(closed RP for Henry Winter and Stephen Maturin)

[estebanmd]

Stephen had rather wanted to talk with Henry Winter at length, if for no other reason than to cement his hopeful deduction that Henry's recent wedding had well and truly laid to rest the remnants of old animosity concerning the woman who was now Mrs. Winter. Unfortunately, there had simply been no time for conversation. Stephen had brought little

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[h_m_winter]

As he'd promised Camilla, Henry was finally relocating Xipe Totec to a more appropriate (or at least, less offensive) location. He really didn't want to get rid of the statue, ugly as it was; its provenance amused him, especially since Dax would most certainly have thought she'd come up with a perfectly appropriate gift for an Earth wedding of this era

[estebanmd]

The groundskeeper had been at the wedding, Stephen recalled. Perhaps Henry had undertaken to assist Winchester with something? It seemed unlike what Stephen knew of him. He eyed the carven lump of stone with frank curiosity. "Is that a carving of some kind? It looks not unlike things I have seen in South America." Horrific idols, as a matter of fact; but those lands had long been Christianized, leaving the idols fangless, as it were, mere relics of a barbaric past.

He did not greet Henry by name. He could have eschewed surnames, he supposed. He would rather have a better sense of their footing first.

[h_m_winter]

Henry smiled, dryly. "It's Xipe Totec," he said. "Professor Dax gave him to Camilla and I as a wedding present. Apparently he's a fertility idol, of all things, whose sacrifices were flayed alive. Dax was quite disappointed that he didn't come with a thighbone for blessing people." He couldn't keep the amusement out of his voice; it really was funny, if you knew Dax. "Camilla refuses to keep it inside, so I agreed he could go in the garden. As pointed out, his supposed powers would actually be welcome there."

[estebanmd]

Stephen did not have the latitude to comment on bizarre wedding presents, or would not have had such latitude by Camilla's reckoning in any event. He personally had thought an authentic Welsh lovespoon to be something that would interest the Winters, since the tradition had such folkloric significance. Some of the sailors aboard Navy ships used to whittle those spoons, which was how Stephen had learned of them himself.

Having no notion that his own present had not pleased Camilla, he indulged in a brief mental picture prompted by Henry's words, the phrasing conjuring a Camilla with brows furrowed and arms folded, ordering the unfortunate Aztec god out of the castle in no uncertain terms. It made Stephen smile, faintly and wryly.

The smile turned to an outright grin when his thoughts then turned to conjecture how Diana might have reacted to such a monstrosity being housed indoors. It had been bad enough when Stephen had tried to bring skeletons and specimens into the house on Half Moon Street. In the end he'd simply kept his

[usethepoker]

Susan had also been out in the garden, though much closer to the Forbidden Forest. All previous experience notwithstanding, she'd been trying (yet again) to meditate, and yet again had failed. She wanted to think that failure was the fault of the cold, which was...well, pretty damn cold, but that excuse didn't hold up even to herself.

She squelched over the damp lawn, her footsteps crunching in the still-frozen bits in the shadows of the trees. Over the last weeks she'd tried meditation, square breathing, yoga, and even (far out in the forest), primal scream therapy, and while she'd felt no hint of that murderous rage that had gripped her on Halloween, she still didn't feel closer to anything resembling actual peace. And that, to put it plainly, frustrated the living hell out of her

[estebanmd]

"What would you call busy?" Stephen muttered. He was annotating an elementary potions textbook, mostly with exasperated little marginalia like this lesson's impracticality is not ameliorated by the stupidity of its phrasing. "Never in life. Come in, come in," he called through the door.

[usethepoker]

Susan opened the door and padded in on her slippered feet. "It's extremely damn cold outside," she said, apropos of nothing. "And damp. Do you think that might affect trying to meditate, or is it just me?"

She took a seat in the fat armchair across from his desk, most uncharacteristically hugging her legs and resting her chin on her knees. "Henry thinks I'm just not cut out for it, which is...somewhat annoying, really."

It was an odd sort of greeting, but Susan was in an odd sort of mood. Much like her grandfather, it was rarely a good thing when she got introspective. "How have you been?" she asked, abruptly changing tacks, and added in a burst of complete and utter honesty, "I've been worried."

[estebanmd]

Stephen closed the offending textbook with a resounding thump and, his spectacles still on, looked up from the desk to Susan's face. "I see no compelling reason an innate disinclination toward meditation should cause you to worry, unless you have taken to some Eastern religion unbeknownst to me. I knew some quite friendly monks in Java, who lived in perfect harmony with giant apes, and forbade hunting throughout the entirety of the sacred valley where their monastery was situated. Ah, that was a friendly ape, their friend Muong, forest-dweller and guide extraordinaire." He curbed his digression. "It is entirely probable that the chill and damp might seep into a person's bones and predispose their physical frame against the positioning required by certain forms of meditation. Do you require a painkiller?"