More words

Elsapatience

I'm going to the gardens today.
Oh, I'm not running away; I bribed Thera to clean the washrooms and scrub the marble in the Great Hall and the Chapel. She's not very clever and I bribed her quite easily with the divinity Cook saved for me last week.
Cook won't tell a soul, I'll be safe.
I dreamt I was in the garden last night. It was a soft, washed-out, half-light dream, the kind I always remember, since the oddest things prick me with that left-over dream feeling. It reminds me of a rose; a dark red one. I know that makes me sound very odd.
In my dream, I was swinging in the old wooden swing hidden between the grove and the over-grown wild rose bushes. It's my garden.

I saw a dove in the gardens. I'd never seen a dove before. Just as I'd never seen a falling star until the night I dreamt of my mother, and couldn't sleep.

Albir Elderberry of Farwood

I heard music in my sleep last night. I wasn't really sleeping. It was one of those funny half-sleep nights, in-between dreaming and awake. But I swear I heard music and it gives me a funny feeling. I suppose it's just because I'm sleeping in an overly-stiff bed in a strange house far from home.
But this morning I walked in the grove and I thought it wasn't such a bad funny feeling. I do like the grove. It's quite nice, not very well kept, and wonderfully over-grown in some places. Around some spots, the proper Royal Gardens have been neglected, and the flowers grow wild and have spread everywhere. I did always hate the stupid orderly rows of ram-rod straight flowers. Looks so much more like an army of soldiers than a garden of flowers. And the unpruned trees are brilliant. I climbed because no one was looking.
Discovered a swing. Hidden behind an immense bush of roses, hanging beneath an immense, fantastic oak.

Elsapatience

That stupid Prince Albir has discovered my garden and stolen my swing.
The devil take him.

Albir Elderberry of Farwood

Some of the servants in this blasted House are uncommonly rude.
A maiden scrubbing the courtyard stones splashed her bloody bucket of muddy water all over the cuffs of my leather boots.
Why must they scrub the damnable courtyard stones anyway, since the place exists out of doors and is constantly weathered and trod upon? No one notices if the damned cobblestones are spotless. Hmph. It is unnaturally ridiculous.