18 April, 2001

Anselm presses open the door, whistling a jaunty tune as he wanders in. The sunlight is in his hair and glittering in his eyes as he makes his mirthful arrival.

As is often the case, Lise's good humor is with her, as well. She sits at the draughts board, looking at pieces haphazardly arranged, not that draughts is that difficult a game. Her coat is off, one hand holding the heavy mane of blonde from the back of her neck.

Anselm squints a bit, adjusting from daylight to shadows. It takes a few more minutes to scan the room, craning his eyes about until he isolates the reason for his arrival.

Lisle slides a piece forward. She had been looking toward the doorway now and again, though. She does so now, and smiles when she sees Anselm. She stands, in fact, eyes brightening like the flash of sapphire against her wrists.

Anselm re-angles his steps, carrying his well-distributed weight toward the bright blue blaze of welcoming eyes. "Hello, m'lady."

Lisle would embrace him, or at least there is some intentions for that, completed only if Anselm seems willing, but the affection is there clear enough. "Anselm. I am so pleased you came." On the table, off to one side, is the book. She adds, "I finished it."

Anselm opens an arm at the indications, seemingly in a far more jolly mood than recent encounters upheld. The devil himself is cavorting in those eyes as he answers. "Good, m'lady. I am pleased to be here. And more so that you finished the book. Did you enjoy it?"

Lisle embraces Anselm, blonde hair against his broader shoulder, before withdrawing. The look in his eyes makes her dimples show as she looks at him directly, pleased. "I did enjoy it. But I admit I was perplexed. Perhaps we should sit outside? The day is, after all, beautiful."

Anselm dips his chin, giving a quick squeeze before the departure. With a sweeping wave of his hand that his body follows through on, he answers. "Where the lady leads, I follow."

Lisle turns to pick up the book, and lay her coat over one arm. She waves to the bartender, pointing outside. Then, her free hand on Anselm's elbow, a touch so light as to be hardly felt, she moves outside, hopefully with him in tow.

The door opens into the courtyard.

Amber: Courtyard of the Dancing Unicorn(#13701RJ)

The courtyard is a rough square, a little over sixty feet on a side. The grey stone walls are decorated in spots with lifelike murals. Red wooden eaves allow for protection from the rain for those standing or sitting by the walls. A formidable looking iron gate stands open to the street, and opposite the courtyard from it, though slightly offset is the brightly painted entrance to the tavern.

The courtyard is lined with smooth grey stone, save for one corner which holds a small fish pond surrounded by rough rocks and pale flowers. Low benches of wrought iron and dark wood line the walls.

(Places and +views available)

Obvious exits:

Tavern Gates

Anselm arrives from the tavern

Things that can be viewed:

Center Gate Pond

Songbird mural Starburst mural Unicorn mural

Anselm follows along easily enough, perhaps aided by the tides of motion she seems to embody. "Quite a pleasant read. I have looked through the book a number of times in my travels. Often sleeping with it on the bedstand."

Lisle walks toward the pond, then stops. She releases Anselm a moment, to open the door and asks the nearest waiter, "Bring out a table and chairs, pleased. Out here, by the pond." Then she turns back to Anselm, handing him back the book, and saying, "I wonder, Anselm, if you think of yourself as Sheilder's Mark?"

Anselm takes the tattered copy back, closing his fingers over a sun, wind, and weather-beaten cover. "Sometimes. I suppose it depends upon how fanciful I am being." His own blue gaze shifts around, skipping from spot to spot about the landscape. "A good choice for sitting. The pond and its environs seem somewhat inspiring."

The waiter arrives, with a chair, a few other men right behind him. They set up a place near the pond, with cutlery and napkins. The first man bows to Lise, then to Anselm, saying, "Would you care for lunch?"

Lisle was about to reply to Anselm, but instead she sits and says to the waiter, "Just a roast beef sandwich and some lemonade will do just fine."

Anselm waits for the lady to be seated first, though he offhandedly answers the waiter. "Just a glass of water, if you would." He eyes the table and the chairs, cocking his head aside which sends his hair tumbling askew. "M'lady seems to be able to get what she wants from most everyone."

Lisle smoothes a napkin into her lap, more relaxed once the waiter is gone. "No, that is not the case, Anselm. It's true -here-, because Eric is one of the owners. It is a joint effort with Random. But it is not true in general. But, really, back to the book." She seems focused. The wall provides some shade, though sun still filters around them through the leaves of an overhanging tree. "Shielder's Mark figured, in the end, that the important thing was his friends."

Anselm eventually settles down into the waiting chair, easing into it as he eases into the conversation. "In the end, yes. Though there were quite a few encounters, and even lessons, that had to go before that realization. He had come of age by that point, and there were quite a few beliefs and inadequacies that he had had to grind out on the forge."

Lisle says, "There were. I agree there was a coming of age for him in that. I will add it was independent of his wife's regard, too. In the end it was his friends, and his wife -as- friend, not necessarily as wife, that gave him hope, helped me see the joy, was, I believe, his salvation.

Anselm laughs again, suddenly, his lips forming a smirk. "I had forgotten the amusement of weighted conversation." He lifts a hand to shade his eyes, an affectation more than a necessity. "He was who he was, independent of what all others thought of him. But, in the end, he learned who he was. Co-incidentally that his friends were right to believe in him."

