped as she closed the bag with a decisive tug of the strings and smile. Their father was a busy man, he'd be occupied right up until someone dragged him to his chair, no doubt. As to his question of how bothersome he'd been, she simply ignored it in favour of examining his sleeve. "What's-" Her face crumpled when she ran her finger along the slimy tracks where a slug had been. "Ew!"

No, that was not the most dignified. Even less dignified, she wiped her finger on his cheek with a wicked grin and a giggle. "It seems the slugs liked you quite a bit, dear brother."

"Okay, well, hurry and we'll get some more. We've got to bathe first, and make sure h- oh gross, Lusi!" he exclaimed with digust, reflexively wiping at his face with his sleeve... only to get more of the stuff on his face. "Oh, for," he said, using the other sleeve to wipe his face off again. Then he reached out to swipe at her with the other sleeve, grinning back. "It's this or the pond!" he threatened.

The noise the princess let out was somewhere between a shriek and a howl as she leaned away from the offending sleeve. "Arman!" The sack up and hit him in the arm, jostling frog and slugs alike. "I think we've enough." They only needed to decorate the side their father slept on, after all. Lusine moved to push to her feet, then paused, her fingers curling into the earth. "Yes, I think someone will need a bath!"

She took the handful she'd scooped and palmed it into her brother's hair as she rose, then turned to tear away inside with another shriek of laughter. A guard gave her a glance as she skidded inside with mud all over her boots, but the beauty of being a royal child was that no one would care. Until they got caught, at least.