Location: Travers House
Time: Noon, 1st of March
Status: Closed, for @mauricecreevey
Anxiously stepping from one foot to the next, the maid was hovering over Lu’s bed. Bed? Lu forced their eyes open, blinking against the angry light coming from the window, slowly but surely realising that they weren’t in bed. Couch? Carpet? They looked around, patted the soft warmth beneath them, then understood. Right. “Nostradame,” they sighed. For a moment they flopped back down onto their guest, closing their eyes again. But the energies of the anxious maid were ruining the serenity. With another sigh they lifted their head again, gave her a look. “So?”
“Charlotte, how often have I told you not to address me by-, You know what, never mind. What about this guest? Just give him a breakfast and the guest gift bag like we discussed and-,”
“He wasn’t on the guest list, though! He just arrived-,” Her voice went up, clearly in a habit to add a title again, but she swallowed it down. Good, because Lu’s attention was very much caught by the problem at hand now.
Carefully, they sat up. “How tall is he? Did he give a name?”
“No name. And he’s … quite tall.”
Not Atlas then. Lu wasn’t so sure if that was good or even worse. Without another word but a slow and elongated groan they grabbed the morning robe from the maid and got up -- not before giving Nostradame’s mostly undressed body a last, wistful look though, of course.
Their body was heavy and slow, but travelled at the speed of light compared to how heavy and slow their mind was. Every heartbeat sent drums of pain through their head, every step felt like a detonation, and every ray of light was akin to a thousand daggers stabbing directly into their eyes.
“Front door or back door?” they asked, clumsily reaching for some sunglasses from their vanity before making it out the room.
“Front door, Sir. I mean, Ma’am, I mean-,”
“Leave it,” they waved her off, feet dragging miles behind them as they made it through the seemingly endless corridor of this godforsaken house. “And no name? You don’t recognise them? No resemblance with any of our dearest family portraits?”
She shook her head, clearly very unsure about how to tread the path between Lu’s power over her and their obvious struggle to remain upright right now.
“Espérons que c’est personne d’importance, alors,” they mumbled.
The guests from last night were scattered through the house, sleeping in various positions and on various surfaces. Formations of bottles and ashtrays were on every level, in every room, around every corner, and had Lu had just a few more hours of sleep they would’ve seen the beauty in the chaos. As it were, the decoration from last night seemed old-fashioned and the few people still awake, greeting them, were a nuisance. “Please, take a room,” they said to one pair basically about to dance the devil’s tango mid-corridor, before halting abruptly.
They stood still. Frowned. Then walked backwards a few steps. Past the rim of their sunglasses, they looked at them. “Calcifer?”, their newly hired driver, as well as: “Maurice Creevey?” They leaned back into their own hips, arms folding over their arms. “Remind me, neither of you were on the guest list, were you?”
