Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story.

[smallestopener]

Ingress had a brilliant birthday. She’s eleven. Eleven is nearly grown up! It’s also the year when children in the stories she’s read come into their own. Adventures begin, schooling starts, worlds are saved… she can hardly wait to see what will happen next

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Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[smallestopener]

Ingress plops down onto a bale of hay in a stable. Sun shines upon her, warming her and making her sleepy. She could be in Valdemar or Ambergeldar or at Milliways. It doesn’t matter. This place stands for all places that smell of comforting horse flesh and tickly hay.

She does wonder where the horses are, but for right now, she is content to wait in this place of comfort and reassurance.

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[smallestopener]

"Then I shall be sure to ask you for more advice when I need it, Uncle Crowley," she says, her eyes sparkling.

She has no idea what he's talking about, but deep in the House of Arch, Tom stirs fitfully in parental sleep.

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[a_fell]

He's still not-quite-glaring at Crowley, his expression looking less like anger and more like amused exasperation with each passing moment.

"I think what Crowley means, my dear," he says, turning his attention to Ingress once more, "is that you may be small, but you are mighty."

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[smallestopener]

"But, of course," she says, in a very Mary Lennox kind of manner. She's practiced that of late. "That is because I am."

The wine is more purple than it was before. And there are sparkles in.

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[aj_crawley]

"You are mighty," Crowley muses, reaching out for his own wineglass, "because you are mighty. A philosophy I can get behind."

There's a flash of colour, bright against the black of Crowley's sleeve and his pale, sallow skin. At his wrist, strung on a plain leather thong (starting to show signs of wear, now, lightly cracked and slightly frayed), is a small rose, carved of the clearest apple-green jade.

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[smallestopener]

Ingress watches the rose. The sun glints on the green, and she sighs. It's lovely.

"There are roses everywhere. Tom says they sing, sometimes. Or one does."

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[a_fell]

"Yes," Aziraphael says distantly. "That one inspires, they say." He cocks his head at her and holds up his own wineglass to examine it; there are sparkles there, as well.

"That sort of inspiration turns up in the oddest places, sometimes."

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[smallestopener]

She clinks her glass to the angel's, and silver glitter puffs up in a cloud from the connection.

Ingress laughs and clinks her glass against Crowley's. Black glitter filters down, mingling with the silver as it drifts to the table.

None gets into the wine.

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[aj_crawley]

"I wouldn't lay bets against you hearing it, one day," Crowley says, holding his wineglass a careful distance - shielding it, almost - from the few glimmering flakes of glitter still swirling about, heedless of gravity in the service of a greater narrative purpose.

"You'll have to come tell me what it's like."

If you had to choose, you'd say he was speaking to Ingress.

Probably.

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[smallestopener]

"I shall sing the song, and I shall hold the shadows back."

She beams at both of them.

"And I'll tell you."

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[a_fell]

"And when you do, you won't forget to tell us about your part in the song as well, I hope," Aziraphael reminds her.

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[smallestopener]

She beams. "I'll not forget. Only I don't know the words yet."

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[aj_crawley]

"Oh, that," Crowley says dismissively. "Hmph."

His eyes are on his wineglass, as he turns it lazily in the light; the sun glints off the rim, and fails to penetrate the deepdark liquid.

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[smallestopener]

"The butterflies will tell me. Don't worry."

The big purple one wobbles by the window and winks.

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[aj_crawley]

"You do better making up your own, you ask me," says Crowley.

(Nobody did, but this is a dream.)

The wine seeps blackly against the glass, glitter-free; leaves a deep red leg; curves away towards the other side.

"Dancing to the beat of your own tune, sort of thing."

After all, just because something's written doesn't mean it isn't written differently somewhere else, where other people can't read it. In bigger letters.

Underlined.

Twice.

Re: Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

[smallestopener]

She watched the dark wine. It draws the eye, and looks like blood.

It doesn't frighten her. Blood is blood.

"I have to know some of the steps, but I can make up more on my own."

Her melange of fighting skills will one day amaze many in Haven.