[Regalis: in search of Peace and Quiet!]

•chapter six•

I'm sorry for the shitstorm that went down last month. It was ugly, and the messages pertaining to it are gone now. In short, I got riled up and reacted in a ture me fashion, with an explosion, and got my shit handed to me for it. Eh. Let's not talk about it.

Chapter Beta'd for you by Karp!

Today's warnings; fantasy racism, a kid being a mean little shit, and an eight-year-old punching another eight-year-old square in the face.

[Regalis: in search of Peace and Quiet!]

•chapter six•

Girl visits the gardens. Girl punches the prince. Girl meets the princess.

•••

Before long, Scarlett offers the children to go to the gardens while the adults catch up, and while Adetta would much prefer to just snag a book from one of the shelves in the office and cram herself into one of the corners with it, she is also fully and well aware that leaving the children without supervision in palace gardens spanning literal acres is literally asking for trouble. As much as she would like to believe in Elijah and Rosaria, they were small children, and she knew from firsthand experience that small children oftentimes came up with most ridiculous and most dangerous ideas, due to their severe lack of concept of danger.

And no, leaving a maid with them is not an option, as they won't go against orders, even ridiculous ones from children. Adetta is the only one who can really reign them in.

"Alastair and Chantal should be somewhere there, so go introduce yourselves," Scarlett smiles, eyes twinkling, and Adetta sends her a suspicious glance. She remembers that in game, younger Alastair used to be a Joffrey-worthy little shit, and Scarlett of all people would know that Adetta would not stand to that behavior.

Was the queen staging a confrontation between Adetta and Alastair on purpose? She did warn them of such possibility and neither Tobias nor Scarlett seemed overly concerned.

Did they actually want Adetta to literally beat some sense into their son, if it actually came to physical blows?

Oh well. One way to find out.

Crawforde sends her a sour face as they leave, silently pleading that she does not, in fact, go after the prince, and she just shrugs, and mouths 'I always just react accordingly'. If anyone will be to blame today, it will be Alastair only, and they all better know it.

♦►☼◄♦

The palace gardens were an actual, literal plant maze of which size overshadowed those at Bellville Manor, and the splendor overshadowed it. But there was a wild charm to those back home, as if a piece of forest, sequestered and subjected to only minimal human influence—paved paths, lamp-posts, and benches, and then just nature—that could not be found here, among the perfectly trimmed hedge fences and flowers planted in fancy shapes, perfectly outlined little ponds and small fencings. Bellville's Garden was, in a way, a jungle, a wonderland full of secrets and secret paths. The Secret Garden that was not secret at all, if you knew where to look.