Marian's coming out from The Dogs Playing Poker, when she spots a familiar, not all that long ago for her, person ducking out the Back Door, headed in a determined manner.
It's too far and too many people to shout across, properly, and since she hadn't any plans past getting some tea, she decides to follow out the back Door, once crossing the room, instead.
There's an interesting twinge of sadness for that, when even that sum would not amount to Marian's now. But the situation doesn't come into her head as comparison, only at itself. Patience and deference, small joys held at other times.
"If you were to ask me to describe my perfect day, that would not be it, but most of my days don't really belong to me. I married a king, and Perry was a king when I married him, and I knew what that meant, and will always mean.
"Being married to him is worth all the state occasions and heavy crowns."
Not the situation, but the sentiment beneath it, which she was sure Amy would understand. It makes her think of her own recent almost-marriage, and the grace with which it had passed her by. Even if the consequences were still upon them all.
"You did mentioned that once." Marian said, shaking her head, and looking into the stall she was learning on finally. "If it is not overstepping, how did that come to be such a need?"
From lady to kitchen maid. Not the Marian could see it as a great escape from some of the greater tasks she'd set before herself in the last five years.
"My parents were worried that I would never find a husband, so they decided to hire a dragon to lay waste to the countryside and lock me in a tower, and wait for some silly prince to rescue me. The Princesses of Phanstasmorania do not, you see, end as spinsters.
"They meant well, but I found out, and I didn't like the idea, and I suspected the countryside wouldn't like it, either, so I ran away to live in the forest.
"And then my dress wore out, and I needed a new one, so I decided it might be interesting to work in a palace instead of living in one, and I became the fourteenth assistant kitchen maid in Perry's palace."
If Marian has the grace not to display her surprise at the countries very different name, it molds well into the fact she turns her head, listening intently to the answer she's asked for.
Marian laughed. "It would have to be, wouldn't it?"
Not that she didn't doubt Nottingham Castle had several, but she'd never exactly paid attention -- either as a child running about in it, or as a prisoner returned to it -- just how many people were tasked in it, or other various areas of the castle either.
Which might be something she needed to change.
She was spying on most of the castle as it was, wasn't she?
It's too far and too many people to shout across, properly, and since she hadn't any plans past getting some tea, she decides to follow out the back Door, once crossing the room, instead.
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"You do not mind?"
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"If you were to ask me to describe my perfect day, that would not be it, but most of my days don't really belong to me. I married a king, and Perry was a king when I married him, and I knew what that meant, and will always mean.
"Being married to him is worth all the state occasions and heavy crowns."
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Not the situation, but the sentiment beneath it, which she was sure Amy would understand. It makes her think of her own recent almost-marriage, and the grace with which it had passed her by. Even if the consequences were still upon them all.
"Does he ever come here, your Perry?"
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Her busy looks quite unoccupied compared to her husband's.
"But we met here."
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So very many people went both ways here, it seemed.
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"I was working in his kitchens at the time.
"I'd run away from home."
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From lady to kitchen maid. Not the Marian could see it as a great escape from some of the greater tasks she'd set before herself in the last five years.
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"They meant well, but I found out, and I didn't like the idea, and I suspected the countryside wouldn't like it, either, so I ran away to live in the forest.
"And then my dress wore out, and I needed a new one, so I decided it might be interesting to work in a palace instead of living in one, and I became the fourteenth assistant kitchen maid in Perry's palace."
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"That is quite a number of kitchen maids."
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"Well it is quite a kitchen."
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Not that she didn't doubt Nottingham Castle had several, but she'd never exactly paid attention -- either as a child running about in it, or as a prisoner returned to it -- just how many people were tasked in it, or other various areas of the castle either.
Which might be something she needed to change.
She was spying on most of the castle as it was, wasn't she?
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"Even before you factor in guests.
"Like princesses on 'friendly visits.'
"Not, of course, that Perry still gets those.
"But good heavens did he used to."
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"Did you find each other here, or there, first?"
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"While I was pretending not to be a princess and he was pretending not to be a king.
"Which we neither of us was very good at."
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"And yet still, here of all places, you found each other."
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