I Know What a Prince and Lover Ought to Be Part 1 - J2 - NC-17
Navigation: Master Post | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
Their kingdoms have been at war since before their grandfather's grandfather's time, so naturally Jensen, son to the royal and upright Ackles lineage, wants nothing to do with Jared, scourge of a Padalecki and curse upon the earth. Jensen spends his time playing in his royal gardens, and occasionally, when he can manage to sneak out from under the mostly-watchful eyes of his nursemaids, in the woods and fields behind the castle. Jensen mostly plays by himself when that happens, because none of the courtiers' children have the guts to go with him, but sometimes he'll play with the peasant children outside the castle walls because playing by yourself is boring.
One mostly dry spring day, Jensen sneaks outside again to play like he really isn't allowed to do. He figures as long as his nursemaid doesn't tattle on him, he'll be fine, and she won't do that because she'll get in trouble, too, for letting him give her the slip. Jensen practices conquering bushes with a stick he finds on the forest floor and collects pretty spring flowers he can give to his mother later. That's when he runs into another little boy, a few years younger than him, carefully picking out pebbles from the bank of a stream.
"Boy, what're you doing?" Jensen asks him, curious.
"Lookin' for the round, white ones. My cousin says they're magic and that if you get exactly one hundred, you can make a wish and it'll come true! Gotta find the really round ones though!" the boy cautions.
Jensen sits down in the dirt next to the other little boy with a plop. "What're you gonna wish for?" Jensen asks him.
"A puppy," the boy replies with childish certainty.
Suddenly, Jensen hears the sound of horses' hooves thudding on the road just at the edge of the woods. He can't see who's riding because of the bushes separating his spot from the road, but it's at least three people, which probably means his father and his older brother are coming back from his brother's first hunt. He'll be missed soon if he's not at home in time to see what his brother caught, so Jensen jumps up in a rush.
"Sorry, I gotta get back home. Maybe I'll see you around again?" he asks, hopeful. They haven't done much playing together, because Jensen was kind of tired from defeating all those evil bushes, and because the other little boy was so focused on looking for the perfect white pebbles, but the other kid is fun, Jensen can tell. Maybe if they can meet again they can have even more fun next time.
The little boy turns to smile at him at that prospect, beaming so brightly that Jensen can't help but grin in return. "Yeah! That'd be great!" the other little boy says. He's got probably the best smile on earth, and Jensen is happy to find out that he was right when he thought the other boy would be fun.
"Ok! I'll try to sneak out tomorrow, too! Bye!" Jensen says, then takes off running for the castle. He has to sneak in the back way before someone important notices he's been gone. And tomorrow, he and the other little boy will get to play.
Dinner that night is kind of the product of his older brother's first hunt--a little fat rabbit dressed, stuffed, and roasted to golden perfection sitting in the middle of the table as the centerpiece. Of course, one rabbit isn't a lot of food to go around the whole court, so most of what they eat is the big buck two of his father's knights killed two days ago, and some mushroom pasties the cooks made that morning.
The food is all very good, like it usually is--Jensen's father is the king after all--but Jensen can't help but fidget in his chair. He can't wait for tomorrow to come, so he can go play with the little boy he met today. He moves restlessly in his chair until his nursemaid scolds him and tells him to be still and to sit up straight at the dinner table. Jensen tries his best, because that's what princes do, but it doesn't work very well.
Jensen doesn't think he'll be able to sleep at all that night, but all the excitement and anticipation from earlier catch up to him, and he's sleeping soundly almost before his mother comes to kiss him goodnight.
The next morning, Jensen sneaks out of the castle courtyard just as soon as he can. Usually, he waits a little while to see if his nurse will call him. He'll play with the children of his father's knights and nobles if they're around, or by himself if they're not. Today, though, the moment his nurse settles down with her embroidery, Jensen is off, ducking under bushes and then climbing over the low garden wall. From there, he sneaks out the back of the castle like he usually does when he goes outside to play, and then he's running straight for the stream where he met the little boy yesterday.
The other boy isn't there when he arrives, and for a minute Jensen is too upset to even realize how disappointed he is. Princes don't cry, though, at least, not where someone might see them, so Jensen scrubs at his face with the back of one balled fist and bites the inside of his cheek and counts as high as he can until the stinging behind his eyes passes and he can swallow around the lump in this throat. The other boy is younger than he is, and usually younger kids are all just annoying, but Jensen was really looking forward to playing with him again today.
He's moved on to just counting, back downwards this time, squashing his disappointment with it, when he gets tackled from behind. "Sorry, my mom made me get a bath this morning," the little boy apologizes from where he's sitting in the middle of Jensen's back.
"Umph," says Jensen, all the air knocked out of him when the other little boy jumped on him.
"Oh, right," the boy responds, climbing off Jensen's back. "Call me Jay, by the way," he says, smiling that wide grin again.
"My name is Jensen," Jensen replies, and the boy--Jay--gets a funny look on his face for a minute. "What?" Jensen asks.
Jay smiles again, though. "Nothing," he says. "I know someone else named Jensen, is all, but he's not very nice. You're much better," he adds confidentially, pulling a twig out of Jensen's hair.
Jensen grins back, and they decide what they're going to play today. Knights is a good game, and one of Jensen's favorites, because they get to ride horses and kill dragons and stuff. Jay says he likes that game too, so they pick that first. They have an argument about who gets to be the prince, because Jensen wants to be the prince, but Jay does too, and they can't both be princes because neither of them wants to be the bad prince, and there can't be two princes on the same side unless they're brothers. And even sometimes then one of the princes is bad, Jensen scowls, thinking about the time his brother dunked him in the fish pond. In the end, they compromise by agreeing to just both be regular knights--knights on a quest! who don't have a prince, because they're questing!--and play at killing dragons and bushes together with sticks.
They play knights until they both get tired, and flop into the long grass in one of the meadows nearby to rest. They point out pictures in the clouds for a while, until Jensen gets bored.
He rolls over onto his tummy and props his face in his hands. "Did you get enough magic pebbles yesterday to get your puppy? I guess not, 'cause you didn't bring a puppy today."
Jay makes an annoyed face. "Naw, there weren't any more round pebbles in that rocky place by the stream. Gonna have to find somewhere else to look, I guess."
"There's a huge pile of rocks over by the big oak tree!" Jensen remembers, jumping up to his feet. "Wanna go look there?"
"Yeah!" Jay jumps up, too, and they spend the rest of the afternoon searching in crevices around the bigger rocks for little, white, perfect, round pebbles so Jay can wish for his puppy.
"What're you gonna name it?" Jensen asks, the next week. They've been playing together outside the castle walls every day, and Jensen doesn't think he's ever had more fun in his life. His dad's knights and nobles' kids are ok, but they're not as much fun as Jay, even if he is probably some kind of peasant. Jay looks a little clean for your typical peasant, but Jensen's never really seen any close up except grown-up ones who have traveled for days to talk to his daddy the king, and traveling makes you dirty. Plus, Jensen knows moms. Moms make you do things like take baths, even when you had one last week and don't really need one again.