Lisle's eyes brighten when Anselm laughs. She seems at ease and happy, her body relaxed, shoulders in an academic slouch while elbows Lean on the chair's arm's languidly. Her dimples are showing, not the ghostly things that show her as vulnerable, but the womanly smile that shows something else -- competence and serene delight. "Oh, we disagree. In the end he learned who he was, but even if he failed his friends would have been his friends because he was the man he was. They were his friends because even without definition, intuition showed them what he was made of long before he knew, and they liked him even when he made a fool of himself, through it all. They were his rock, his light, that showed him the way."

Anselm laughs again, brightly, rolling his head back and breathing in of the air and clouds above. The back of one hand wipes across his eyes, clearing away imaginary tears. "Oh my!" He stifles another bought of laughter. "That, I think, is a point of disagreement. His friends had some idea, but they did not show him the way as much as he stumbled upon it. Nope all of his concerns, his confusions, and his inability to be certain of what his friends thought. They helped mold his ending, but I do not know that I feel they guided him to it."

Lisle leans forward, putting a hand lightly, familiarly, on Anselm's shoulder. "But Anselm, in the darkness of the forge, in the shadow of hate from the son who hated his father, it was his friends that brought the memory of joy back, yes? Don't you think some of this has to do with having faith in your friends?"

Anselm pats the back of her hand, gently as he shakes his head. "While I agree that they helped to light his way, it does not connect to who they were. It was simply the belief in who they were that led him on. Perhaps even the hope."

Lisle says, "There we agree. The hope." And Lise has plenty of it, apparently. She sits back again, dimples still showing, "But I confess I'm puzzled where your role in this is. I've been unlucky not to have known you growing up, or I suspected I'd know very well."

Anselm says "I could say that no one really knows me. But that would be as much a choice as a life statement. A wandering gambler makes few ties, has few friends, and is truly known to none. That is the life I chose when I left here, and it has brought me its share of happiness."

Anselm lifts the book up, having clutched it through much of the conversation, and settles it onto the table. "The nothing boy, growing up, marrying a princess, inheriting from his actions positions and responsibilities he was untrained for and unaccustomed to and having to learn his way through them... It seems to fit to me."

Anselm says "And, of course, the fact that both of our stories occur, in the majority, after what we would deem to be the 'happy ending'."

Lisle listens to this carefully. "Yes, well, that is a good point. I mean, about your story happening after the fairy tale's end. With me it's different, no fairy tale like that. But that's me, and I want to know more about you, Anselm." Her voice is velvet, warm as the sun. She pauses for a moment while the waiter delivers her sandwich and drink, and Anselm's water, before continuing. "I hope you can say there is a fine life after the fairy tale ends. I wish you to say it's time for a new one to begin, and that having found yourself with a metaphorical forge you've come out, ready to begin anew."

Anselm flicks the edge of his glass, another baritone chuckle issuing forth though his smile remains. His good humor seems to have a firm hold on him. "I think it is better to say that I found one crucible, I was ground through it, and am looking for another to regain a touch with myself I have been lacking." Scratching his cheek he continues. "Though yes, I can see and say that there is some need for a new life to begin. The old one's ghosts are old and need to be put to rest. Much like the Red Keep."

Lisle says, "Exactly, so, Anselm. It is time to admit new friends into your heart." The way her smile turns into a grin shows she does, of course, probably mean herself at least. "And I'm also curious -- you mentioned something in that book you thought was a lie. I wonder what."

Anselm pulls at his goatee, sobering slightly despite the beauty of the day. Seabirds whirling overhead distract his eyes as he weighs the moment. "New friends, perhaps. New life, yes. But odd that you have not seen the lie, yet. What would you guess it to be?"

Lisle says, "Our perspectives can be different, Anselm. What is lie to you may be only hope to me. If there is any lie, from my point of view, is that anyone actually does live happily ever after. Everyone grows and changes, one fairy tale merging into another. Mark's second fairy tale, where he -really- changed, happened after the first one, after he'd married the princess and become duke of his own lands. So, if that is not what you meant, I cannot see where your lie is."

Anselm nods, a slow twist of his lips unable to hide the pleased look that is growing. "Quite so. And that is the one true lie. There is no happily ever after. There is only the rest of life. Working, living, failing and succeeding. That is the lie in that book, and one I have given much thought to."

Lisle watches Anselm's face very closely while he speaks, saying in reply, "There is no happily ever after, Anselm, but there are moments of deep happiness to counter the deep sadnesses. But it isn't just working, living, failing and succeeding, it's the people who you share these with. If the happily ever after its this books greatest lie," she reaches over to tap the book's cover, "Then it's insistence on the importance of friendship over all, yes, even above romantic love and the blood of family, is its greatest truth." After that she sits back again, finger rimming the glass of lemonade. "I wonder what your conclusions are, having thought about this so much."

Anselm finally plucks his glass from the table, dexterity honed by repeated and extended manipulation of cards and decks and chips making the gesture have an odd kind of grace. He sips the clear liquid, eyes visible above the edge, eyes holding the sapphire gaze with their own shade of cobalt. "There is, inherently, a quibble in friendship. A question in which there is the comparison of dependence on others and dependence on oneself. Aristotle may have felt that humanity is a pack animal, defined in a social situation. But I have some questions about that."