patience

[calescent]

Alser's granddaughter has the same suggestive "power" blessing from her first set of three that Kiri has. Her other blessings aren't torz either - flexibility is coru, loyalty is hunti - but she is torz, and Alser's current best guess for a successor. She's about the elder prince's age, just a little older than Kiri. Alser asks Kiri if he might visit her at home with this grandchild-of-interest in tow.

Kiri says sure, why not.

And so Alser and Patience Frothen - who is only named for the blessing of patience, and does not wear it in her hair - comes to the house not too long after the princes do.

Comments

[pythbox]

"And I don't like my name anyway," he admits. "Being a 'the Second' of it wouldn't be any better."

[salt_of_the]

"How come you don't like it?"

[pythbox]

He shrugs. "I just don't."

[salt_of_the]

"Do you have a nickname or something or do you just sort of - go around not liking your name that everybody calls you?"

[pythbox]

"The second one," he says, smiling wryly.

[salt_of_the]

"That sounds super annoying!"

[pythbox]

"It kinda is!" he says. "Kiri knows, and she just calls me 'your highness' or doesn't call me anything, but I don't tell most people because I bet my father wouldn't like it if I went around telling the whole kingdom I hate his name."

[salt_of_the]

"Yeah, I bet that wouldn't go over so well. Well, I can call you 'your highness' too if you want if there isn't anything you like more."

[pythbox]

"There isn't really," he says, shrugging. "I don't care about names much except for not liking the one. That'd be nice of you."

[salt_of_the]

"Okay, then I will."

[pythbox]

Spontaneously, he hugs her again.

[salt_of_the]

Hugs!

[pythbox]

Hug hug hugs. The prince likes hugs. He likes them soooo much.

[salt_of_the]

It seems like Patience also likes hugs!

[pythbox]

That is excellent. They shall have many hugs.

[salt_of_the]

So they shall!

[calescent]

When the Frothens have settled in and Kiri is no longer socially obliged to be constantly available to and solicitous of them, she goes a-wandering down a hall on the second floor that leads to the pantry. (There is a dumbwaiter allowing coordination of the pantry with the kitchen.) She wants to see if they still have that apple jam so as to inform her meal requests when next she issues them.

[pythbox]

Along this hall, there is an alcove containing a large decorative urn.

The large decorative urn appears to be sniffling very quietly.

[calescent]

That is an unlikely behavior for an urn, however large and however decorative.

Kiri peeps into the alcove.

[pythbox]

There is a small blue corner of a small blue sleeve just barely poking out from behind the urn on one side. Whoever is back there must also be quite small, to fit into that amount of space.

[calescent]

Well, there are a couple of servants' children around - the gardener has a baby, the cook has a five-year-old - but this is not the right amount of implied independent mobility for the one or the right size for the other.

"Isten?" asks Kiri, keeping five feet back but crouching down.

[pythbox]

The quiet sniffling stops. The sleeve corner vanishes.

[calescent]

"Did something happen to you?"

[pythbox]

A few more moments of silence. Then a small face peeks out from behind the urn, red-eyed but clean.

"I got lost," he explains, quietly.

[calescent]

"It's a big house," says Kiri. "I used to get lost in here all the time."