They're still looking for pebbles in between playing other games, and Jay already has 37 pretty white pebbles that they've decided are round enough to be magic.
Jay shrugs. "If it's a girl dog, then I'm gonna name it Sadie, and if it's a boy, then I'll name it Harley."
"Which do you want more?" Jensen asks, trying to picture Jay with his future wish-puppy. He pushes a little twig with a leaf at the top into the pile of dirt they've been making. It's too low and crumbly to really be a castle, but the leaf looks like a banner anyway.
Jay drops the stick he's been using to dig in the dirt and flops onto his back on a hummock of grass. He tucks his hands behind his head, and Jensen wanders over to sit nearby. "I dunno," he says. "I think I'll let the magic decide."
A month later, they've exhausted all the nearby places to look for white pebbles. The streambank, the rock pile; they've even checked a little by the side of the road, even though they've both agreed they shouldn't play there because they might get in trouble if their parents see them. "I'm not supposed to be out here," Jensen confessed one day. Jay looked relieved and said he wasn't either.
They searched the edge of the road anyway, once they'd been over the stream bed for the fifth time, and now they're pretty sure they've found all the white pebbles there are to find in the woods nearby. Jay only has seventy-four pebbles.
"This sucks," Jensen says, splashing his feet in the stream morosely. His shoes are off, settled in a pile with Jay's on top of a smooth, flat rock where they can't lose them.
"Well, they wouldn't be magic if they were easy to find, right?" Jay reasons. He's kind of upset, too, but isn't prepared to give up hope or stop looking just because they don't know where else to look right now. Besides, there's a crawdad living under the rock he's standing over, and Jay is determined to catch it. Jensen caught it yesterday, and it's been hiding ever since he put it back.
The sun is shining brightly the next day when Jensen meets Jay. The whole summer has flown by, but it's still hot, and Jensen hopes they'll still have a long time to play before it starts getting really cold or snowing or something. Fall will be fun playing outside with Jay, he thinks--they can pile up leaves and then jump in them, or run through them, which is a game that's fun to play even inside the castle courtyard. Once all the leaves have come down, though, and it starts snowing, Jensen isn't sure how easily he'll be able to sneak out. His nurse likes to stay inside where it's a little bit warmer and a lot less windy. Making snow forts with Jay might be a lot of fun too, though, and Jensen wonders if maybe he'll be able to sneak Jay into the castle then.
These thoughts take Jensen all the way to their usual meeting spot. When Jay shows up, though, he looks sad.
"My parents say we're gonna go visit my cousins in Rabadhishan," Jay tells Jensen dejectedly. "I hoped we wouldn't go this year, so we could keep playing." Jensen isn't really sure where Rabadhishan is, exactly, but it features as 'far away' in one of his fancy hand-painted picture books.
"That's really cool!" Jensen can't help but exclaim. "Is it really all sand forever and ever?"
Jay perks up a little in the face of Jensen's enthusiasm. Jay is usually cheerful anyway, and seems to forget, at least momentarily, why he was upset about having to go in the first place. "It is! Sand, and some little desert palm trees. Except for the city. The city is really big and has all these sandy-colored buildings with pretty, colorful roofs. Dad says that sometimes they have to repaint all of them because of sandstorms! But we always go in August, and they don't have sandstorms then, so I've never seen one."
Jay spends most of the rest of the afternoon telling Jensen about Rabadhishan, until Jensen can imagine it so well, it's like he's been there himself. He tries to imagine what it must be like to be so hot and dry all day, and then get so cold at night, and thinks he almost manages to. In honor of Jay going to the desert, they spend the parts of the afternoon when he's not telling stories--from the one time he got lost in the big, central market place on the last day and how he was afraid his parents would forget him and go back home without him and he'd be stuck as an orphan, to the time his cousin got a pet monkey and it got into his mother's travel trunks--pretending to be desert bandits in the wilderness.
Winter seems to stretch out forever. Jensen's nursemaid keeps a closer eye on him than usual, maybe to make up for all the times she didn't know where he was during the summer, and only lets him play outside a little bit each day. When she does, first she bundles him up until he feels like a giant ball of yarn, and then she bundles herself up until she looks like a huge furry bear, and then they're allowed to go outside.
It's best when his nursemaid coordinates with some of the other nobles' nurses, or if they catch some outside too, because then the nurses retreat to a little ensconced part of the garden and chatter about whatever grown-ups talk about, leaving all their little ball of yarn charges to build snow forts and have snow fights. When it's just Jensen and his nurse, he's still allowed to build snow forts if he wants (even though it's not nearly as much fun by himself), but she won't throw snow balls with him, and she gets really angry when he throws them at her, so he stopped doing that a long time ago. All he's allowed to do is build snowmen or snow castles or make snow angels, and it's boring and not fun.
Then his nursemaid bundles him back inside, even though he's still playing and not that cold, even if his teeth are chattering, clucking about how his lips are blue and he's going to lose fingers if he stays out any longer. Then she unwraps all his layers and lays them out by the fire before she puts him into new clothes. That part is kind of nice, because he was kind of cold, and once they get inside where it's warmer, then it feels like all the snow he's collected on top of his clothes melts all at once and all his layers of wool soak it up instantly and he's shivering and wet.
Most of the time, though, Jensen's nurse won't take him outside in the first place, and Jensen has to amuse himself indoors where he has to be quieter, and not knock things over, and he's always getting scolded to not get into that, and to stay out from under people's feet, and to use his indoor voice, for goodness' sake! Jensen misses playing with Jay terribly and daydreams of all the mischief they could get up to together, but Jay is far away in Rabadhishan where it never snows at all, and Jensen is stuck inside most of the time. Jensen isn't exactly sure which is the least fun part, but he does know he can't wait for winter to be over so Jay can come back and they can play outside in the woods again.
Winter slowly melts into spring, and Jensen drags mud everywhere after he comes back in after going outside. His nurse is too much of a veteran to be appalled at the state of his princely clothing, but she makes tsk-ing noises at him anyway, so he knows he's not getting a free pass. In early April, his parents leave the castle. They take Jensen's older brother with them because although he's a prince now, one day when he's a grown-up he's going to be the king and has to see what kings are supposed to do. Since his big brother is going, they tell Jensen very firmly that he has to take care of his baby sister, who is one and a half and always running shakily into everything. She's ok for the first twenty minutes but starts crying as soon as she realizes Mama and Papa aren't coming back, and she keeps crying for a really long time despite Jensen's best efforts to distract her. Eventually her nursemaid gives up, too and puts her to bed and explains to Jensen that she'll be more happy in the morning and that he was a good boy for being so nice to his little sister.
