Re: The Halls of Castle Amber...
Ballad is in good listener (fairy tale bartender) mode. The silvery blonde smiles rather ruefully when Jade echoes Lance about her being the shadow expert and says, “Perhaps relative to newcomers.”
When Jade marks interest in self preservation aloud that Ballad decides to take a sheet of paper out of her bag — when she ran into the cousins and they changed her course, coat and bag both were at ready for an errand — and scrawl a few notes. Devil’s in the details and this is a devil of a puzzle. There’s a whisper of a frown when Jon says Julian was in a hurry, but it doesn’t stay and the dimple appears again when Jade says, yes, Ballad asked that, for she hadn’t forgotten her question and meant to circle back to it eventually.
She brightens when Jade confirms she’s from Rebma and her mother is Princess Fiona. Earnest, hand to heart: “I’ve always wanted to meet my aunt Fiona. Well, Llewella too. Any aunt, really. And to visit Rebma!”
And then — is there a long, complicated Germerchten word for that feeling when you begin to realize you might be the only child in your family of your generation who may have had two parents equally involved in your life? She feels a sudden, surprising twist of deep affection for her Dad.
"I don't think ol' talonhands was trying to capture me, and neither do my internal organs," she offers Jon, placing a hand over her ribs to indicate she'd been wounded or almost wounded there. When he looks to see whether his father's name brings any negative associations, he finds none with the Very Charming cousin he is Very Determined not to underestimate. Maybe a splash of surprise, but that's all.
Lance's yawn gets a lopsided smile and maybe she slides him a glass of water instead of booze if there's water behind the bar.
"As for when I was attacked, I suppose it might count as 'today,' but it sounded to me," and here a quizzical glance, Lance-wards, as if for confirmation, "like Martin and Rinaldo were both attacked before today. Jon, Jade, Ari, does the commonality you mentioned noticing about your attacks still hold, now that we've all shared our experiences?"
She begins doodling as Jade speculates, little art nouveau stars and vines and nonsense lines, as if it helps her concentrate. "What did the king say about the grey men?" she asks with a slight frown. She scrawls something with a flourish on her piece of paper and turns it toward Jade, although she won't try to hide it from Ariadne, Jon, or Lance, if they make an effort to read it.
"May I ask, that is," and Ballad straightens from her graceful slouch, the nonchalant listening attitude, in order to look a touch imploringly at each of her cousins. "Are we all on the same page about wanting to find out what's behind this grey menace ourselves, not just leave it to the aunts and uncles?" There's an air about this question: as if she maybe has another revelation to drop, should this be a gathering of Scooby Gang.