Medicine Men

After going back to her room to wash up after talking with Lucas, Hannah heads off to find Gerard.

What she finds instead, upon knocking at his door a few times and beginning to worry, is a servant who explains she thinks Prince Gerard has gone already. "The boys were grabbing provisions, my Lady," the woman notes.

Hannah thanks her, and with a sigh, heads back to her room, again. She packs, an effort of moments. She looks around the space she has so thoroughly managed not to make her own with some regret, but leaves it as it was, yesterday.

With a bundle under the arm which also holds her bag, Hannah tracks down Solange's room, and hopes.

"Iyokipi," Hannah mutters under her breath, and knocks.

A young woman answers the door and bids Hannah to come in. Upon entering, Hannah sees Solange sitting on her bed with what appears to be a log book of some kind and papers strewn around her in various piles. The young woman returns to the other side of the room where she's packing clothes and toiletries into a large chest.

Hannah blinks at the scene a moment, speechless.

"Hi Hannah...I'm just looking over some accounting stuff from my late uncle's estate..." Solange puts down the receipt she was scrutinizing and looks at Hannah curiously. "I expected you to be in Xanadu by now."

"Oh, uh," Hannah blushes. She glances at the young lady and back at Solange. "I missed the train I think. I was talking with Lucas, and I guess I... my timing is all off. I don't even know where I am when I wake up anymore. It looks like your father already went back. I was hoping you could put me in touch with him and he could get me there?" Hannah asks, obviously unsure about what she's supposed to say and not supposed to say in front of the servants.

Solange, who has grown up around servants, doesn't understand her reaction and misattributes it to having missed going back to Xanadu with her father. "Sure, that's not a problem at all," she says soothingly as she fishes out her father's trump. "Just a moment..."

She walks over to Hannah as she concentrates on the trump.

"Oh! Wait," says Hannah, laying a hand on Solanges arm. "My mare. I need my mare. Help me work that out. How do we..."

Hannah seems to stop and think and clearly comes within inches of swearing, although she doesn't do it.. "Can we do this from the stables? Your father can go into the hall - everyone will just have to understand. Unless you have a better idea?"

Solange chuckles as she contemplates the scene Hannah painted. "Passing a horse through a trump? I've never done it, but why not? Don't worry about reactions--Uncle Random will be amused. Let's go get her."

Hannah looks horribly relieved. "I did it before, with Caine and Fiona. Misae doesn't like it, but she can handle it."

She leads Hannah back down to the stables. Her conversation is sparse, her manner somewhat preoccupied, but she smiles brightly at Hannah's remarks and points out interesting things on the way to the stables that Hannah may or may not have seen before.

Hannah actually seems unusually preoccupied herself, and mentions that she's been this way quite a bit - these are the areas of the castle and grounds she's most familiar with.

Once there, Solange will call out for a groom and ask him to ready Hannah's mare (Hannah may have to tell him which one it is) to take to Xanadu.

"She'll need saddle, tack, etc..." Solange muses. "I assume there are stables already set up in Xanadu, so we shouldn't need feed."

Hannah nods, and hopes, and whispers to her horse like she's greeting an old friend.

When the mare is ready and Hannah is satisfied, Solange once again concentrates on the trump of her father. A grin spreads across her face as she envisions Gerard's expression when she tells him she's through passing Hannah AND a horse.

Hannah ties her bag and bundle unto Misae and gets a good grip on her lead. She's ready to go.

Gerard accepts the contact at once. When bona fides have been exchanged and the nature of the transit has been discussed, Gerard summons one of the boys and goes out into the hall to hand the horse off.

"Father has sent for one of his pages to take your horse. It may take a moment or two," Solange explains. She holds her hand out to Hannah to join her in the contact.

Hannah nods and takes Solange's hand. She smiles at Gerard.

While they wait for the page to come, Gerard tells Solange what's happening in Xanadu. Soren reports that Bleys' son came through with a fellow named Kyril, who got his skull cracked in a brawl in town. He's had a look at the lad, but he'll be glad of a second opinion from Hannah. Also, Random returned last night with Ambrose, Brennan's brother, who was at the funeral.

Solange blinks. There's a lot to process in Gerard's download of information. "Bleys's _son_? Ambrose is with Uncle Random?" The incredulity of the last sentence is very apparent in her voice. She pauses, and then the last three questions come out in a blur. "There's someone there named Kyril what does he look like is he all right?"