Jensen nods sagely and pretends he doesn't miss his parents either, because he's a prince and has to be brave and not act like a little baby. Instead, Jensen concentrates on how much fun he'll have once Jay comes back from Rabadhishan. Maybe Jay will have met some real desert bandits. Then when he comes back, he'll tell Jensen stories about how they showed him their bandit treasure hoard and about the fire lizards that they have to guard it. Fire lizards are the size of Great Danes, but since they're lizards, their legs are shorter and their bellies drag on the ground. They have long tails to make up for it, though, and a row of spikes all the way down their spine from the back of their necks all the way down to the very tip of their tails. They're the color of sand and spit fireballs the size of Jensen's sister when they're hungry or angry, which Jensen is pretty sure is all the time. Otherwise, they wouldn't be good for guarding treasure.
Since the desert bandits will be showing Jay their treasure, though, the fire lizards won't eat him or spit fireballs at him, and maybe they'll give him a baby fire lizard to bring back. That would be pretty cool. Not as cool as the puppy Jay wants, but all they have in Rabadhishan is a lot of sand and no little round white pebbles, so Jay won't have been able to make his wish yet.
It's that thought that gives Jensen the idea. Jay has wanted a puppy for nearly a year, which is like forever, but Jay can't find any pebbles while he's away, so he can't get his wish-puppy yet. Jensen will find the remaining pebbles for Jay and then give them to him when he gets back, and then he can make his wish, and then when they play outside together, Jensen will get to play with the wish-puppy, too. Jensen is excited about the idea of a puppy because he's never had a puppy before, and when his father's hunting dogs have puppies he's never allowed to play with them because they have to get training. Obviously, Jay's puppy will belong to Jay and not to him, but having a puppy would make Jay so happy Jensen thinks it's worth it.
Jensen's private search for pebbles is slow-going. It's still muddy out, and Jensen's nursemaid keeps a sharp eye on him because the king and queen aren't back from their tour of the kingdom yet. She is not, she says, going to be responsible for him drowning himself in mud while his royal parents are away, so he'd better be on his best behavior. He also makes sure to play with his baby sister a lot more because his mama told him to and because his daddy told him it was his loyal duty to his monarch and the throne to take care of her. Jensen doesn't want to be a traitor, so he spends much of the spring in his sister's nursery making her toy horses and dolls besiege each other. Mackenzie doesn't seem to understand the game, though, and usually just runs shrieking happily through both encampments' defenses before plopping down on her fat baby bottom and clapping delightedly.
When this happens, Jensen shrugs and rebuilds defenses for both sides as best he can. He figures if the evil Padalecki army or his daddy's good army had a giant baby sister, they'd probably win the war. Baby sisters can be very destructive.
Jensen isn't able to sneak outside the castle while his parents are away, but he decides that's OK because he and Jay already searched everywhere they could think of outside the castle for the little white pebbles. Looking for the little stones by himself isn't as much fun as it was with Jay, not even when Jensen pretends that it's a real Quest with a capital Q and the fate of his kingdom rests on finding them. He also can't take as many breaks to play other games because being knights or princes or desert bandits is really no fun at all to do alone. Jensen can still play those games with the other children in the court, and he does, but he also wants to keep his search for magic pebbles a secret in case there aren't enough to share. If he tells the other kids, they'll all want one hundred pebbles, too, so they can make their own wishes, and Jensen knows just how hard the perfect round ones are to find. If anyone deserves a wish, it's Jay, because he's been looking the longest, and Jensen isn't going to risk Jay losing his chance just because he's not there.
Royal flower gardens are, Jensen discovers, really not very good places to look for rocks. There are lots of flowers, and some bushes, and some more flowers. There aren’t many pebbles, white or otherwise, to be found there. There is mulch on the ground, and manure, which he only gets into the one time because his nursemaid swats him so hard he has trouble remembering that princes aren’t supposed to cry. Jensen figures princes probably get an exception about not crying when their nurses spank them.
Gardens also have a lot of strict gardeners who don’t like it when you get into their flower beds and call Jensen's nurse to take him 'somewhere else to play.' Jensen is used to playing with the other children on the grass, or, occasionally, climbing in the trees in the orchards, which the gardeners never seemed to mind before. Apparently, rooting through flower beds is viewed very differently. In the end, Jensen gives the flower garden up as a lost cause and decides to look somewhere else.
Jensen's continued search in the orchard goes much better than his attempt in the flower gardens. For one thing, trees don't really seem to mind rocks, and orchards don't have to appeal to the critical eye of visiting dignitaries, so stones of all sizes aren't cleared away with nearly as much vigour as they are amongst the flowers.
Jensen may get a little distracted climbing trees on the days he looks for pebbles in the orchard, but trees are exciting, and the ones out in the forest around the castle are either too small to climb or way too tall for him to reach even the lowest branches. Orchard trees are perfect. Plus, there are cherry blossoms on the trees and some pear blossoms coming out. Jensen knows not to pick any of these flowers because if he does they won't turn into fruit, but it's fun to sit up in the branches and imagine he's inside a cloud.
Jensen eventually searches around the base of every tree in the orchard, and while he finds lots of pretty little rocks, only six are small and white and round enough to be magic. Jensen wraps them carefully into a linen handkerchief embroidered with his initials and puts them in the very back corner of the toy box in his room. He has to be careful no one knocks the folded linen loose rooting through the chest for toy soldiers or storybooks and lets a hard-won magic pebble get lost.
The ground starts drying out, and all the spring flowers in the royal flower gardens bloom. The gardeners are less testy because their work looks nice, and the castle maids make a big bouquet and put it in the grand entrance hall because the king and queen are returning from their assessment tour of the far reaches of the kingdom, and the castle has to look pretty for when they come back.
Jensen is really happy to see his parents again. His baby sister is even happier and toddles into the middle of the Royal Homecoming Ceremony shrieking with delight with her little baby arms raised above her head. Her nurse scurries after her shamefacedly and tries to scoop her back up into her arms, but the queen opens up her own arms and drops down to let Mackenzie run happily into them, so the nurse just backs into the edges of the crowd to await the queen's pleasure should she signal for her to take Mackenzie back. Sometimes Jensen has a hard time believing that Mackenzie is going to grow up to be a princess, because she always acts like such a baby, but maybe that's what baby princesses do.
There are banquets and parties (even though Jensen still isn't allowed to stay up for those), and his brother is nicer than usual and takes Jensen with him on his horse around the courtyard and plays games with both him and Mackenzie, even though before he went on the trip with their parents, he mostly ignored both of them because they were 'too little.' It's so much excitement and activity that Jensen forgets about the magic pebbles for nearly two weeks.
