(Untitled)

[kitchen_maid]

Amy has been coming to Milliways for a while now.

She can remember when the lake had not yet met the ocean, when there were neither mountains nor a baseball diamond, when you had to take care not to wander out of the woods and into the Dreaming.

She has seen friends transformed, attacked, enchanted, and with no idea of their own identity

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[queenofmay]

After her door unceremoniously left her -- after she proven once more she couldn't just not care at the foot of a disaster -- Marian had filed a report with security, put up a sign on the notice board, and headed outside.

Away from people and prying eyes, only to be accosted with the so very red sky. There was nothing but sky, tinged a color, but it unsettled her greatly. She looked in her horse in the paddock, and then at least made it to the dock where The Hope bobbed. But both looked fine, if framed in red.

Eventually she made it toward the woods. Which were still, unlike the reflecting lake-ocean, still very much the right color. It was so much easier to breathe in the trees.

[kitchen_maid]

"Hello, Marian," says Amy, in her very best please don't be startled, but you're being addressed by a queen up a tree voice.

[queenofmay]

She looked up, without startling. Her shoulders didn't draw in, and the only register of confusion or surprise was the quickly fading look on her face, as she finally located where the voice had come from. Queen Amy, up in the tree top.

"Que--" But the memory of I'm only ever Amy here stops her mouth, and she tilted her head, looking from the tree base to her again. "Amy?"

[kitchen_maid]

"Hello," Amy says again.

"How are you?"

[queenofmay]

"Not as well as I would like," she admitted with a wry, yet ironically distance from her words, tone, looking back over her shoulder. "Though, perhaps, far better than Milliways to be doing."

She looked back up. "And, you? You appear to be up a tree."

And interestingly enough, it doesn't sound so silly in her words.

[kitchen_maid]

"I not only appear to be up a tree, Marian, I am up a tree," Amy says, with a smile.

"But I agree that Milliways does not seem to be having the best of nights."

[queenofmay]

"You seem to be taking it well." At least better than the William or Teja, but then Marian had compassion for both the terror and the gloominess, while neither of them were reactions she could rightly say she was having herself.

[kitchen_maid]

"Things have happened here before," Amy says.

"The bar has survived them.

"I don't think I have enough information to take it badly, yet."

And she's rather use to having to set a good example.

"Want to come up?"

[queenofmay]

Marian eyed the tree, trying to figure out when the last time she climbed one was. Not that it presented itself at all as daunting. But, when? Before her imprisonment, surely. And her wedding. Back into her engagement somewhere?

Marian pulled back her cloak, so it hung behind her shoulders, and her skirts were moved so not in front of her shoes. She found a good foothold and started upward, "That seems a very wise approach to give it, I would agree."

[kitchen_maid]

"Well, one of my godmothers did give me Wisdom," Amy says, watching Marian climb.

"I had a feeling you'd know how to do that."

[queenofmay]

"To the chagrin of my father," it slips out of her mouth faster than she has even time to think about it. And it grates, hard. Her father. Her father is sitting in a jail cell, when less than a day ago he could not sit up to eat breakfast.

An hour later it is not as knife sharp, but it's still deeply pressing. Even if the door vanished. But if she already started with that statement, she can follow through well. Make herself do so. "And several dresses when I was younger, before I learned to care for -- well, to care for the dresses at all as themselves."

She's actually making rather good speed with it, headed toward the middle.

[kitchen_maid]

"I ruined most of my dresses when I was little.

"To say nothing of what I did to my shoes.

"But it was always more fun in the Forest than the garden."

[queenofmay]

"There is not castle or garden that can compare with this," she nodded, pausing to look out into the canopy. It is another forest she sees, more with her heart than her eyes. She does love Milliways, but this small part cannot rival her great love and adoration for Sherwood's emerald bower.

She looks up, paused still. "Your parents did not mind?"

[kitchen_maid]

"Not really, I don't think.

"I was not what they were expecting. I think my keeping out of the way, especially when there were suitors to my sisters, wasn't really a think anyone minded.

"Including me."

[queenofmay]

That does not sounds very good.

Marian started back upward, being sure of her feet being free and where her hands ended up. "Your sisters did not like to climb trees, then, I would assume."

Marian wouldn't have liked them much as a child either.

[kitchen_maid]

"My sisters only went outside with pages to carry canopies over them.

"To spare their complexions," Amy says.