the_seafarer | (no subject)

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"We should take the children down to the beach," he tells Marian, when he joins her at breakfast, rubbing seawater out of his hair with a towel. So far, the maids and manservants at Silverhall have been scandalized by the habit the Queen's brother has of wandering down to the shore in the early morning and taking a swim before breakfast, all by himself and returning for coffee and toast looking remarkably cheerful and very damp.

"Amy and Perry are going to busy all day again, and the children oughtn't to be cooped up in the Palace all day. What do you think? We could make it a picnic. You know how they love picnics."

It's true that he has an ulterior motive, but a good one: simply to spend more time with his niece and nephews, and Marian can always be relied upon to both entertain the children and spend time by the sea. Her delight in it has hardly seemed to dim in the few days they've been here, and they may as well take full advantage.

The little Caribbean inlet in Milliways is fair in its way, but nothing compares to this: the long, wide, reaching stretch of ocean, glittering under the sun, with sand shifting beneath his feet and the breeze tugging at him, inviting him further, past the horizon, to the very edge of sea and sky.

So they find themselves, not much later, walking slowly in single file down a wooden stair that leads through the dunes to the flat white sand of the beach: Marian carries a basket, Susan is tasked with the blankets, and Caspian has Merry, perched on his shoulders and searching along the horizon with the spyglass his uncle had brought for him.

"Spot any pirates?" Caspian asks, as Merry navigates them towards the best spot to settle, but his nephew only shakes his head solemnly.

"Not today."

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"You pick the pretty ones!" Susan calls, pulling Uncle Caspian along toward the water.

"You pick the ones you like," Merry says. "They're the right kind."

"And you have to be careful if they're broken," Susan says, helpfully. "Sometimes the edges are sharp."

"We must mind our fingers, then," he says, quite solemnly, allowing himself to be tugged. The sea breeze ruffles at his shirt and hair, and when he looks up, squinting at the sun, it pulls at his collar as well. Susan's skirts, naturally, are nearly like a sail.

At the water, he lets the waves wash over his feet and toes as he obeys Susan's commands, searching for telltale glints before stooping and tugging them free of the sand.

"Here," he tells her, holding out a pretty pale gold shell, so thin and fine that it's nearly translucent.

"How about this?"

Merry and Caspian can be as solemn as they may get. Marian is glad to find the surf. The feeling of water is familiar, but the scent of salt is stronger in a real ocean than the ocean-lake of Milliways. It stretches the endlessness that Santo's memories have but the bar doesn't.

But she'd never thought of collecting shells that time. It will be a memory wholly Ambergeldan and Amy's children. Light, with sunshine and the laughter of all their voices.

"This one?" She's picked up one that curves in a spiral but the side has a chunk that has been broken out by being washed hard against other shells beside it.

"It's broken," Merry says, "but it's pretty."

He holds one out to her shaped like a scallop, white, with a small hole just at the middle of the top edge. "This one for a necklace," he says. It's a good necklace shell.

Susan, meanwhile, studies the one Uncle Caspian has found, and nods. "That's a good one!"

She picks up the hem of the top layer of her dress and holds it so her skirt is now a very large pocket for shell collecting.

(It's what Mama does for blackberries, in the Forest of Faraway. Shhhhhh. Don't tell.)

There are quite a lot of the fragile golden shells, which is convenient because most come with a neat little hole in the smaller end, and Caspian is busy for a quite a while picking out the nicest ones and depositing them in Susan's skirt. Eventually, of course, they have to start getting much more picky, comparing each new shell to the ones found before and tossing those less perfect.

Eventually, though, there's a good collection of them: gold, pink, white, and a few with shining opalescence that glimmer with rainbow colors in the sun.

"What do you think?" Caspian asks. "Enough for a necklace or two?"

Marian nodded, taking the smaller one from Merry to let him keep searching for more. "It's quite beautiful."

The hem of her skirt was well damp, but she continued to look with him, picking some larger for the blanket, but not too large as over weight her own skirt.

Spirals and scallops. Some flat, some with bumps or lines, curving half circles. Different and the same, miraculously. Yet full of so many colors that been kept bounty inside the rolling waves.