It’s halfway through May by the time Jensen remembers his Quest for Magic Pebbles and, he’s ashamed to think, Jay coming back. It’s already past the time of year it was when they first met a year ago. When Jensen realizes this, he sneaks away from his nursemaid and outside the castle walls every day for a week, even though once, on Wednesday, his nurse caught him just after he got safely back inside the garden. She had been looking for him for nearly an hour and had “called herself hoarse in the process.” Jensen was in so much trouble that night he didn’t get dessert after dinner.
It's pretty warm out even in the mornings and getting warmer, and most of the mud is gone. There are a lot of flowers blooming and slow, heavy bumblebees buzzing their way between them. It's perfect dragon-fighting weather.
Jay doesn't come on Monday, and he doesn't come on Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday or Friday, either. Jensen begins to lose hope, which means that he spends less time defeating dragons of bushes with his stick of a sword and more time sitting on a rocky outcropping by the stream and waiting, while looking dejectedly at the water as it burbles past. Maybe Jay is mad at him for forgetting about the pebbles and isn't going to come play with him any more. Jensen sticks his stick in the stream, even though his daddy said you never ever put your sword into water if you can help it, and if you have to, you need to take it out and wipe it dry and make sure the sheath isn't wet before you put it back in, or it's bad for it. But Jensen misses Jay and is pretty sure his not being there is his fault, and his sword is really just a stick anyway instead of a real sword, so he sticks it in the stream, and since the water's flowing past too quickly to swirl it in depressive circles, he kicks up mud from the bottom of the stream instead and watches the clouds of debris flow away from him downstream.
Jensen hardly plays at all on Saturday; there's almost no point, because sure, maybe the bushes in the woods are more fun than the neat rows of shrubbery within the castle walls, but the trees in the orchard are a lot more fun to climb because the bottom branches aren't as hard to reach and Jensen doesn't have to worry about getting in trouble. It was, honestly, a lot more fun in the little strip of woods outside the castle before Jensen realized he could have been playing with Jay out there. If he isn't going to be playing with Jay, he can do that inside the castle grounds just as easily.
That is, of course, when Jay leaps upon him from the back and sends them both tumbling into the shallow stream. There's enough water to get them both soaked, but not much more than that, Jensen's knees scraping the muddy bottom of the stream, and Jay's knees mostly in the middle of Jensen's back.
Jensen is still sort of damp when he gets home, and very definitely muddy in places, and he gets in a lot of trouble with his nurse for that. He also gets the sniffles for three days after for running around all day in wet clothing, even if it's not nearly as cold as it was a few weeks ago. Jensen doesn't mind at all.
Jensen and Jay play the rest of the summer. Jay is delighted when Jensen gives him the few pebbles he's managed to collect on his own, as if six pebbles over a whole winter were really a lot, and it makes Jensen puff up with pride for having made Jay so happy. Jay tells Jensen all about Rabadhishan, and how his aunt lives in this house that looks like a normal house on the outside, but inside there's this outdoor courtyard with a fountain made out of blue and red and white tiles. It sounds a lot like the courtyard in Jensen's castle except for the fountain, but Jay says it's not like castles because the whole thing is paved with flat stones and much much smaller and even the poorest of peasants have little courtyards in their houses, because otherwise it gets too hot in the afternoons because of the desert.
They spend a lot of time looking for pebbles, but there still aren't many left to be found. Jay has a more cheerful attitude than Jensen in general, but he gets impatient like all little kids when things don't work out, reminding Jensen for the first time in a while that he's younger. Jensen has more patience, but he doesn't mind when Jay's frustration means they take breaks to play other games. One of Jensen's favorites this summer is desert bandits, even though Jay says he didn't really get to meet any this year, either.
May turns to June, and June stretches into dusty July. When they finally hit one hundred, it doesn't register for two extra days when they find a hundred and first pebble and do a recount. It is decided that they need a proper wish-making ceremony, to convey the proper pomp to the affair, so they tie the pebbles back up into the handkerchief they've been keeping them in to keep them safe and together until they're ready. The two boys make little crowns out of long-stemmed weeds and work extra leaves in to make them look more majestic. They pick the rock pile by the big oak tree to perform the ceremony, because it kind of looks like a dais if you look at it right, and the oak tree leaves branching out behind it catch the light like stained glass.
Neither boy has been to a Wishing Ceremony before, but a quick conference decides that Jay, as the wish maker, should carry the pebbles forward towards the rock pile, where Jensen will stand as the master of ceremonies. They rush to their 'places' and Jensen raises his arms high. He doesn't have a robe, which would be better, but his leafy crown is good enough. He holds up the extra pebble and beckons grandly. Jay walks forward at a mostly stately pace, handkerchief full of pebbles clasped in his hands and held out in front of him majestically. When he gets to the base of the rock pile, he screws his face up, eyes shut tight. A few moments later, he relaxes and opens his eyes, and that's that. Wish made. Afterward, Jensen knights Jay with a stick even though that's for, well, knighting instead of wish-making, to make it more dramatic.
Jay isn't allowed to say what he actually wished for, even though they've wondered often enough what kind of puppy Jay is going to get after he made his wish for Jensen to know anyway. Jensen, they decide, should be the one to safeguard the pebbles until the wish comes true--Jay's cousin told him this past year in Rabadhishan that you have to keep the pebbles you wished on safe and together until the wish comes true, or it won't after all. It's a lot harder to keep track of one hundred little pebbles if you have to go visit your aunt in Rabadhishan in the winter, and they don't want to jeopardize the wish they've worked so hard to earn. Jensen doesn't feel right keeping all of the pebbles when they looked for them together, so in the end Jay takes the hundred and first pebble, to make it more even.
They spend the rest of the summer, before Jay has to go back to Rabadhishan for the winter again, waiting for Jay's wish to come true.
Autumn rolls around, leaves changing color. Jay leaves, two weeks later than last year, because of one last bout of summer heat late in the year.
The October rains start. Jensen has more trouble sneaking out of the castle again, but by now it doesn't matter. Jay's left for the winter, and it won't be until May comes and the flowers come out that they'll get to play together again. It's a mild winter; the wet ground freezes, but they don't get as much snow as usual. Jensen stays inside and plays with his little sister and tries to make her smile now that she's getting big enough to really be fun to play with.
In the spring, early, before the rains start and can turn the roads to mud, Jensen is fostered away. The kingdom of Harris is to the east: swamps and forests and green fertile ground. They don't get really cold winters or snow, his nurse explains to him, but instead it rains and rains all winter, and the summers are hot and humid. Jensen is excited to see a place that's green all year round, where the leaves don't have to fall off the trees because they need to get ready for the winter. His father's father's younger brother was good friends with the princess of Harris (who later became the ruling queen, a few years before Jensen's grandfather took the throne here at home), and it is time for their kingdoms to renew ties.
At first, everything is new and exciting. Jensen misses his parents, his nurse, and his brother and sister, but they're family, and family and fostering can never abandon you. Jensen's sad about Jay, though; he doesn't know when he'll see Jay again, and he didn't get a chance to say goodbye.