Hannah's eyebrows go up at Solanges reaction. Her grip takes on a more reassuring pressure.

Gerard describes the fellow. It could be Kyril based on the description: a little older than she expected, but the timeflows could make that happen, and they have been funny since the Sundering. Apparently Bleys' son Edan is from the Land of Peace, and he had enemies from there who met him on his arrival in Xanadu. One of them clocked this Kyril fellow, who walked in with Edan, on the head. Soren arranged for him to be brought to the castle and Gerard looked in on him this morning and had a chat with him.

Solange's eyebrows go up at the mention of having a _chat_, but she keeps the rest of her reaction in tight check. Does Gerard look displeased?

Solange can't tell.

By the time Gerard has answered Solange's questions, but before she can question him further, the page has arrived and they complete the transit. Solange, Hannah, and Misae are in Xanadu.

"I...um...have this thing I need to check on," Solange says to no one in particular, using the distraction caused by the mare's sudden arrival in the castle to slip away unobtrusively.

"We'll see you later," Gerard calls after her.

Hannah glances after Solange and turns to smile quickly at Gerard, before turning her attention to the boys. She introduces them to Misae, and makes sure they're comfortable with taking her through the castle to wherever the stables are before she turns her over to them. She's fairly certain, baring any Gryffons showing up, that Misae can handle a castle stroll. She unties her things before she sends them off.

There's not a proper stable here yet, the boy tells her. They can take the horse down to the town, or she can be corralled outside to graze. Which does Hannah prefer?

Corralling her to graze would make Hannah happier, until she has time to get a good look at the conditions down in town herself.

The boy runs off with the horse to arrange that.

Freed of the horse, she gives Gerard her attention. "Is his skull actually cracked, or just his skin? I need to talk to you, but let's get things in their proper order."

"Someone knocked him on the back of the head with the pommel of a blade, looks like. A little bruising, but neither skin nor bone is broken. He needs to rest, not that I see that in his future from the way Solange went haring off down there." Gerard casts his eyes down the hall through which his daughter had recently departed.

Hannah smiles.

"We can go have a look in on the lad later, but I suspect neither of them will welcome anyone just now. He was asking about his 'Solly' when I talked to him. He's anxious to see her."

"Solly, huh?" Hannah's smile widens. "You didn't tell him she's your daughter, did you?"

"Not until after he'd told me what I needed to know," Gerard replies.

Hannah shakes her head, but she has her own list of things she needs to know, so she certainly understands.

"Can we talk somewhere private?" she asks, ready to get down to business.

"Aye," he says and rolls back into his chambers, letting her join him and close the door behind him. "What's on your mind this morning, Hannah? My case, or someone else's?"

"Yes, and Yes, and more. I'm going to be selfish, and start with me. I saw you when I walked the Pattern. Or rather, someone I was saw you, talked to you. At first, I thought i was seeing the future - now I think perhaps I was walking in an ancestors' shoes," Hannah says, and shrugs, like that isn't too unusual. She looks at Gerard curiously, determining that yes, he must have been younger. "Can I ask you some things? I came to you first, since it might be a secret."

"Aye, ye can ask," Gerard says, and gestures to Hannah to sit down. "The meaning of the signs and portents we see when we walk the Pattern isn't always clear, Hannah. Not even with the perspective of centuries behind me do I understand what I saw. But ask away and I'll answer what I can."

Hannah nods, and takes a deep breath. "I was with you, and there was a baby. She was tiny..." Hannah gets a wistful, sad look, "very small, in a basket. You called her sunny."

Hannah closes her eyes to recall, "A wee sunny bairn." She smiles softly. "I couldn't look at her too much. You were surprised I wanted you to foster her. You didn't understand..." Hannah opens her eyes to look at him and takes another deep breath. "I was sick, or something. Tired. You were worried about that, and about what Julian and 'da' would think. But you agreed, but you asked me to stay away. And right at the end, to put flowers on your mother's tomb?"

Hannah tilts her head and looks at him. She looks worried, even a little haunted. "Could I have seen something a female ancestor saw, or is this something... else?"

Gerard looks distinctly disturbed by the recital.

"That's not how it happened, but it echoes a thing that did happen to me. When my sister came to me, great with child, and asked my help in giving birth. She died bearing the babe, and I took her home to our mother's country and adopted the girl."

Now it's Hannah's turn to look disturbed.