Merry turns and starts to answer and then stops, frowning very hard.

"Birds," he says, pointing back towards the blanket, where a half dozen seagulls have managed to get into the picnic basket and are helping themselves to lunch.

"Bad birds," Susan yells, letting go of her skirt (and, unfortunately, the collected shells) and running back towards the blanket. "Go away! Shoo! Bad birds!"

Fortunately, shells can be collected again.

Caspian's legs are longer, and he overtakes Susan as he runs back towards the blanket to shoo away the gulls in a flurry of white feathers and disgruntled squawks.

"Not too bad," he tells the others after a quick inspection of the basket. There are a few ruined pieces of bread and one sadly pecked apple, but those get tossed aside and are immediately set upon once again.

Marian, luckily, managed not to dump her and Merry's shells, but then she's had a lot of time not reacting to sudden noises and unexpected events. Seagulls are more relieving than disappointing in that way all at once.

They do still follow after the other two, after Marian folding her skirt together to carry the collection with one hand, reminding Merry to take a hand, and following after the two who gone running.

Coming up just on Caspian's pronouncement of the food. "Perhaps, lunch should happen next. Before we have more uninvited guests?"

Merry and Susan are not paying any attention to the grown-ups right now.

They are busy chasing the seagulls away from the bread and apple that have been discarded.

"Shoo. Go 'way," Merry says. "You were bad."

"And you don't get rewarded for being bad," Susan adds.

Certainly not bread and apples.

"We're going to save these for birds who weren't bad," Susan says, collecting the rejected and somewhat shredded bread from the beach.

"Let that be a lesson to you," Merry adds, with the air of a child who is quoting a grown-up (and, specifically, who is quoting Nurse Jemima, who believes that just about anything can be made into a lesson).

He helps Marian with the basket, nodding.

"Yes, I think so. Shan't have to worry about it getting gobbled up while we're down the beach and too far to chase the little scavengers off, then."

They unpack quickly, neatly, laying out bread and fruit and cheese and a plate of cold meats. There's something sweet-smelling wrapped in a napkin that gets laid to one side, and he calls to the children.

"Come on! Before I give your share to any birds that wants it."

"Your uncle is a terrible liar," Marian said, brightly, giving the children napkins that get tugged by the breeze already. "We'd totally join up forces and convince him to give us his food, if he did that, wouldn't we?"

Beat, with a small smirk showing, as she leaned, just slightly toward them, as though telling a secret, though her voice was only mock-secret volume. "Or I'd at least join up with you two. I hear that he has no will power where it come to you."

Edited 2012-05-31 01:58 (UTC)

Merry frowns the way only a three-year-old heir to a throne, with fairy-given Integrity can.

"That," he says, finally, slowly and carefully, "would be wrong."

"It's an aboose of power," Susan adds.

"Which is bad," Merry adds.

Papa is very clear about these things.

So is Mama.

But especially Papa.

(If, it would seem, not terribly clear about pronunciation.)

He gives Marian a wounded look that fails, utterly, particularly as he isn't sure whether she means he's terrible at or terrible for it; either way, the children are clearly somewhat less silly than their caretakers for the day.

"Thank you," he tells them, pulling out a stack of soft cloth napkins before grinning at Marian.

"You know my weaknesses too well, my lady. I shall have to be careful not to cross her, don't you think, you two? Now. Who's ready for lunch?"

Susan's slip is rather adorable, leaving Marian for a few seconds having to press her lips together to keep from laughing. Which causes her to miss entirely Caspian's combinations of different reactions and wonders. It's been so long since she spent a long time near young children, but everything they do continues to endear them.

Even slips amid a deft understanding of such a concept. Amy and Perry are quite lucky to her. Their life, even as incredibly busy as it goes, is quite blessed.

Marian reached for a cube of cheese, watching the three of them.

Merry solemnly offers Marian his napkin, while Susan makes sure that Uncle Caspian doesn't cut himself while he's slicing the bread.

Grown-ups do need ever so very much looking after.

But once the bread is sliced, and everyone has a napkin, (and the boldest of the birds has been driven off again with a Stern Look and an apple core), it really is a perfectly lovely picnic by the shore.

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