Master Post
Part 2
Their kingdoms have been at war since before their grandfather's grandfather's time, so naturally Jensen, son to the royal and upright Ackles lineage, wants nothing to do with Jared, scourge of a Padalecki and curse upon the earth. Jensen spends his time playing in his royal gardens, and occasionally, when he can manage to sneak out from under the mostly-watchful eyes of his nursemaids, in the woods and fields behind the castle. Jensen mostly plays by himself when that happens, because none of the courtiers' children have the guts to go with him, but sometimes he'll play with the peasant children outside the castle walls because playing by yourself is boring.
One mostly dry spring day, Jensen sneaks outside again to play like he really isn't allowed to do. He figures as long as his nursemaid doesn't tattle on him, he'll be fine, and she won't do that because she'll get in trouble, too, for letting him give her the slip. Jensen practices conquering bushes with a stick he finds on the forest floor and collects pretty spring flowers he can give to his mother later. That's when he runs into another little boy, a few years younger than him, carefully picking out pebbles from the bank of a stream.
"Boy, what're you doing?" Jensen asks him, curious.
"Lookin' for the round, white ones. My cousin says they're magic and that if you get exactly one hundred, you can make a wish and it'll come true! Gotta find the really round ones though!" the boy cautions.
Jensen sits down in the dirt next to the other little boy with a plop. "What're you gonna wish for?" Jensen asks him.
"A puppy," the boy replies with childish certainty.
Suddenly, Jensen hears the sound of horses' hooves thudding on the road just at the edge of the woods. He can't see who's riding because of the bushes separating his spot from the road, but it's at least three people, which probably means his father and his older brother are coming back from his brother's first hunt. He'll be missed soon if he's not at home in time to see what his brother caught, so Jensen jumps up in a rush.
"Sorry, I gotta get back home. Maybe I'll see you around again?" he asks, hopeful. They haven't done much playing together, because Jensen was kind of tired from defeating all those evil bushes, and because the other little boy was so focused on looking for the perfect white pebbles, but the other kid is fun, Jensen can tell. Maybe if they can meet again they can have even more fun next time.
The little boy turns to smile at him at that prospect, beaming so brightly that Jensen can't help but grin in return. "Yeah! That'd be great!" the other little boy says. He's got probably the best smile on earth, and Jensen is happy to find out that he was right when he thought the other boy would be fun.
"Ok! I'll try to sneak out tomorrow, too! Bye!" Jensen says, then takes off running for the castle. He has to sneak in the back way before someone important notices he's been gone. And tomorrow, he and the other little boy will get to play.
Dinner that night is kind of the product of his older brother's first hunt--a little fat rabbit dressed, stuffed, and roasted to golden perfection sitting in the middle of the table as the centerpiece. Of course, one rabbit isn't a lot of food to go around the whole court, so most of what they eat is the big buck two of his father's knights killed two days ago, and some mushroom pasties the cooks made that morning.
The food is all very good, like it usually is--Jensen's father is the king after all--but Jensen can't help but fidget in his chair. He can't wait for tomorrow to come, so he can go play with the little boy he met today. He moves restlessly in his chair until his nursemaid scolds him and tells him to be still and to sit up straight at the dinner table. Jensen tries his best, because that's what princes do, but it doesn't work very well.
Jensen doesn't think he'll be able to sleep at all that night, but all the excitement and anticipation from earlier catch up to him, and he's sleeping soundly almost before his mother comes to kiss him goodnight.
The next morning, Jensen sneaks out of the castle courtyard just as soon as he can. Usually, he waits a little while to see if his nurse will call him. He'll play with the children of his father's knights and nobles if they're around, or by himself if they're not. Today, though, the moment his nurse settles down with her embroidery, Jensen is off, ducking under bushes and then climbing over the low garden wall. From there, he sneaks out the back of the castle like he usually does when he goes outside to play, and then he's running straight for the stream where he met the little boy yesterday.
The other boy isn't there when he arrives, and for a minute Jensen is too upset to even realize how disappointed he is. Princes don't cry, though, at least, not where someone might see them, so Jensen scrubs at his face with the back of one balled fist and bites the inside of his cheek and counts as high as he can until the stinging behind his eyes passes and he can swallow around the lump in this throat. The other boy is younger than he is, and usually younger kids are all just annoying, but Jensen was really looking forward to playing with him again today.
He's moved on to just counting, back downwards this time, squashing his disappointment with it, when he gets tackled from behind. "Sorry, my mom made me get a bath this morning," the little boy apologizes from where he's sitting in the middle of Jensen's back.
"Umph," says Jensen, all the air knocked out of him when the other little boy jumped on him.
"Oh, right," the boy responds, climbing off Jensen's back. "Call me Jay, by the way," he says, smiling that wide grin again.
"My name is Jensen," Jensen replies, and the boy--Jay--gets a funny look on his face for a minute. "What?" Jensen asks.
Jay smiles again, though. "Nothing," he says. "I know someone else named Jensen, is all, but he's not very nice. You're much better," he adds confidentially, pulling a twig out of Jensen's hair.
Jensen grins back, and they decide what they're going to play today. Knights is a good game, and one of Jensen's favorites, because they get to ride horses and kill dragons and stuff. Jay says he likes that game too, so they pick that first. They have an argument about who gets to be the prince, because Jensen wants to be the prince, but Jay does too, and they can't both be princes because neither of them wants to be the bad prince, and there can't be two princes on the same side unless they're brothers. And even sometimes then one of the princes is bad, Jensen scowls, thinking about the time his brother dunked him in the fish pond. In the end, they compromise by agreeing to just both be regular knights--knights on a quest! who don't have a prince, because they're questing!--and play at killing dragons and bushes together with sticks.
They play knights until they both get tired, and flop into the long grass in one of the meadows nearby to rest. They point out pictures in the clouds for a while, until Jensen gets bored.
He rolls over onto his tummy and props his face in his hands. "Did you get enough magic pebbles yesterday to get your puppy? I guess not, 'cause you didn't bring a puppy today."
Jay makes an annoyed face. "Naw, there weren't any more round pebbles in that rocky place by the stream. Gonna have to find somewhere else to look, I guess."
"There's a huge pile of rocks over by the big oak tree!" Jensen remembers, jumping up to his feet. "Wanna go look there?"
"Yeah!" Jay jumps up, too, and they spend the rest of the afternoon searching in crevices around the bigger rocks for little, white, perfect, round pebbles so Jay can wish for his puppy.
"What're you gonna name it?" Jensen asks, the next week. They've been playing together outside the castle walls every day, and Jensen doesn't think he's ever had more fun in his life. His dad's knights and nobles' kids are ok, but they're not as much fun as Jay, even if he is probably some kind of peasant. Jay looks a little clean for your typical peasant, but Jensen's never really seen any close up except grown-up ones who have traveled for days to talk to his daddy the king, and traveling makes you dirty. Plus, Jensen knows moms. Moms make you do things like take baths, even when you had one last week and don't really need one again.
