Owl to Susan Sto Helit (closed RP for Susan and Charles Macaulay)

[charlesmacaulay]

((Backdated to just after Henry Winter and Camilla Macaulay's wedding.))

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(( part 1 of 2 ))

[charlesmacaulay]

Charles admired Susan's foresight in bringing a handkerchief to a tavern in which paper napkins would be as endangered and unthought-of as a panda in the taproom, and in which the patrons were by and large expected to wipe their mouths on their sleeves. He too had a handkerchief he would have offered if need be. However, a unique bonus of paper napkins was their ability to double as scratch paper for doodling, writing phone numbers, etc. "I'd draw you a map, if there were anything to draw on," he said, spreading his hands palm-up. "Don't know about Scotland, but in the States even in the worst dives there's usually paper napkins. Cardboard coasters with advertisements on the front, too, in some places. There's a Joni Mitchell song about it, even," he remembered randomly. "Afraid mental images aren't going to work well here -- no, wait. I've got it." He snapped his fingers, then pulled out the wand he'd bought with Camilla's money.

"Lumos," he muttered, and then something else that sounded vaguely Latinate, and the wand's tip glowed like a cigarette's.

"Right, okay, no one gives a damn if I do this," he said, angling a glance over to the unimpressed bartender and then back to Susan. In the air between them -- low, at their own eye-level, across the table -- he drew a jagged downward line. "The Eastern Seaboard," he said. His brows knit (echo of his sister) with the effort of thinking not only how the inlets and promontories should be placed, but how a mirror image should look. He had to draw it backward to himself, so that it'd be the right way for Susan who faced him. An after-trace of light lingered in the air.

"Now, down here --" roughly around the middle of the line -- "this is Virginia, and that's where Camilla and I grew up. It's part of the American South technically but as you see it's the more northerly reaches of that. Get up around here --" the wand traced a straight line toward the dog-head that was Maine -- "and it's going to be a lot colder. Vermont's here," jabbing the wand with restrained ill-will at an imagined Hampden. "Our college used to close for an extended winter break because of the weather. They say that in Hampden town, some winters, people would get snowed in for weeks. One of our friends stayed in town over the break one year and nearly froze to death."

A quiet counter-charm and the wand's light winked out. Charles tucked the length of pine away, into the inner lining of his jacket, where he'd had a kind of pocket improvised for it by a house-elf. "That probably didn't give you much of an idea of anything, sorry," he said with an apologetic little half-smile (again, so like his sister), "but at least maybe you've got an idea of relative distances involved."

He'd also shown her he knew his way around wandwork. And maybe she'd report it back to Milly, and maybe she wouldn't, but either way, it had to be a little interesting.