"I don't know what that means. It could mean you have a connection to my sister, or to her daughters. Is it normal among your people to see visions of things your ancestors saw?"

Hannah looks a little uncomfortable, but doesn't squirm. "Not normal, but it can happen. It's not... much like this, not usually so simple as seeing what they saw. Ancestors might help us with visions, if we prepare properly, are welcoming and pay attention. I hoped I might see something, and I did. Now it's figuring out what it all means." She smiles.

"Is there a woman who was supposed to have a baby in a... stone building, a castle maybe, by the sea, and had it in the woods by a stream... in a grove?"

"Me ma left Amber to have my sister in the Isles," Gerard says gravely. He adds, "She died in bearing her, as my sister did in bearing her last daughter."

Hannah's brow furrows in a distinctly worried look. "I didn't see any of them," she sighs. "So I can't really know, can I? Your mother had a woman then, like a guardswoman, who couldn't understand why she'd go into the woods? Maybe not a guardswoman - someone pledged to her? She was worried a daughter born in the woods wouldn't 'know her duty' and felt like your mother was abandoning them." Hannah's hand goes to her side, where that painful kick had landed - but it couldn't have been a kick, she knows, not that late.

She looks at Gerard and tears fill her eyes. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry for bringing all this up, but I'm trying to understand." She swallows, and goes on in a tighter voice, trying to control herself. "She knew she had to have the baby outside of the stone, or they'd both die. She wasn't scared. She was content."

"She saved my sister, 'tis true, but she didn't save herself," Gerard says sadly. "Me ma was a goddess in the Isles. She had priestesses who served her. Maybe it was one of them you saw--if that was what you saw at all. I don't know. Tell me what she looked like."

Hannah describes her in detail. "She walked behind me, and she was armed, but once she was on the ground with me it never crossed my mind that she was a threat. She... when I was explaining the sea and mountain and forest were all connected she said that wasn't what we'd been telling people. She mentioned sisters in the woods, and that there was an old breach. Is this the war Vere is still fighting?

"Oh, and she called her 'Lady.' Not my lady or Lady so and so, just Lady."

"Aye, if you saw who I think ye saw, she would." Gerard's jaw has taken on an unhappy set as Hannah described the woman. "The woman whose likeness ye've spoken is called the Spider. Her name is Vianis, and she served my wife as Chancellor until she turned on her and rebelled. It's her forces Vere is fighting in the Isles. I'd be there fighting too, if I had my legs."

"I know you would, Gerard," Hannah says with conviction. "And your legs on the list for dicussion, too, because I'm ready to make plans and I bet you are too. But this whole... Isles war, it's confusing to me. Is your wife your mother's heir?" she asks. "Is Vianis with the women from the woods now? And why are they all fighting in the first place - is it a land dispute? Resources?"

"Religion," Gerard explains unhappily. "My mother was a goddess incarnate, as I'm a god incarnate from my descent through her and my father, and the arguments are over what our role should be, and how best to serve us. The priestesses of the Isle hae given up the old ways, the ways that watered the land in the blood of men during the dark times. Vianis has gone back to the ways of the Witch-Queen drylanders, who say that a man's blood is the best way to serve the Goddess in certain rites."

Hannah is quiet and thoughtful for some time. "Isn't Vere a god incarnate through you?" she finally asks.

Gerard purses his lips and shakes his head. "Only in the half-blood. His mother is a priestess, not a goddess in her own right. But even gods aren't immune from the rites. Were I to return to the Isles, maimed as I am, I'd be expected to give my blood to set things right. It's not the same when a man--or a god--volunteers."

Hannah nods. "Okay, that gives me about eighty new questions, but in the end, it doesn't matter, because we have to focus on you. Vere and your wife will take care of the Isles. If they haven't finished the work by the time we get you healed, then you can go back and fight that war. In the meantime, thanks for answering my questions. I'm still not really sure who my mother is, but if she were your sister, that'd be fine and dandy with me."

"It'd be fine and dandy with me as well," Gerard says gruffly.

"Next on my list - Did you know Lucas sent Solace off with his mother?" Hannah asks. She does pull out a sheet of paper with all kinds of scribbles on it.

Gerard frowns. "No, I don't recall hearing that." He eyes her sheet of paper. "Where did you hear such a thing? It seems unlikely that putting the lass together with her mother-in-law would calm her or otherwise improve her health."

