Funerary Rites 29: Service

[aldersprig]

🔑

It took them another fifteen minutes to calm Chitter down that time, during which the tea and coffee - and Chitter’s soda - arrived. The maid bringing the drinks made things either better or much worse by looking Chitter in the eye and apologizing for being late. “I had to feed the moat creature, you see.”

“Moat creature! Moat Creature! Wait…”

Five minutes later, Senga had managed to convince Chitter that there was no invisible moat and no moat creature. Five minutes after that, with Candavish’s amused help, they’d managed to calm her down.

“Honestly. You could have just told me that you were kidding,” she huffed.

“I believe I did. Twelve minutes ago. Although-”

read on…

Comments

[kelkyag]

Yup. *Definitely* time for more back story. :)

<bounces> <pretends to wait patiently>

[aldersprig]

*laughs*

Meanwhile, writing like 3 chapters ahead, I’m like YAY I GOT BACK TO THE KISSING :-)

[kelkyag]

Kissing, bah. Plot!

ETA: Yes, I know you're writing ahead, but I can't exactly comment on what's not yet posted. :-P

[aldersprig]

*grins* Kissing is plot too!

[kelkyag]

Soooooometimes, yes. Sometimes it is a distraction from the plot.

(Sometimes the "plot" is a thin excuse for the kissing, and sometimes you write that, but that isn't the part of this story that interests me ... but the balance, so far, is not kissing. The bit where multiple intro segments were all family politics and no kissing argues in my favor for the story overall. ;)

[sauergeek]

Candavish was trying to dissemble, or at least avoid answering the question. The dodge of “Well, I have several behests and instructions from Mr. Monmartin, from Mrs. Monmartin, from-” quite properly concerns Erramun in his role of bodyguard to Senga. I'm not sure what, if anything, Senga just broke in Candavish with Erramun's prompting, but that kind of avoidance is a security issue that needed to be addressed immediately. I have to wonder about the older maids, and possibly the younger ones as well. What orders are they still carrying out from another person, and can those be discovered or, failing that, avoided? It is probably valuable to find out both who gave the orders, and what they were, to see if they're still worth carrying out — but that needs to be Senga's decision, not some other (possibly dead) family member.