deathsmajesty | The Creepy, Once-More-Unduly-Filled-With-Children Mansion in the Woods, Saturday

Liliana had spent the night in Innistrad; the geistmage she'd borrowed from Olivia had wanted to get some preliminary readings and measurements from the Chain Veil. While the night had been long and tedious, the following morning (late morning, to be sure) saw her Planeswalking home again, full of smiles and empty of stomach. Her staff at the estate had offered to make her breakfast before she'd left, but she'd waved them off. After all, she was certain to return home to a paramour cooking up brunch in the kitchen, and why ruin her appetite for that?

Her blithe assurance of how her day was going to go crashed around her ears when she swept into the (oddly quiet and scentless) kitchen, with a cheerful "My darling, what culinary delights have you prepared for my delectation this morning, I'm positively starved!" only to find a child sitting in her breakfast nook.

Specifically, the child her paramour had once been, and had returned to for the weekend.

"Bloody hell," she said, looking at the sandy-haired young boy with undisguised dismay. "This island's timing and humor are atrocious."

[For the gentleman, of course, but also open for any wandering adults and children because a Liliana-run daycare sounds hilarious.]

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Jon narrowed his eyes at her. "Fair," he decided. "This is not a normal house, though. It's huge!"

"It's a normal house for me," Liliana conceded. "I like my space. And my belongings. And I don't like people, which is why the exterior remains the way it does. Now come along. You may ask questions, at least until I get tired of answering them."

"The perfect answer!" Liliana said with a laugh. "I couldn't have replied better."

In due time, the steward returned, the meal plated not in the way that Hannibal would have, of course, but still with elegance and taste.

"Oooh, crepes! Delicious."

Jon's eyes lit up at that. Look, there was a reason he was so well aligned to the Eye.

"How big is it? How can you even use such a big house?"

Hannibal gave her a little bow. "I do my best. You should visit sometime and I can show you the instrument." He gave a little hum. "I really do need to have a dinner party again."

"Are you having another dinner party for the holiday?" Liliana asked, helping herself to tea and crepes, though she did, of course, pour a cup for Hannibal as well.

She gave him the square footage of the house, then broke it down by how many floors and the number of rooms. "And I have a great many rooms that I use for only one thing," she said with a laugh. "A ballroom, a gaming room, a conservatory, a formal dining room, guest rooms...We redid our upstairs so any guests could have their own suites."

And no one would think they were free to use her bathing chamber. Hannibal had warned her about that.

Hannibal grinned. "The answer to that, I think, is yes. But which one? There are so many this time of year."

"What do you conserve?" Jon asked. "Why do you need a whole room for it?"

"Well, I have fond memories of your dinner party for Thanksgiving last year," Liliana said. "Your tour gave me ideas for our own renovations and Ignis and I played a lovely game of billiards."

Hannibal nodded. "Thanksgiving it is. A favorite of mine, as it revolves around food." He lifted his tea in a toast. "Look for the invitation."

"Plants, mostly," Liliana said with a smile. "It's...mmm, consider it something like a greenhouse, but attached to the house. A lovely room to relax in, with a fountain in the middle, and it's always warm."

Warm was very important to Liliana and her body that was so cold, her breath didn't steam in the winter.

She returned his toast before lifting it to her mouth. "I shall inform Ignis of our plans once he is the proper age to appreciate them," she said with a laugh.

Colour Jon skeptical. "Like fruits and things? So they don't die in winter? We went to Kew Gardens with school last year. It's got a bunch of greenhouses. The Palm House was the first place to use wrought iron that much, and all the panes of glass are hand-blown. The Temperate House is much bigger, though. It took over thirty years to build! It's the biggest Victorian glass house still around. There was one called the Tea House, though they didn't use it for tea, I don't think, but the suffragettes burned it down. And they've got the tallest flagpole in Britain! It's all one big tree, though it's rather cheating because the tree is from Canada. I suppose they are technically part of the UK, but it's not exactly the same."

Hannibal chuckled in turn. "Is it terribly awkward having your paramour as a child? There were times when my husband was adult while I was young, but never the other way around. It's refreshing for me not to have been hit with this."

"I don't think I knew you were married," Liliana noted with another sip as she ladled toppings onto her crepe. She didn't bother holding back or sticking to polite proportions; Liliana took what she liked as she liked it. "If anything, I'm grateful that I was away Friday night and only returned this morning. I don't sleep in much and that truly would have been an awkward awakening. It is difficult, for a number of reasons - including my lack of welcome home brunch - but it's also quite adorable. A new avenue to learn about him. Though hard to remember sometimes that he is not a time-displaced child and the things I tell him now won't actually help in the troubles he endured as a youth, oddly enough."

"You know a lot of facts, Jon darling," Liliana said, said with a smile. "As you grow up, some people will tell you not to just rattle them off, that you'll just come off as a know-it-all. But do you know what I think?"

She gave him a conspiratorial smile. "That's just because they're boring and jealous they don't know interesting facts about the world. There's nothing sadder than someone who isn't curious about the world and nothing more tedious than someone who uses their energy to try to put out the spark of curiosity in others." She patted him on the head. "Never choose boring, Jon. It doesn't suit."

Honestly, Liliana saw that brief bit of assumed defiance as a good thing. Because Liliana.

"Ah good, you're here," she said, opening up the kitchen door to let her inside. "There's food for you in the breakfast nook. Wash your hands up in the sink and then go eat up. And then we can discuss further working in my garden."

She figured that if she held the talk about gardening over Tiny Nell's head until after she ate, Tiny Nell would be less inclined to fuss about lunch being hot cocoa, filled crepes, and also a sandwich.

[I'm so sorry I missed this ping!!!]

It was always good to see his food enjoyed; that was its purpose.

"My husband passed away. It's a shame; he was truly spectacular. But yes, the only times he was a child, I was also."

Hannibal shook his head. "It is a shame we can't learn things and bring them back with us. If nothing else, I would have a head start on learning English."

Jon scowled a little at first, but as she continued, but he was grinning by the end, even though he rolled his eyes and squirmed out from under her hand, straightening his hair (for some value of "straightened").

"I don't want to be boring. Learning things is exciting! Even if the police don't think so. They're awful."

Nell all but tiptoed into the kitchen, scared to touch anything in this fancy place. The sink was a little too high for her, so she ended up a little wet, but her hands were clean! She followed her nose to the breakfast nook and sniffed carefully at the crepes and hot cocoa before cautiously tasting the drink.

She smiled and sipped again, careful of how hot it was.

[No worries. Life is nuts right now.]

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The Creepy, Once-More-Unduly-Filled-With-Children Mansion in the Woods, Saturday

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