Hannah's face clouds over with worry. "I went to see her this morning, in Amber. She wasn't there, but Lucas was. He told me. He didn't send her off, just the children. I misspoke. Solace decided to go, felt her place was with them." Hannah manages not to speak sarcastically, and if she has a personal opinion about all that, she doesn't say it out loud.

Discretion being the better part of valor, Gerard keeps any opinion he has about all that to himself.

"She didn't tell me any of this, of course, and I believe she'd want to see me if the option were available. Either that, or she's being kind so she doesn't hurt my feelings. Regardless, though, I'd like to find a way to go check on her. Does someone have a trump of Lucas's mother? It's Flora, right? I'm trying to find a way..." Hannah shrugs. "If I could get an introduction and if she'd be willing to bring me to them through a trump, and if someone might loan me a trump so I could trump someone to get back? What do you think? I'd like to see her before we go, and I need to get to the city too. Here, I mean." She looks down at the list and looks back at Gerard, only a little worried she can't do it all.

Gerard says, "I have a trump of her, and if you like, I can make the introduction. She could contact me to send you back."

Hannah looks relieved. "Okay, then. I think I can do that..." She flips her paper over and makes a note on the back, flips it back over, skims it, and rubs her fingers on her forehead. She scribbles another note at the bottom of the well-covered side. "In 6 days, and that's when I'd like us to head out." She glances at Gerard in question, and looks at the paper a little disheartedly.

"All right," Gerard says. "You must have quite a list to finish before we go."

"Yeah, we'll see. Can't write day 6 in stone, yet," Hannah scowls.

"I just don't see any way to do this any faster. I have to get my ducks in a row today or there won't be any getting anything accomplished. And things never go right," she scowls. "I should see Solace sooner. Damn." She taps her pencil on the list.

"Here's something else you can help me with." She underlines something. "Have you looked out much? What can you tell me about the currents down there? Where do you guess the best place to dump waste into the water is, and where the worst place is?" She glances back down to cross something off.

"I've not been down to the town," he admits, scratching his head. "I can talk general principles with ye, but you'll need to go and look. If I could just walk--" and he smacks his fist into the palm of his other hand. "Ask Cambina. She rebuilt the damaged public works in Amber after the earthquake and if she doesn't know the answer to your questions, she'll know who to send to ye that does."

Hannah nods, and adds Cambina to her list. "Be thinking about how we can build ramps down and not get the warriors in an uproar. You may get healed, but lots of other people won't, and there's no good reason there can't be ramps up to here. And in here."

She looks up and realizes she's just ordering him around. "Could ya?" she smiles. "And, uh, when we go, do you think you could help me with this Shadow Shifting? Teach me?"

"Of course," Gerard says. "You need the teaching, and better for me to have something to do than to sit around doing nothing. I'm not a great teacher, at least not at the explaining part, but I can show you what to do and maybe that'll be enough."

Hannah grins. "That's exactly the best way I learn. Besides, I think I've got an advantage - I've been going between worlds for 22 years already. Little different, no doubt, but I'm sure I can work it out once I see how it's done. Now, back to you again - I know you had a talk with the kids. What I want to do is find a place enough like here that we can get you changed over to a safer painkiller, and be able to stock it here without it degrading over time. And while we're there, I want to get some of this imaging done Solange was explaining to me. She told me you all agreed you'd try a magical solution. Is that what you want? Assuming we can find one that works within the limits you've set?"

Gerard frowns a little at the discussion of painkillers. "I've agreed to look at that first, and if we canna find anything that will fulfill Vere's oath by magic, we'll look at technological solutions. The laws in Xanadu may be different from the ones in Amber--the way this castle is lit tells me they probably are--but I'm comfortable with what I grew up with, which is not sae much magic in Amber but a lot in my mother's country. So I thought to try that first."

Hannah nods. "Sounds good. Whatever you want to try, I'll try to learn. What are you thinking about the painkillers?" she asks, not letting that go by.

"Just that I wish we had a better idea of what works here and what doesn't. But we'll not learn without trying, I suppose, so best we do it sooner rather than later." Gerard shrug. "It willna be pleasant, weaning mysel' from the morphine. Do you propose to do it here or in Shadow?"

Hannah shrugs. "I'm not sure yet. Have to see what it's really like, Shadow - how it's different than what I already know. I'd thought we'd have to be here or in Amber or on the True Earth - or in Rebma or this Tirnah no goth--"

"Tir-Na Nog'th," Gerard corrects absently.

