chatelaine of cair paravel

[charning]

In the wood, near but not too near the Lantern, drives a sledge, drawn by a reindeer under the whip of a Dwarf, and carrying a woman, of sorts. She is taller, and paler, and somehow - grander, more terrible, colder even than the deep winter through which she rides. The furs are decorative; she wears nothing over her ears, which, were she human, would spell frostbite given how long she has been on this ride.

The harness-bells jingle tinnily.

Comments

[jackfrostbite]

Winter, it turns out, will do all kinds of amusing tricks for a jelly bean.

[charning]

Jadis's trip lasts a long time.

The supply of jelly beans was pretty generous, though. It lasts too; everyone has enough to do and can only occasionally spend their down-time sending him on amusing capers or delegating Winter their less delicate chores in exchange for candy.

One day there is a fateful combination: an incubus with a jellybean and spare time and no ideas.

He toys with the green bean between his clawed thumb and forefinger. "I wonder what you would do for this," he purrs, in a voice like velvet and a serrated knife. "Has anyone found a limit to it yet?"

[jackfrostbite]

Winter laughs.

"Not yet, my lord. Do you care to try?"

[alicornucopia]

"Oh, maybe," says the incubus, as though he has something in mind. He doesn't, yet. He's not a very creative incubus. "What wouldn't you do?"

[jackfrostbite]

"Well, that would be telling," he says reasonably. "Do you just not have any good ideas, my lord? Because—" he licks his frost-blue lips "—I can think of a few."

[alicornucopia]

"Can you," says the incubus, eying the jellybean, and Winter.

[jackfrostbite]

He grins sunnily.

He makes a suggestion.

[alicornucopia]

The incubus takes him up on it.

Winter earns his jelly bean.

The incubus tells all his friends, and Winter is kept very busy for a while.

One of the incubi was already out of the jellybeans he managed to secure, at the time of this event. He sulks.

[jackfrostbite]

Winter decides to cheer him up.

Incubi are fun.

[alicornucopia]

Once it is clear that jellybeans are not, strictly, required as recompense, something of an open season is called on Winter. He must do more and more to earn smaller and smaller chances of candy; the supply dwindles, but there are one or two still floating around, and some of the incubi are capable of cooperating well enough to pass them around, keep Winter guessing, dole them out slower and slower.

News of this new era in Make Winter Do Things spreads quickly, and while incubi are the keenest, they are not the only.

[jackfrostbite]

Winter is, on the whole, happy with this arrangement. He could do with more jellybeans, if more were available, but they aren't and what he gets in their place is... fun.

Mostly.

Not completely.

He doesn't complain. That might get some of them to stop, but not the ones who are the problem.

[charning]

Eventually Jadis returns, with the treasure she sought, minus a few of her companions but ungrieving.

Some of her minions ask her for a resupply.

She wants to know if they've been eating them, and they tell her they have not, they only feed them to Winter.

And she laughs and makes a new jar and distributes them to everyone who wants a few, and she calls Winter over to hand-feed him just one; it is the first jellybean he hasn't had to do anything for in nearly a year.

[jackfrostbite]

Winter beams at her.

[charning]

"My Eternal Winter," she says, but then she's off to play with her new artifacts in her arcane workrooms.

[alicornucopia]

One of the dwarves holds up a yellow jelly bean, smirking.

[jackfrostbite]

His eyes track the bean without conscious intervention.

He licks his lips.

[charning]

A good time is had by - all.

When Jadis finds out what her minions have been doing with the provided jellybeans, she laughs and laughs.

[jackfrostbite]

Winter is amused by her amusement.

[charning]

That is the correct reaction to Jadis's amusement. So he gets a jellybean. And then she sends him away to kill someone the secret police have informed on.

[jackfrostbite]

It's so nice when he has things to do.