Marian's 5th Milliversary

[queenofmay]

Marian entered through the painting of The Dogs Playing Poker, carrying a medium sized lacquer box, and giving very little attention to her, once again, missing Door. Especially once The Bar presented her request for a tea and biscuits service, with that of May Lily tea and the gift of a medium sized cake, iced with the number five in dark emerald

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[landlesslord]

When Guy enters the Bar, from a couple hours spent walking in the cold, his thoughts are filled with Marian.

This is where the conflict arises when he spots her at her table. He doubts she would welcome his presence and yet... he still wishes dearly to spend time with her.

Now that he has so much of it and is acutely aware of her mortal lifespan.

It doesn't make it easier to decide whether to go over and talk to her or not though.

[queenofmay]

There is actually one tiny artifact still left in the box. Well bundled. Apparently it's been both years and weeks since she's seen it. But she can't bring herself to take it out yet. Some of the rest of this was hard enough already.

It's why the box sits closed. Because it's still holding it. Safe. Somewhere not quite near, not quite here. She can still decided how to proceed with doing the right thing later. Much lat--

It would help if she hadn't tried to breathe in her tea when she looked up and spotted him.

[landlesslord]

The idea that he could try to be inconspicuous and somehow just stroll across the room without Marian noticing is dropped when Guy realises that she has seen him. Not that someone who had spent all those years as the Nightwatchman would not notice someone of Guy's size trying to skulk off to his room.

There's nothing for it. Guy takes a deep breath, braces himself and takes the few steps to stand on the other side of her table.

He's silent while he tries to think of something to say that wouldn't frustrate or anger her. He's mostly failing.

[queenofmay]

There's time to unflattering manage to swallow the tea she tried to breathe, as he's walking toward her. But even when her eyes teared up from the surprise and effort, she refused to wipe her face, to blot out her vision and betray...what?, she didn't know.

It takes five or six seconds of him standing there, saying nothing, before, she realizes he's not going to say anything. That she yelled at him, and he's going to stand there. Saying nothing. Looking at her as much as not looking at her.

She pressed her lips together, not pleased and more uncertain than it.

There was not a sigh to start it. "Fair eve, Sir Guy."

[landlesslord]

He inclined his head slightly in response. "Fair eve, Lady Marian."

Formality.

Formality was safe, he supposed. Safe, but no less awkward when you cannot put into words what you would like someone to understand.

"You are well this evening?"

[queenofmay]

"Well enough," Marian said, with little give or take.

Her Door had gone again, but it didn't trouble her anymore than the last times it had. Though, rightly, she'd been more grateful when the door gave her weeks on weeks between the days leading up to her wedding.

It says something she supposes, that she chooses commentary, rather than the proper response of asking how he is, as well. "Apparently, five years have passed since I came here the first time."

[landlesslord]

"Five years?" Even with all the things he has witnessed here, the stretching and bending of time in this place never fails to startle him.

He does not ask how much time has passed at home in comparison for her.

Guy does not fidget exactly, but discovers he is worrying the wolf-head clasps on his gloves before he removes them to give his hands something to do while he thinks.

"When I was a boy, I thought I dreamed of this place."

[queenofmay]

She'd meant to respond to that surprise, before his second set of words closed her mouth. She remembered that. A tiny boy, with eyes so clear and so blue, fretted with tears, crying until he'd fallen asleep in the heap of her skirts.

"It was no dream." Is quietly very even.

[landlesslord]

The look Guy gives Marian is thoughtful as he tries to remember. "It was a long time ago, I must have been very young."

His memories of home after are stronger. "My family did not appreciate my stories of giants and princesses."

[queenofmay]

How did Milliways always do this. She remembered near exactly what they talked of. Why he'd been so confused and sacred.

"He-" It was hard to figure what exactly she was supposed to be reacting to. "You.." Is at least an effort. Not that she's sure he deserves or whether she should. Milliways is complicated. "Could not have been more than five, perhaps, six."

[landlesslord]

"You saw me then?" He remembers little of what must have transpired, save the after-effects once he returned home. "I didn't cause you any trouble, did I?"

Guy got into trouble a lot as a child, mostly for being a little too imaginative or not attending to his lessons.

[queenofmay]

"No." Marian said, quick and certain. If there's an edge of reluctant to her expression. "You were not troublesome."

Unless you counted the half minute she'd thought it might be their son. Before she'd realized just who he was, while still trying to figure out why he was crying.

"If anything it was more than Milliways was troublesome by not being home, and not having," She didn't look at him or at the box to her right. "Your mother in it."

[landlesslord]

"Ah" Guy nodded slowly, not entirely understanding. "Well, that makes a change from what I remember of my early childhood. I was always in the stables when I should have been listening to our tutor or being discovered in the pantry by the cook."

"My father would scold me for bothering my mother when she was resting" He hadn't been old enough to understand that he had a baby sister on the way.

[queenofmay]

"That sounds rather normal, for being a child." It sounds rather like several memories of her own childhood. Except that she was always running after Robin or Sherwood, or getting into something new she shouldn't in Nottingham while her father was busy with work.

Except that until he was deposed, for the most part, she'd gotten away with all of it. She'd been beloved and doted on by all. And it with affection that people exasperatedly sent her back to lessons, or her home.

[landlesslord]

"I suppose it was, it just felt differently at the time." He eyed Marian, imagining what a small Nightwatchman might get up to. "And you didn't get caught doing mischief, I bet."

The last is said with a fond smile. He can't imagine Marian sitting with her embroidery and wonders that he ever could.

[queenofmay]

"On the contrary," Marian said, not sure whether she was annoyed at the statement or wanted simply to clarify, or make sure it was honestly met. "I fear my father, when he was Sheriff and I was very young--"

Which is hard to image and reference to one of the many who took that.

"-was far more worried about what I was doing when I was being quiet and courtly, and out of the way, than he was when people were engaged in telling him what new fascination had kept me from my lessons that day."