" - or one of the other places aligned with True Earth. Otherwise, I'd be afraid we weren't taking the best advantage of the positive ambient energy created by your family. I mean, that's assuming the Patterns are all family." She smiles, and shrugs again. "But maybe there's a best place for escaping morphine, and maybe that's not here. We'll have to look some, I think, and be careful, so the morphine doesn't just stop working. That's part of why I think you should be teaching me - I think you'll instinctively shift the shadow so that your medicine stays... active."

"Quite probably. Or mebbe I'll shift the medicine with me, so it's the right formulation to work in whatever shadow we travel to." Gerard sounds rather phlegmatic about the process. "That's the kind of trick Random could tell you how to do better than I can."

Hannah draws a line from Random on her list and adds, "Ohanzee Ohanzee."

She sighs. "Do you mind if I bother your young gentlemen this afternoon to carry letters for me? I've got to get a staff together. It's..." she laughs, "it's on the list."

"Go ahead," Gerard says agreeably. "I think the best you can find for a staff will be people Cambina knows of in Amber, though. And if you work from the castle there to bring people here, you'll have all the castle staff at your disposal."

She gets up and kisses him on the cheek. "Thank you so much. I'd be so lost here without you. Trying so hard to make a place here, you know, but it's... I don't know anything! I hate starting over," Hannah says, but smiles. That may not be entirely true.

"You're welcome, lass."

After slipping away from Gerard and Hannah, Solange immediately starts for the Xanadu infirmary. She has a pretty good idea of where it is, based on the tour Random gave, and within a few strides has settled on a speed that is not quite running.

So Kyril and her father had a chat? She wonders futilely how much Kyril revealed about their past relationship. Not that she regrets any of it, far from it, but this is a stretch of untested waters between herself and Gerard. She's pretty sure he wouldn't have approved of the relationship at the time she was having it, her so young when she attended Lauderville and Kyril a commoner from shadow. She's also pretty sure he wouldn't have approved of her revealing to Kyril who she really was, and she's damn sure he wouldn't have approved of her having sex outside of marriage--although _men_ did it all the time and that was socially acceptable!--which is why she never told him. At all. About any of it.

Bloody hell in a handbasket with little pink and purple flowers. Old memories surface as she walks.

//Watching Kyril finish his interaction with a patient, his focus completely on the person in front of him. He always had a good bedside manner. Solange smiles to herself at the double entendre as he catches sight of her and walks over. Saying a final goodbye to him, that she's leaving to go home to Amber for good, seeing the flicker of emotion in his eyes that's quickly repressed. She puts the vial in his hand, smiles and kisses him, then turns to leave.//

//Telling him she wants to end their relationship. Sipping the red wine, uncomfortable, while she watches his face. Why? he asks, angry. How to explain to him that she's afraid of her feelings, knowing he'll grow old and die and she'll stay the same, afraid she won't still love him when he's an old man and she still looks and feels like she's twenty... Can't explain, sounds lame and selfish even to her, drinks the wine instead.//

//Feeling the heat radiate off the bare skin between them, her hands slipping down his back along a thin sheen of perspiration. Looking up at him, the lazy afternoon sun shining against the straw-colored hair that's falling around his face, those grey eyes gazing back down at her as he... //

She squelches _that_ memory as the doorway to the infirmary appears in front of her.

Solange pauses in the hallway, feeling suddenly awkward. What if it isn't him? Unicorn help her, what if it is? She finds it ironic that Kyril has been on her mind lately, that she realized way after it was all over her feelings for him never really went away as she wanted them to, and then suddenly here he is, in Xanadu. Does she want to continue their relationship? What if he doesn't? What right does she have to even ask him after she was the one to run away in the first place? What if...

No. This is getting her nowhere. Putting a firm damper on further ruminations, she takes a deep breath and plunges through the doorway before she can reconsider.

Kyril looks up as she enters. He is sitting at the desk, rather than lying on the bed. His head is bandaged, expertly but with Xanadu materials. It almost looks like a costume he'd put together for a costume party.

He places a piece of paper in the book he'd been reading and closes it. Medical text, it looks like. He stands, and takes a step towards her. "Hello, Solly, I was wondering when you'd find me." He smiles unevenly.

Great Unicorn. It _is_ him. No one but Kyril ever called her Solly.

She grins and catches him up in a ferocious hug. "Find you? It took me about twelve years," she says ruefully, thinking of the time that has passed since she broke off their relationship. "But it looks more like you found me."

