The fireplace is in excellent working condition, the house is decorated with holly and boxwood garlands and some spruce from the woods; Alma has a red ribbon tied loosely around her neck, which she is trying continually to bite off. The house almost always smells like spice and cider and warmth, and there's a little carved creche in the middle of ( Read more... )

The trouble with goats is that they're not inclined to stay home if they don't have to, which is the short answer as to why Percy is trying to coax one off the Mansion lawn.

"C'mon, Butter. Come on. Hey, hey," wiggling his fingers. "Come on, now." Alma, who came along for the ride, is standing by and watching with something akin to amusement.

The fireplace in the kitchen has actually turned out to be an appreciable success, and so evening will find Percy poking sticks and twigs into it, and then building the cabin of logs around it, and shoving bark and dead leaves down the middle, to make a fire. The kitchen smells like spice and pie, thanks to Cimorene.

Percy is in the orchard, for once not busy--all the drop fruit was gathered back in October, before the frost, and everything after that is ruined, and's been fed to the chickens and the two horses that still inhabit the barn, as well as the goats he borrowed from Luther's herd. The farm looks good, especially in cold afternoon light--made all ( Read more... )

Percy is, at the moment, searching fairly energetically through the Mansion.

It's dark and probably past midnight by the time Percy is relieved by Morvydd and comes back to the house. He's walking weary, but he gets inside without making any noise and goes to their room to undress.

Percy is busy in the garden, turning over the hard frosted soil in what will hopefully be the cold frame, with a little work. His limp is better than it was before, and he's happily grubby.

Over the course of the last week, particularly with the several days of not being able to understand anybody else, Percy has gotten the chimney all but finished, and now, in celebration of this accomplishment, is sitting around back of the house with a beheaded chicken and a pot of boiling water, divesting it of feathers. This process is slightly ( Read more... )

Percy has gone out ostensibly to pick squashes, but after a few moments of kneeling in the soft earth he slips his hands together and folds them, closes his eyes, and starts praying. His red ruffly hair is all mixed up and falling over his eyes a bit, and his leg is so stiff and painful it's beyond all saying, and like Jacob after his fight with ( Read more... )

Percy is undressing for bed--and by undressing we merely mean removing his t-shirt; pajamas are kind of a foreign concept--in the bedroom he now shares with Cimorene ( Read more... )