The Seasonal Accountings occur at the January, April, July and October gatherings. These are times to show what supremacy the court can muster. It is common to swear oaths based on these accountings.
The Spring Accounting sees the Spring Court at its high point. Normally, the Spring see it as an affront to let the Winter Formal take their thunder, so they try to outdo them. This event occurred April 26.
The Spring Accounting was an interesting event. The turn out of the changeling population was very low, with only a few members of each court present, and many were distinctly late, particularly Bobby 13-Times who entered with an off putting pun “Sorry I am late, something Kept me.”
It was thought that many individuals were snubbing the event, particularly the Winter Court. However, due to tradition, the Winter King made an appearance, bringing with him his former Bodyguard Dmitri Rattrap, who had managed to escape from Arcadia for a second time.
The absence of the Scarecrow King and Spring Court except for Warden Hart was very notable. The Scarcrow King had never missed an event since ratifying the compact, being tied to ritual. More disturbing was that the Scarecrow King had decided to hunt down the Green Prince this month. The signs of the Scarecrows hunting were present all month in the hedge, but suddenly broke today, becoming vibrantly Spring. The absence of the Spring courtiers was less clear, but was very noticeable, with even less clear reasons.
Despite the strange and low turnout, many notable things occurred. First, as mentioned above, Bobby 12-Time apparently had visited Arcadia once again this month, returning as Bobby 13-Times, as well as ready for construction.
Johnny Baboon, a wanderer who usually accompanies Mr. Preta (the one who called on the population of Regina for a change) was in attendance. He is something of a celebrity chef.
The the Scarecrow’s Pet led Quincy off to kill the Hedge beast. However, there was a lack of communication and instead Quincy was led to a hedge beast: the Snark. A brutal yet quick battle occurred. The snark roiled and transformed. But Quincy held his ground. With brutal skill, he struck the beast down. Somehow, the act of doing this granted Quincy Elagabalus’ eyes, as the essence of the beast coalesced into him.
Additionally, Ruby, who had followed and attended Quincy’s battle, felt some strange sympathy to the beast, repairing it as Quincy fought it, releasing aspects of a strange Cyclopean Basalt land into the hedge. The snark seemed to be of this land. This was not the only time Ruby exhibited strange behavior such as this, oftentimes calling other monstrous dream things into existence, things like strange flying rainbow fish-slug things. Something had touched and changed her dramatically last month (the word nulm was bandied about a bit, as were the Gibbering things).
Thuddin managed to catch a glimpse of Athalvolf during the battle with the Snark and ran after her, as she was fighting with the great Briarwolf. He fought but was not a match for the monster. However, it left him alone and he came back to the gathering.
Aisling had new prophecies to share, and received more insight from talking to the logs Bobby was carrying about.
Through all of this, Warden did his best to make the night feel like a party, including bringing mortal revelers. However, the other concerns outweighed this.
Due to concerns with Ruby, Warden did not start the throne speech. Instead, the Winter King began, and cited that he was truly in control, responsible for this weather and was stealing Warden’s thunder amongst other things. Eventually, Warden felt the icy chill of this declaration, and began a speech of his own. However, it seemed too late, for as he gave his speech, and suffered the heckling of the Winter King, every time Warden mentioned that he was Spring Monarch, the Crown would flicker from his head, culminating during a portion of the speech about getting support for his causes and receiving oaths, he made a statement about being the True Spring King bearing the Seal of Bridgeberry. At this point, the Crown and Seal vanished, leading to shock and outrage about the room.
During the throne speech, Quincy and Aisling declared that they would hunt the influence of the Green Prince in the city.
At this point, in reaction to the loss of the crown, some of the absences became apparent. While Warden held a revel in the real world, deep in the accounting halls, the Scarecrow King (who from this one can work out was not dead) and all of the other Scarecrows were signing another into the compact as Spring King (which was commonly speculated to be Uxbridge). This ceremony was such that they did not wish to be disturbed, but assured all that they were accounted.
The night continued, with more strange occurrences. Twitch arrived, much happier without the constant countdown. This led him to actually be vaguely sociable, which is a strange occurance.
Around this time people slowly began to hear strange voices in their heads, telling the about such things as “He is coming” or “beware the Owls” or “he knows” or “Johnny Baboon is going to eat you”. This continued and stirred people up for a bit.
The Summer Court decided that the best course of action to get a proper King (based on the changes brought onto Quincy by the Snark and other revelations that they encountered) was to be as much like Elagabalus as possible. Therefore, Quincy declared a challenge to the hedge, that he would vanquish the Ogre King, as the Elagabalus had so many years before.
The final strange happening was enough to send the weary crowd scrambling and call it a night: the room filled with owls, bursting in from every entrance, all bearing the same message: “He is coming. There is no going back”.