It's left outside his lab door in Thoth, so that if he goes to the washroom or to get something to eat he will see it, and not risk its death by leaving it in front of his apartment. That would be too much work for a cavalier or two.
It's a ... plant?
It's a grafted plant in a pot, a real armful of plant; ivy geranium wrapped around a honeysuckle entwined with a whole rainbow of zinnias. They're surrounded by a handmade 'fence' of hawthorn leaves in perfect necromantic stasis.
This probably should have been a bouquet, or the whole thing should have been rendered static, but no, aside from the hawthorn, the rest is alive. Sorry.
He sees it, first, when heading to the aforementioned washroom; he doesn't do anything about it, because he's too focused on, well, the washroom — but it's still there, when he gets back, and so he stares at it for a solid six or seven minutes before shaking himself and attempting to pick it up.
He could have called for help; he could have made a construct of one kind or another; he could have spared himself a strained back, perhaps, or more accurately —
He drops it, almost as soon as he touches it.
It isn't the weight, even though it's almost more than he can bear; it's the knowledge, sure and certain, of exactly who set the plant down in the hallway, just against his laboratory's door, where he would be sure to see it, and soon —
Dulcie, who looks so very little like Cytherea, to someone who loves her and had never seen her and still knew how thoroughly she rang false.
Dulcie, who was murdered, who was lost to him — to them, to him and Cam both — Dulcie who is here, and who clearly knows that they're here, and where to find them — Dulcie, lost and beloved, Dulcie found?
But it's too overwhelming, to see her so clearly, and he doesn't trust himself not to still be leaking active psychometry in touching the pot again, and so his sleeves are pulled over his hands as he awkwardly shuffles back into the lab, plant cradled protectively close to his midriff, eventually settled onto a counter, nice and safe and impossible.
His hands have reached for his Relic even before he says anything aloud; it isn't because he doesn't know the meanings of the flowers, words written indelibly on the endless expanse of flimsy before his mind's eye, it's just —
Confirmation, maybe?
Ivy geranium. Honeysuckle. Zinnias. Hawthorn.
I engage you for the next dance. Devotion; fidelity; fraternal love. Thoughts of absent friends; I mourn your absence; I miss you...
Hope.
(The shadow behind him, which seldom resembles a stick-thin necromancer these days — or a necro's robe full of coat hangers, whichever — flutters wildly at its edges, as if a half-dozen wings rustle restlessly, again and again, furled and unfurled and half-snapped; but hope is the thing with feathers, perched in the soul, and Palamedes Sextus is all aflutter now.)
When Camilla returns, bearing lunch - because Lord Undying knows he'd only forget if she didn't bring it, which leaves one to wonder just what he was doing with himself before she arrived - she finds him standing motionless. Motionless, that is, but for the odd flutter and ruffle of his shadow, the shapes that barely make sense but which have already settled into her bones as parts of him, now. There's a plant pot on the counter, incongruous and entirely conspicuous in this otherwise man-made space. All the hard angles of him, the unsteady movement of his shadow-self-- things which indicate that a matter of great significance has just occurred.
She clears her throat as she approaches, shoving a wrapped sandwich in his direction in a way that brooks no argument. One dark brow quirks high.
Her methodology for getting him to eat has been means-tested for very nearly two literal decades, at this point, and generally speaking it has a very low failure rate! ... but then again, usually he is not staring, in shock, at something that Dulcie touched bare minutes before he did.
"Dulcie," he begins, still staring at the plant — still oblivious to the sandwich — and then stops, and gulps a swallow down hard, and looks up at Cam in every bit as much nearly-panicked shock as she might have expected him to have if —
Well, if things had gone right, and Dulcinea Septimus had made it to Canaan House alive and what-passed-for-well, only to keel over in front of him in a fashion that he couldn't bring her back from, probably; it certainly isn't a level of gobsmacked she's ever seen on his face before.
Dulcie he says, and this time both of Camilla's eyebrows fractionally raise in an expression that suggests she, too, is surprised. She isn't like him, entirely devoid of necromancy and therefore unable to utilise his impressive skills, but she is nothing if not astute. It doesn't take much to extrapolate from his expression and the potted plant and that one whispered rush of a name that Palamedes believes she's here. Nor does it take long for Camilla to internally concede that - given the circumstances of their being here - it could be entirely possible. She and Palamedes, The Reverend Daughter and Nav-- their last memories from their own realm of existence do not neatly align. It stands to reason, then, that the lupus lupus that brought them here could have found Lady Septimus at some point before her death. Perhaps even some point after it.