They're still looking for pebbles in between playing other games, and Jay already has 37 pretty white pebbles that they've decided are round enough to be magic.
Jay shrugs. "If it's a girl dog, then I'm gonna name it Sadie, and if it's a boy, then I'll name it Harley."
"Which do you want more?" Jensen asks, trying to picture Jay with his future wish-puppy. He pushes a little twig with a leaf at the top into the pile of dirt they've been making. It's too low and crumbly to really be a castle, but the leaf looks like a banner anyway.
Jay drops the stick he's been using to dig in the dirt and flops onto his back on a hummock of grass. He tucks his hands behind his head, and Jensen wanders over to sit nearby. "I dunno," he says. "I think I'll let the magic decide."
A month later, they've exhausted all the nearby places to look for white pebbles. The streambank, the rock pile; they've even checked a little by the side of the road, even though they've both agreed they shouldn't play there because they might get in trouble if their parents see them. "I'm not supposed to be out here," Jensen confessed one day. Jay looked relieved and said he wasn't either.
They searched the edge of the road anyway, once they'd been over the stream bed for the fifth time, and now they're pretty sure they've found all the white pebbles there are to find in the woods nearby. Jay only has seventy-four pebbles.
"This sucks," Jensen says, splashing his feet in the stream morosely. His shoes are off, settled in a pile with Jay's on top of a smooth, flat rock where they can't lose them.
"Well, they wouldn't be magic if they were easy to find, right?" Jay reasons. He's kind of upset, too, but isn't prepared to give up hope or stop looking just because they don't know where else to look right now. Besides, there's a crawdad living under the rock he's standing over, and Jay is determined to catch it. Jensen caught it yesterday, and it's been hiding ever since he put it back.
The sun is shining brightly the next day when Jensen meets Jay. The whole summer has flown by, but it's still hot, and Jensen hopes they'll still have a long time to play before it starts getting really cold or snowing or something. Fall will be fun playing outside with Jay, he thinks--they can pile up leaves and then jump in them, or run through them, which is a game that's fun to play even inside the castle courtyard. Once all the leaves have come down, though, and it starts snowing, Jensen isn't sure how easily he'll be able to sneak out. His nurse likes to stay inside where it's a little bit warmer and a lot less windy. Making snow forts with Jay might be a lot of fun too, though, and Jensen wonders if maybe he'll be able to sneak Jay into the castle then.
These thoughts take Jensen all the way to their usual meeting spot. When Jay shows up, though, he looks sad.
"My parents say we're gonna go visit my cousins in Rabadhishan," Jay tells Jensen dejectedly. "I hoped we wouldn't go this year, so we could keep playing." Jensen isn't really sure where Rabadhishan is, exactly, but it features as 'far away' in one of his fancy hand-painted picture books.
"That's really cool!" Jensen can't help but exclaim. "Is it really all sand forever and ever?"
Jay perks up a little in the face of Jensen's enthusiasm. Jay is usually cheerful anyway, and seems to forget, at least momentarily, why he was upset about having to go in the first place. "It is! Sand, and some little desert palm trees. Except for the city. The city is really big and has all these sandy-colored buildings with pretty, colorful roofs. Dad says that sometimes they have to repaint all of them because of sandstorms! But we always go in August, and they don't have sandstorms then, so I've never seen one."
Jay spends most of the rest of the afternoon telling Jensen about Rabadhishan, until Jensen can imagine it so well, it's like he's been there himself. He tries to imagine what it must be like to be so hot and dry all day, and then get so cold at night, and thinks he almost manages to. In honor of Jay going to the desert, they spend the parts of the afternoon when he's not telling stories--from the one time he got lost in the big, central market place on the last day and how he was afraid his parents would forget him and go back home without him and he'd be stuck as an orphan, to the time his cousin got a pet monkey and it got into his mother's travel trunks--pretending to be desert bandits in the wilderness.
Winter seems to stretch out forever. Jensen's nursemaid keeps a closer eye on him than usual, maybe to make up for all the times she didn't know where he was during the summer, and only lets him play outside a little bit each day. When she does, first she bundles him up until he feels like a giant ball of yarn, and then she bundles herself up until she looks like a huge furry bear, and then they're allowed to go outside.
It's best when his nursemaid coordinates with some of the other nobles' nurses, or if they catch some outside too, because then the nurses retreat to a little ensconced part of the garden and chatter about whatever grown-ups talk about, leaving all their little ball of yarn charges to build snow forts and have snow fights. When it's just Jensen and his nurse, he's still allowed to build snow forts if he wants (even though it's not nearly as much fun by himself), but she won't throw snow balls with him, and she gets really angry when he throws them at her, so he stopped doing that a long time ago. All he's allowed to do is build snowmen or snow castles or make snow angels, and it's boring and not fun.
Then his nursemaid bundles him back inside, even though he's still playing and not that cold, even if his teeth are chattering, clucking about how his lips are blue and he's going to lose fingers if he stays out any longer. Then she unwraps all his layers and lays them out by the fire before she puts him into new clothes. That part is kind of nice, because he was kind of cold, and once they get inside where it's warmer, then it feels like all the snow he's collected on top of his clothes melts all at once and all his layers of wool soak it up instantly and he's shivering and wet.
Most of the time, though, Jensen's nurse won't take him outside in the first place, and Jensen has to amuse himself indoors where he has to be quieter, and not knock things over, and he's always getting scolded to not get into that, and to stay out from under people's feet, and to use his indoor voice, for goodness' sake! Jensen misses playing with Jay terribly and daydreams of all the mischief they could get up to together, but Jay is far away in Rabadhishan where it never snows at all, and Jensen is stuck inside most of the time. Jensen isn't exactly sure which is the least fun part, but he does know he can't wait for winter to be over so Jay can come back and they can play outside in the woods again.
Winter slowly melts into spring, and Jensen drags mud everywhere after he comes back in after going outside. His nurse is too much of a veteran to be appalled at the state of his princely clothing, but she makes tsk-ing noises at him anyway, so he knows he's not getting a free pass. In early April, his parents leave the castle. They take Jensen's older brother with them because although he's a prince now, one day when he's a grown-up he's going to be the king and has to see what kings are supposed to do. Since his big brother is going, they tell Jensen very firmly that he has to take care of his baby sister, who is one and a half and always running shakily into everything. She's ok for the first twenty minutes but starts crying as soon as she realizes Mama and Papa aren't coming back, and she keeps crying for a really long time despite Jensen's best efforts to distract her. Eventually her nursemaid gives up, too and puts her to bed and explains to Jensen that she'll be more happy in the morning and that he was a good boy for being so nice to his little sister.