She steps back, her hands holding his, and takes a good look at him. He looks older, but she doesn't comment on this. "You cut your hair. And this bandage thing..." she nods at the bandage covering his head, "not a good look. Father said you'll be all right, thank goodness. How did you get here? Did you find that road off the M-64?" she smiles.

"I walked here. 'Bout 20 miles out, I ran across one of you space aliens, and he led me in." He smiles.

That would be that new cousin, the one Father said was Bleys's son. Solange smiles back at the space alien reference.

"I almost got up here when I got whacked by one of your cousin's friends. It's more dangerous here than it has been in Lauderville since the war ended." His hand goes to his bandage. "You, ah. You picked a good time to leave." He doesn't look very happy.

Her expression turns concerned, watching his hand go to his head, so she leads him to a nearby bed where he can sit down.

She follows with the chair from the desk and positions it in front of him before sitting down herself. "What happened in Lauderville?" she asks ominously.

"The Great Oceanic War. Atlantica and Pacifica jointly attacked by... something. Atlantica thought it was secret experiments by the Pacificans, and it could've been, but not the government. Anyway, I spent a long time in a Medical Battalion in Oceania.

He looks glum. "Pacifica as you knew it was one of the casualties."

Solange sits back and slumps in her chair. Her expression is pained, but not stunned. "Attacked by...something," she repeats, already suspecting he's referring to a Black Road manifestation. "I'm sorry," she says, heartfelt. She opens her mouth to say more, to try to explain about the Patternfall War and the Black Road and the Sundering... But unsure of how he'd take such information, she instead looks down at her lap and says nothing. Now is not the time. Later.

"Kyril..." Solange continues, still gazing at her hands in her lap, "I...I know it's been a long time, and I can't ask anything of you, but I just wanted you to know that you were right--I never got over you." She forces herself to raise her head to look at his face, even though she's afraid of what she might find there. "I ran away. I was childish and selfish and I ran away and I caused you all sorts of pain. I'm sorry. Can you forgive me? Did you...find someone else after I left?"

He's quiet for a long moment. "I had girlfriends, yes. Wars break down old rules and Pacifica didn't have many to begin with." He smiles.

Solange doesn't smile back, but the look on her face shows she understands.

"I never found another girl who was an alien princess from a fantasy kingdom, though."

That elicits a small smile from her.

"It's a pretty amazing kingdom, too. It's like it makes you want to pick up a hammer and whistle a tune while you build it. And then never leave."

Her smile grows.

"There's more in most of the half-ruined towns of Oceania, but anybody there would come here in a heartbeat. It's just like that.

"I'm not sure what I want, but I do know I want to stay. Your Dad's quite a guy, you know."

"Yeah, he is, isn't he?" she grins, agreeing with him completely. "I'd like to talk to you about his legs sometime. And have you meet Hannah--she's a cousin and also a doctor and overseeing his case. And then..." Solange trails off.

Still grinning, she looks at Kyril for a moment, taking in his eyes, the line of his jaw, his smile, all those things about him that she's missed over the years. She doesn't know what will happen with their relationship, but for the moment she allows herself the luxury of not worrying about it and just enjoying the fact that he's decided to stay.

"Kyril, I'm in the middle of preparations to take a sea voyage," she continues, finding her tongue again. "We'll be sailing from Amber to here, laying down a way through shadow as we go, as we're starting to move people from the former to the latter. Would you like to come with me?"

He blinks, twice and closes the book in front of him. "In, ah. In what capacity?"

Solange gives him a wry look. "Every ship should have some medical personnel aboard. It can be in a professional capacity.

"Look, I don't mean to make you feel uncomfortable," she continues. "I'm not suggesting we...that is, that you..." She pauses and passes a hand over her face, embarrassed and having problems putting into words what she wants to say. "Kyril, I guess that sounded to you like me asking if you wanted to jump back into bed together? I didn't mean it that way. I just thought...well...I thought it would give us an opportunity to talk and get to know one another again. If that's something that interests you. Which it may not after I made such a mess of things."

Cheeks hot, Solange mentally reviews the reasons Kyril gave for wanting to stay: her genealogy, the place is amazing, and her dad's quite a guy. None of them specifically mention her. Is she assuming too much? He was always there for her back in Lauderville--even when she was dating others, he was there for her to go back to. Of course he's changed and she can't expect him to feel the same way as he did back then, to just pick up where they left off.

