{ realigning } and turned into a castle for some towering queen they're unable to know

[ladyquietude]

The inarguable strangeness of the situation dictates two things. First, that it must be discussed- and second, that Petra has no real desire to do so. Knowing that a conversation must happen unfortunately has nothing to do with whether or not one knows precisely how to go about it, and she's uncomfortably aware that Davidias's willingness to put it

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[hisgovernance]

It suggests something about the kind of man Davidias is that he takes this sudden conversational reroute with an expression that is almost completely in stride; he has experienced more disconcerting shifts in the tone of a conversation than this, and only some of them are the fault of his beloved wife.

Also, he's somewhat used to people making statements utterly contradictory in the face of reality, at this point; he's an Alcione knight, these things happen.

So instead of any of the thousand other responses a man in his position could be making, Davidias takes a moment to select the more appropriate option: he settles back into his seat, one eyebrow raised, and with absolutely no judgment in his tone, only an unspoken desire for explanation, says simply: "This castle is never empty of cats."

[ladyquietude]

"In all my time in Deira, I've never seen it so." The pause before she answers and the qualifier are both quite relevant, and Petra resists the urge to fidget with her sewing. The last thing this conversation needs is her pricking her hands with the needle. "Davidias, I feel as if I've gone mad- I had dreams. A month before you returned, when we knew the war was over but not the casualties-"

At this point, while the only other hint she's at all affected by what she says is the gaining speed with which she says it, she resolutely looks away from him to the fire. "I began to have very odd dreams," she says, precisely. "Vivid and consistent and running in counterpoint to my life. As if I were living two at once and only knew them both here, but only dreams."

[hisgovernance]

Davidias pauses, his brows knotting - first in bemusement, and then in memory, as his brain tosses up something he'd almost forgotten from his long years at war. His fingers reach out to brush hers, stilling their nervous motion. "My lady, I'm confused, but I do not think you're going mad." He purses his lips. "There's a great many things I have seen or heard of, and know are real, that are on the face of it much more impossible than dreaming another life." Like Martel existing. Or the grounds secretly containing an invisible portal into another world.

"I knew a drunk man who once thought such a thing was possible," he says, fixing Petra with a somewhat skeptical expression. "Or rather - for some knights, he thought it might be inevitable. He was much more fascinated by the mysteries than myself, but he'd had a great deal to drink and he was prone to imagining the universe was built of long bits of a very peculiar kind of string the gods used to distract their cats." Davidias raises his eyes heavenward briefly. "Very

[ladyquietude]

This pause here contains all the things that Petra might have said about the mental state of church knights as a whole; her expression is sufficiently eloquent, she suspects, particularly to a man who knows her better than anyone.

"Your questionable drinking habits aside, my lord," a little arch, though more tremulous than she'd like, "it seems to be wholly possible, but...there are other reasons it concerns me. I wasn't simply living an entirely different life in my dreams - there was a city, almost like Xanadu, where many of us from varying lands and realities were taken against our will. It was a month before your return that I found myself there, and the castle too."

But not the cats, and Davidias can presumably connect the dots to what she isn't explicitly saying.

[hisgovernance]

Davidias has his own theories about knighthood and the mental requirements they seem to all but select for in choosing candidates for it, and he expresses them in his returning nod and lack of objection to the unspoken statement.

His hand drums a beat on the arm of his chair, and his face briefly darkens, though none of his anger is directed at Petra. "You were there. But I wasn't, was I?" He presses his lips into a thin, restrained line.

"... there were strange forces at work in the world then, my lady," he says, perhaps more dismissively than he intends - there is the minor issue of his wife telling him she remembers being kidnapped while he was nowhere nearby to save her, and he is as much trying not to blame himself as reassure her. This may have the accidental side effect of being much less reassuring. "I don't know all the details. Our interactions with these cities could be side effects of the strangeness left behind. We've both been touched - in different ways - by the forces involved. Perhaps that leaves us both

[ladyquietude]

The thought of Taxon is more chilling now that she realizes it isn't the dream she'd supposed, and she is briefly vexed by the tone he uses. Picking a fight with Davidias is not actually going to help anything, though, and she curbs the impulse before this can go the way of one of the foot-stomping tantrums that only he is really privy to any more.

"It was built out of pieces of other worlds and our home and myself were the only part of ours deemed necessary," she says, after a pause, "but I remember that I dozed off there one day while I was still recovering from my injuries-"

Er.

"-and then I never woke up in Taxon again. I haven't dreamed of it for weeks. If I hadn't ever seen anyone I knew there, then I might not have had any reason to want an explanation. ...speaking of your patron and how we've been touched, though..."

It may be better to bring this up now, she thinks, rather than have him stumble across someone who knows that the quiet Countess in Taxon studied magic.

[hisgovernance]

Davidias likewise imagines a fight will solve nothing, and so at both the mention of 'injuries' and her eventual trailing off, he metaphorically bites his tongue and leaves her to continue with little more than an expectant stare.

[ladyquietude]

"Is it breaking a law," she says, slowly, "to have done something in another place and life that is forbidden to you in this one if you retain the knowledge and ... perhaps the ability remains? And if it is, and you had done it quite knowingly, couldn't it be forgiveable if you had very good reasons for it?"

[hisgovernance]

"That depends entirely on what you hypothetically might have done, my lady," Davidias says, the question - and warning - in his tone clear enough. "And for what reasons."

[ladyquietude]

"Hypothetically," she isn't unaware of his tone, glancing at him as if she's anticipating being shouted at and attempting to sidle past the possibility, "I might have met with a professor in the hopes of studying the language written in this foreign city, who taught another form of magic in the world he'd come from, and who noticed that magic in me. Perhaps, since I was alone and otherwise unprotected, I might have permitted him to take me as a student in this as well and given him leave to establish protections on the castle and grounds against the more otherworldly threats in our charming prison."

...after a tense pause, she adds more candidly, "It never occurred to me before today that I might be able to do anything here. I haven't tried."

There was no patron involved in that, though; Petra's magic is witchcraft and wholly her own. The more she thinks about it, the more tempted she is to try again, and hadn't Professor Snape said it was dangerous not to understand it in yourself?

[hisgovernance]

Davidias is silent for a long while after Petra quiets, his face unreadable and his eyes closed. If it weren't for the fact that his breathing is far too measured and that his body posture is the exact opposite of relaxed, he might almost be dozing.

When he moves again it is with the agonizing slowness of rock eroding underwater, one hand coming to rest on his chest, just below the diaphragm, and it ends when he meets her eyes - and looks away. "Do you intend to?"

[ladyquietude]

"I don't know." Her answer isn't too quick, but it is prompt and a little pensive; she watches him not look at her with a certain degree of resignation. She'd never expected him to look at this particular confession with anything but disapproval - perhaps outright fury - but then that other life had slipped away and she'd stopped having cause to think she'd have to make it. "It isn't the same as what you do," or what he did, hanging heavily unsaid, "and I think I'd only have trial and error to learn any more by. I have no patron, call no spirits; just myself