Jensen nods sagely and pretends he doesn't miss his parents either, because he's a prince and has to be brave and not act like a little baby. Instead, Jensen concentrates on how much fun he'll have once Jay comes back from Rabadhishan. Maybe Jay will have met some real desert bandits. Then when he comes back, he'll tell Jensen stories about how they showed him their bandit treasure hoard and about the fire lizards that they have to guard it. Fire lizards are the size of Great Danes, but since they're lizards, their legs are shorter and their bellies drag on the ground. They have long tails to make up for it, though, and a row of spikes all the way down their spine from the back of their necks all the way down to the very tip of their tails. They're the color of sand and spit fireballs the size of Jensen's sister when they're hungry or angry, which Jensen is pretty sure is all the time. Otherwise, they wouldn't be good for guarding treasure.
Since the desert bandits will be showing Jay their treasure, though, the fire lizards won't eat him or spit fireballs at him, and maybe they'll give him a baby fire lizard to bring back. That would be pretty cool. Not as cool as the puppy Jay wants, but all they have in Rabadhishan is a lot of sand and no little round white pebbles, so Jay won't have been able to make his wish yet.
It's that thought that gives Jensen the idea. Jay has wanted a puppy for nearly a year, which is like forever, but Jay can't find any pebbles while he's away, so he can't get his wish-puppy yet. Jensen will find the remaining pebbles for Jay and then give them to him when he gets back, and then he can make his wish, and then when they play outside together, Jensen will get to play with the wish-puppy, too. Jensen is excited about the idea of a puppy because he's never had a puppy before, and when his father's hunting dogs have puppies he's never allowed to play with them because they have to get training. Obviously, Jay's puppy will belong to Jay and not to him, but having a puppy would make Jay so happy Jensen thinks it's worth it.
Jensen's private search for pebbles is slow-going. It's still muddy out, and Jensen's nursemaid keeps a sharp eye on him because the king and queen aren't back from their tour of the kingdom yet. She is not, she says, going to be responsible for him drowning himself in mud while his royal parents are away, so he'd better be on his best behavior. He also makes sure to play with his baby sister a lot more because his mama told him to and because his daddy told him it was his loyal duty to his monarch and the throne to take care of her. Jensen doesn't want to be a traitor, so he spends much of the spring in his sister's nursery making her toy horses and dolls besiege each other. Mackenzie doesn't seem to understand the game, though, and usually just runs shrieking happily through both encampments' defenses before plopping down on her fat baby bottom and clapping delightedly.
When this happens, Jensen shrugs and rebuilds defenses for both sides as best he can. He figures if the evil Padalecki army or his daddy's good army had a giant baby sister, they'd probably win the war. Baby sisters can be very destructive.
Jensen isn't able to sneak outside the castle while his parents are away, but he decides that's OK because he and Jay already searched everywhere they could think of outside the castle for the little white pebbles. Looking for the little stones by himself isn't as much fun as it was with Jay, not even when Jensen pretends that it's a real Quest with a capital Q and the fate of his kingdom rests on finding them. He also can't take as many breaks to play other games because being knights or princes or desert bandits is really no fun at all to do alone. Jensen can still play those games with the other children in the court, and he does, but he also wants to keep his search for magic pebbles a secret in case there aren't enough to share. If he tells the other kids, they'll all want one hundred pebbles, too, so they can make their own wishes, and Jensen knows just how hard the perfect round ones are to find. If anyone deserves a wish, it's Jay, because he's been looking the longest, and Jensen isn't going to risk Jay losing his chance just because he's not there.
Royal flower gardens are, Jensen discovers, really not very good places to look for rocks. There are lots of flowers, and some bushes, and some more flowers. There aren’t many pebbles, white or otherwise, to be found there. There is mulch on the ground, and manure, which he only gets into the one time because his nursemaid swats him so hard he has trouble remembering that princes aren’t supposed to cry. Jensen figures princes probably get an exception about not crying when their nurses spank them.
Gardens also have a lot of strict gardeners who don’t like it when you get into their flower beds and call Jensen's nurse to take him 'somewhere else to play.' Jensen is used to playing with the other children on the grass, or, occasionally, climbing in the trees in the orchards, which the gardeners never seemed to mind before. Apparently, rooting through flower beds is viewed very differently. In the end, Jensen gives the flower garden up as a lost cause and decides to look somewhere else.
Jensen's continued search in the orchard goes much better than his attempt in the flower gardens. For one thing, trees don't really seem to mind rocks, and orchards don't have to appeal to the critical eye of visiting dignitaries, so stones of all sizes aren't cleared away with nearly as much vigour as they are amongst the flowers.
Jensen may get a little distracted climbing trees on the days he looks for pebbles in the orchard, but trees are exciting, and the ones out in the forest around the castle are either too small to climb or way too tall for him to reach even the lowest branches. Orchard trees are perfect. Plus, there are cherry blossoms on the trees and some pear blossoms coming out. Jensen knows not to pick any of these flowers because if he does they won't turn into fruit, but it's fun to sit up in the branches and imagine he's inside a cloud.
Jensen eventually searches around the base of every tree in the orchard, and while he finds lots of pretty little rocks, only six are small and white and round enough to be magic. Jensen wraps them carefully into a linen handkerchief embroidered with his initials and puts them in the very back corner of the toy box in his room. He has to be careful no one knocks the folded linen loose rooting through the chest for toy soldiers or storybooks and lets a hard-won magic pebble get lost.
The ground starts drying out, and all the spring flowers in the royal flower gardens bloom. The gardeners are less testy because their work looks nice, and the castle maids make a big bouquet and put it in the grand entrance hall because the king and queen are returning from their assessment tour of the far reaches of the kingdom, and the castle has to look pretty for when they come back.
Jensen is really happy to see his parents again. His baby sister is even happier and toddles into the middle of the Royal Homecoming Ceremony shrieking with delight with her little baby arms raised above her head. Her nurse scurries after her shamefacedly and tries to scoop her back up into her arms, but the queen opens up her own arms and drops down to let Mackenzie run happily into them, so the nurse just backs into the edges of the crowd to await the queen's pleasure should she signal for her to take Mackenzie back. Sometimes Jensen has a hard time believing that Mackenzie is going to grow up to be a princess, because she always acts like such a baby, but maybe that's what baby princesses do.
There are banquets and parties (even though Jensen still isn't allowed to stay up for those), and his brother is nicer than usual and takes Jensen with him on his horse around the courtyard and plays games with both him and Mackenzie, even though before he went on the trip with their parents, he mostly ignored both of them because they were 'too little.' It's so much excitement and activity that Jensen forgets about the magic pebbles for nearly two weeks.
It’s halfway through May by the time Jensen remembers his Quest for Magic Pebbles and, he’s ashamed to think, Jay coming back. It’s already past the time of year it was when they first met a year ago. When Jensen realizes this, he sneaks away from his nursemaid and outside the castle walls every day for a week, even though once, on Wednesday, his nurse caught him just after he got safely back inside the garden. She had been looking for him for nearly an hour and had “called herself hoarse in the process.” Jensen was in so much trouble that night he didn’t get dessert after dinner.