Why does she care, anyway? It was a long time ago, and she's no longer that same little girl leaving home for the first time, and he's no longer that med student she fell in love with. They're two different people now. Aren't they?

Solange sighs deeply, conflicted in emotion and not enjoying the sensation.

"If you'd rather stay here, I understand," she finishes, striving to keep her tone neutral.

"Hey, I haven't said either way," he objects. "Don't shove me overboard yet." He grins. "As long as you're willing to take it a step at a time, I'm in.

"I'm still very new here, and if we were to fall back into old habits, and they were great habits, by the way, I'd want to make sure it wasn't just because you're the only person I know on the planet." He smiles.

Solange smiles back, making a mental note never to introduce Kyril to Paige.

"Hey that makes me the space alien!"

Solange's smile grows into a grin as she recalls their conversation in which Kyril accused her of the same thing. "Space alien? So where's your spaceship? You walked here? That's rather mundane. You're not very good at this, are you?" she jokes, repeating back to him things he said to her then, hoping to get a laugh from him.

"Kyril, I'd like nothing better than to stay here and talk," she continues, sincerely meaning it, "but I still have preparations to make for this voyage. I'm going to take off you can rest some more, I'll also check with Father to make sure you're all right to go, and I'll come back for you when I'm ready to leave. Will that suit?"

[assuming he says yes or we eventually get to yes]

She stands but pauses before leaving, suddenly wanting to tell him how much she's missed him, but all that comes out is, "I'm glad you're coming."

"Yeah. Me, too." His voice is somewhat hoarse. Perhaps it's the injuries.

Feeling suddenly awkward again, Solange smiles a goodbye and turns to leave. She glances back at Kyril once before stepping through the door and back into the hallway.

He's looking back at her, his head cocked to the right. He waves when she turns back.

Sometime later that day (so Solange doesn't run into the current thread Gerard is having with Hannah), she'll trump her father. She informs him she's going to take a ship from Amber to Xanadu and that Lucas and Lilly will be onboard with her, and clears with him that Kyril is healthy enough to accompany her.

Hannah settles down in the kitchen with her notebook and her list. She lets the boys have their run of the food while she figures out how to reprioritize.

She scribbles, munching on apples, carrots and celery. Lists and letters.

Cambina~

Gerard says you may be able to help me. Conner and myself are working on making sure the City here in Xanadu is set up to the best health advantage of those here and those who'll be here as it grows. And I need a staff. He mentioned your name in regard to both these challenges. My community planning experiences have been with a smaller (or at least more geographically scattered) population - and certainly not with this technology level.

Any advice or help you could give me would be greatly appreciated.

With Thanks~

Hannah.

Folly~

We need to talk about plans Gerard and I are ready to move ahead with. Please be in touch as soon as you get this.

Thanks~

Hannah.

[This one is to be slipped under the door if she's not there.]

Conner~

I have lists! Hopefully soon I'll have some people to give some of them to. I'd like to go down to the city within the next... well, as soon as you and I can manage to get together, or sooner if you're too busy. I want to tour, have a town meeting, and start lining people up to do the work that needs doing.

I'm also going to try to corner the King to find out if there is anything he doesn't want us to do before we just start doing things.

Hope to see you soon~

Hannah.

Queen Vialle~

I'd like to spend some time with you, a few hours at least, doing a little exploring outside here, up around the castle. I think you should have a nice sitting area outside. Fresh air is good - somewhere quiet, away from the waterfall. I suspect we'll have to do some walking to find a place protected from all the noise.

I'm going to be busy, but just let me know when a good time is for you, and we'll do this.

Sincerely~

Hannah.

[This one is addressed to the King on the outside.]

Dear Saint Nicholas~

For Christmas, I would like a stable at the castle. If you're feeling very generous, because I've been so very good that I myself should be made a saint, I'd also like an elevator down to the city.

thankyouverymuchIswearIhavebeenverygood,

~Hannah.

P.S. I will be visiting you later to ask what you want!

Paige~

I've got no idea where you are, but if you get to Xanadu soon, I'd be happy to take the children off your hands a while and put them to work.

Hannah.

When she's finished, she splits them up half and half, giving them each some that she guesses might be here and some that she isn't at all sure where they're at. Her instructions are for them to bring her back any of the ones whose recipients can't be confirmed to be in residence in Xanadu, unless noted otherwise above.