"Well," she says, steadily - giving him at least a moment’s reprieve before she reminds him of his need for sustenance, he's surely owed that given the circumstances, "then we ought to find her."
Outwardly she appears impassive and unflappable as always, but there's something in the way she shifts her weight from the ball of one foot to the heel, the infinitesimal tensing of her shoulders, that says she's ruffled too. Having met a counterfeit version of the Lady in question has done nothing to sour her memories; both of them huddled in his shuck, or hers. Pouring over her letters between classes.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
it's a gift.
It's a ... plant?
It's a grafted plant in a pot, a real armful of plant; ivy geranium wrapped around a honeysuckle entwined with a whole rainbow of zinnias. They're surrounded by a handmade 'fence' of hawthorn leaves in perfect necromantic stasis.
This probably should have been a bouquet, or the whole thing should have been rendered static, but no, aside from the hawthorn, the rest is alive. Sorry.
well, that escalated quickly...
He sees it, first, when heading to the aforementioned washroom; he doesn't do anything about it, because he's too focused on, well, the washroom — but it's still there, when he gets back, and so he stares at it for a solid six or seven minutes before shaking himself and attempting to pick it up.
He could have called for help; he could have made a construct of one kind or another; he could have spared himself a strained back, perhaps, or more accurately —
He drops it, almost as soon as he touches it.
It isn't the weight, even though it's almost more than he can bear; it's the knowledge, sure and certain, of exactly who set the plant down in the hallway, just against his laboratory's door, where he would be sure to see it, and soon —
Dulcie, who looks so very little like Cytherea, to someone who loves her and had never seen her and still knew how thoroughly she rang false.
Dulcie, who was murdered, who was lost to him — to them, to him and Cam both — Dulcie who is here, and who clearly knows that they're here, and where to find them — Dulcie, lost and beloved, Dulcie found?
But it's too overwhelming, to see her so clearly, and he doesn't trust himself not to still be leaking active psychometry in touching the pot again, and so his sleeves are pulled over his hands as he awkwardly shuffles back into the lab, plant cradled protectively close to his midriff, eventually settled onto a counter, nice and safe and impossible.
His hands have reached for his Relic even before he says anything aloud; it isn't because he doesn't know the meanings of the flowers, words written indelibly on the endless expanse of flimsy before his mind's eye, it's just —
Confirmation, maybe?
Ivy geranium. Honeysuckle. Zinnias. Hawthorn.
I engage you for the next dance. Devotion; fidelity; fraternal love. Thoughts of absent friends; I mourn your absence; I miss you...
Hope.
(The shadow behind him, which seldom resembles a stick-thin necromancer these days — or a necro's robe full of coat hangers, whichever — flutters wildly at its edges, as if a half-dozen wings rustle restlessly, again and again, furled and unfurled and half-snapped; but hope is the thing with feathers, perched in the soul, and Palamedes Sextus is all aflutter now.)
no subject
She clears her throat as she approaches, shoving a wrapped sandwich in his direction in a way that brooks no argument. One dark brow quirks high.
"You have an admirer, Warden."
no subject
"Dulcie," he begins, still staring at the plant — still oblivious to the sandwich — and then stops, and gulps a swallow down hard, and looks up at Cam in every bit as much nearly-panicked shock as she might have expected him to have if —
Well, if things had gone right, and Dulcinea Septimus had made it to Canaan House alive and what-passed-for-well, only to keel over in front of him in a fashion that he couldn't bring her back from, probably; it certainly isn't a level of gobsmacked she's ever seen on his face before.
(The sandwich remains unnoticed.)
no subject
"Well," she says, steadily - giving him at least a moment’s reprieve before she reminds him of his need for sustenance, he's surely owed that given the circumstances, "then we ought to find her."
Outwardly she appears impassive and unflappable as always, but there's something in the way she shifts her weight from the ball of one foot to the heel, the infinitesimal tensing of her shoulders, that says she's ruffled too. Having met a counterfeit version of the Lady in question has done nothing to sour her memories; both of them huddled in his shuck, or hers. Pouring over her letters between classes.