It's pretty warm out even in the mornings and getting warmer, and most of the mud is gone. There are a lot of flowers blooming and slow, heavy bumblebees buzzing their way between them. It's perfect dragon-fighting weather.
Jay doesn't come on Monday, and he doesn't come on Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday or Friday, either. Jensen begins to lose hope, which means that he spends less time defeating dragons of bushes with his stick of a sword and more time sitting on a rocky outcropping by the stream and waiting, while looking dejectedly at the water as it burbles past. Maybe Jay is mad at him for forgetting about the pebbles and isn't going to come play with him any more. Jensen sticks his stick in the stream, even though his daddy said you never ever put your sword into water if you can help it, and if you have to, you need to take it out and wipe it dry and make sure the sheath isn't wet before you put it back in, or it's bad for it. But Jensen misses Jay and is pretty sure his not being there is his fault, and his sword is really just a stick anyway instead of a real sword, so he sticks it in the stream, and since the water's flowing past too quickly to swirl it in depressive circles, he kicks up mud from the bottom of the stream instead and watches the clouds of debris flow away from him downstream.
Jensen hardly plays at all on Saturday; there's almost no point, because sure, maybe the bushes in the woods are more fun than the neat rows of shrubbery within the castle walls, but the trees in the orchard are a lot more fun to climb because the bottom branches aren't as hard to reach and Jensen doesn't have to worry about getting in trouble. It was, honestly, a lot more fun in the little strip of woods outside the castle before Jensen realized he could have been playing with Jay out there. If he isn't going to be playing with Jay, he can do that inside the castle grounds just as easily.
That is, of course, when Jay leaps upon him from the back and sends them both tumbling into the shallow stream. There's enough water to get them both soaked, but not much more than that, Jensen's knees scraping the muddy bottom of the stream, and Jay's knees mostly in the middle of Jensen's back.
Jensen is still sort of damp when he gets home, and very definitely muddy in places, and he gets in a lot of trouble with his nurse for that. He also gets the sniffles for three days after for running around all day in wet clothing, even if it's not nearly as cold as it was a few weeks ago. Jensen doesn't mind at all.
Jensen and Jay play the rest of the summer. Jay is delighted when Jensen gives him the few pebbles he's managed to collect on his own, as if six pebbles over a whole winter were really a lot, and it makes Jensen puff up with pride for having made Jay so happy. Jay tells Jensen all about Rabadhishan, and how his aunt lives in this house that looks like a normal house on the outside, but inside there's this outdoor courtyard with a fountain made out of blue and red and white tiles. It sounds a lot like the courtyard in Jensen's castle except for the fountain, but Jay says it's not like castles because the whole thing is paved with flat stones and much much smaller and even the poorest of peasants have little courtyards in their houses, because otherwise it gets too hot in the afternoons because of the desert.
They spend a lot of time looking for pebbles, but there still aren't many left to be found. Jay has a more cheerful attitude than Jensen in general, but he gets impatient like all little kids when things don't work out, reminding Jensen for the first time in a while that he's younger. Jensen has more patience, but he doesn't mind when Jay's frustration means they take breaks to play other games. One of Jensen's favorites this summer is desert bandits, even though Jay says he didn't really get to meet any this year, either.
May turns to June, and June stretches into dusty July. When they finally hit one hundred, it doesn't register for two extra days when they find a hundred and first pebble and do a recount. It is decided that they need a proper wish-making ceremony, to convey the proper pomp to the affair, so they tie the pebbles back up into the handkerchief they've been keeping them in to keep them safe and together until they're ready. The two boys make little crowns out of long-stemmed weeds and work extra leaves in to make them look more majestic. They pick the rock pile by the big oak tree to perform the ceremony, because it kind of looks like a dais if you look at it right, and the oak tree leaves branching out behind it catch the light like stained glass.
Neither boy has been to a Wishing Ceremony before, but a quick conference decides that Jay, as the wish maker, should carry the pebbles forward towards the rock pile, where Jensen will stand as the master of ceremonies. They rush to their 'places' and Jensen raises his arms high. He doesn't have a robe, which would be better, but his leafy crown is good enough. He holds up the extra pebble and beckons grandly. Jay walks forward at a mostly stately pace, handkerchief full of pebbles clasped in his hands and held out in front of him majestically. When he gets to the base of the rock pile, he screws his face up, eyes shut tight. A few moments later, he relaxes and opens his eyes, and that's that. Wish made. Afterward, Jensen knights Jay with a stick even though that's for, well, knighting instead of wish-making, to make it more dramatic.
Jay isn't allowed to say what he actually wished for, even though they've wondered often enough what kind of puppy Jay is going to get after he made his wish for Jensen to know anyway. Jensen, they decide, should be the one to safeguard the pebbles until the wish comes true--Jay's cousin told him this past year in Rabadhishan that you have to keep the pebbles you wished on safe and together until the wish comes true, or it won't after all. It's a lot harder to keep track of one hundred little pebbles if you have to go visit your aunt in Rabadhishan in the winter, and they don't want to jeopardize the wish they've worked so hard to earn. Jensen doesn't feel right keeping all of the pebbles when they looked for them together, so in the end Jay takes the hundred and first pebble, to make it more even.
They spend the rest of the summer, before Jay has to go back to Rabadhishan for the winter again, waiting for Jay's wish to come true.
Autumn rolls around, leaves changing color. Jay leaves, two weeks later than last year, because of one last bout of summer heat late in the year.
The October rains start. Jensen has more trouble sneaking out of the castle again, but by now it doesn't matter. Jay's left for the winter, and it won't be until May comes and the flowers come out that they'll get to play together again. It's a mild winter; the wet ground freezes, but they don't get as much snow as usual. Jensen stays inside and plays with his little sister and tries to make her smile now that she's getting big enough to really be fun to play with.
In the spring, early, before the rains start and can turn the roads to mud, Jensen is fostered away. The kingdom of Harris is to the east: swamps and forests and green fertile ground. They don't get really cold winters or snow, his nurse explains to him, but instead it rains and rains all winter, and the summers are hot and humid. Jensen is excited to see a place that's green all year round, where the leaves don't have to fall off the trees because they need to get ready for the winter. His father's father's younger brother was good friends with the princess of Harris (who later became the ruling queen, a few years before Jensen's grandfather took the throne here at home), and it is time for their kingdoms to renew ties.
At first, everything is new and exciting. Jensen misses his parents, his nurse, and his brother and sister, but they're family, and family and fostering can never abandon you. Jensen's sad about Jay, though; he doesn't know when he'll see Jay again, and he didn't get a chance to say goodbye.
Master Post
Part 2