[au] Narnia and the North

[the_seafarer]

There's a chill bite to the air, these days. The horses have been growing out their winter coats, and they look shaggy and plump as Caspian turns them out into the paddocks. Behind the stables, in the makeshift woodshop he'd cobbled together, the sleigh from his drawings is starting to come together. 

He hopes he'll have it finished by Christmas. With a little luck, and maybe some assistance, he thinks it should be possible. The tack, he's largely left up to Susan's devices, though he'd commission Gimli the dwarf for the various buckles and other metal pieces they'll need.

Once the horses are turned out, he gets to his other morning chores with a will, whistling cheerfully as he does. The stable stays strangely quiet around him. It takes him the better part of an hour to realize the strangeness is because he's become accustomed to Susan's cheerful presence working alongside him, talking or humming or simply working in companionable silence. 

Caspian pauses in his task – refilling the grain chest – and looks around. Susan's nowhere to be seen, and when he later wanders through the stables, checking each stall and outside, he can't find her there, either.

Comments

[sai_delgado]

"We heard you walking on the deck," Susan puts in, wanting to explain. "And came to see who it were."

[the_seafarer]

"And just as well, too, for no one knows this ship quite like Drinian," Caspian tells her.

His friend smiles, teeth white against the tan of his skin and beard, and politely offers an arm. "I'd be delighted to accompany you... and to protect against further mischief."

[sai_delgado]

(we'd all protect her if we could)

"I'm sure there's naught of need for protection," she says, lightly, but rests her hand on Drinian's arm with a warm smile. "But yer company'd be much welcomed by both of us, say true."

[the_seafarer]

"Then perhaps it is you who are doing me the favor, by allowing me to tour the ship I love with a beautiful woman on my arm," Drinian says, his blue eyes twinkling.

Caspian's mouth twitches as he fights a laugh. "Careful with that one, Su," he counsels, strolling nearby. "He's always been terribly charming."

[sai_delgado]

Susan, in turn, doesn’t try to keep from laughing. “Oh, it’s thick as thieves the two of ye are, I kennit,” she teases. “With manners fair as yer faces, too.”

[the_seafarer]

"Some fairer than others," Caspian jokes, and Drinian sighs.

"Shall I show you the forecastle, miss?" he asks, and escorts Susan toward the bow of the ship, where the great dragon's head rears, glowing gold in the sun. "Here, the sailor on watch would stand, keeping a sharp eye for pirates and other dangers."

"And Reep would often sit here, too," Caspian tells her. "We never did seem to sail quite fast enough for him."

[sai_delgado]

“Let me simply be Susan to ye, I pray,” she tells Drinian, then beams a quick smile at Caspian. “I can just see him doing so, eager to see what’d lie ahead, so I can.”

Susan peers closely at the side of the great gilt dragon, then climbs up a step to look out the way the sailor on watch would have done. “It reminds me of a tale of a prince who looked through the eyes of a dragon,” she muses. “Many and many-a year ago, in a far, far-off kingdom.”

[the_seafarer]

"You've met Sir Reepicheep, then?" Drinian says, surprised and pleased in equal measure. "No doubt he's told you all our stories."

Caspian smiles to watch her clambering around the ship. "If he were looking through the actual eyes of a dragon, we've a story like that, too," he says, cheerful. "Though I doubt Eustace remembers it so fondly."

[sai_delgado]

"Aye, and that I have." Susan turns back around with unselfconscious grace on the perch to look down at Drinian as she explains. "He found his way to - to the place between worlds where I first met His Majesty," she decides, "and it were there I met him, too. He's very dear, and has told me some of yer tales, but not nearly all yet, I'd wager."

She shakes her head at Caspian, then, sending golden hair cascading down over her shoulder. "Nay, not the same as being turned so," she clarifies. "This were a dragon-trophy, the head of one taken in a hunt when it threatened the land's people and mounted as a prize on the wall of the old king's chamber. But there were a secret passage behind it that even the king knew naught of, ye see."

[the_seafarer]

Drinian shakes his head, but fondly. "He never could abide an adventure he couldn't go on," he says, amused.

"We'll give him your best on our return," Caspian tells him, and meets the curious, keen glance his old friend sends his way with a small nod; one that says we shan't be staying, not this time.<

Drinian nods back. "Do," he says, and turns to Susan. "And I'd wager the rest of that story is a good one."

[sai_delgado]

"I kennit," she agrees, and oh, but it's clear from her tone that Susan's deeply fond of the Mouse. "He's a brave and selfless creature, say true."

Susan hops back down to the deck and looks up at Drinian. "Well, in the end it were, but at the time it were a dangerous trial for the prince and his brother both." She thinks over the story, and thinks about Caspian's father, and hastily decides to tell an abbreviated version. "Ye see, the young prince Thomas came upon the passageway and were led by ka to the window behind the dragon's eyes, where he witnessed a great treachery in the making - but he weren't able to warn his brother in time, and so the older prince were betrayed and thrown in a tower prison. But eventually the two brothers were able to be reunited once more, and Prince Thomas used the bow of his father, the very same that slew the dragon, to drive the enemy from their kingdom."

[the_seafarer]

Sailors love stories as much as they do songs and superstition, and both Caspian and Drinian listen attentively and with visible appreciation.

"Ka?" asks Drinian, and Caspian explains, as well as he can: "Fate, or something similar. Like destiny."

"Well," Drinian continues, once she's finished. "That is a fine tale, and no mistake. And it all came right in the end, which is always pleasant to hear."

[sai_delgado]

Susan nods, confirming Caspian's explanation. "Ka like a wind, my da' always used to say. And when it comes, yer plans'll stand before it no more than a barn before a cyclone."

She flushes the faintest pink at Drinian's compliment. "Ye say true, and I say thankya," she agrees. "I've always loved a good story myself."

[the_seafarer]

"Well, any sailor will tell you the best way to deal with a wind that strong is to run before it and let it blow you where it may," Drinian tells her. "For to do anything else, if you can't find safe harbor, will only end in catastrophe."

He offers his hand, gallant, to help her down from her perch, though he smiles as he does it. "If you enjoy that view, perhaps you'd like to see the one aloft, from the fighting-top."

[sai_delgado]

(bird and bear and hare and fish)

"Ye're right about that," Susan agrees. She's careful, so very careful, not to let her glance flicker toward Caspian, and to keep her tone and smile easy still. "For it will or no, and changes everything as it passes."

(charyou tree - come, Reap)

But oh, it's easier than ever she'd thought it might be, with the memory set at a distance and the pain and fear of it that she'd woken with unable to touch her, and as she realizes it Susan's smile brightens further. She places her hand in Drinian's and lets him help her, then tips her head back to look up before she beams at him in sudden delight. "Could I really?"

[the_seafarer]

"Yes, of course," Drinian tells her, his smile flashing once more. He glances over at Caspian, eyes twinkling merrily. "Will you join, Sire?"

"If Susan likes," is Caspian's easy answer, as he smiles at her.

[sai_delgado]

"Thee kens I would, if thee's an interest," she teases, amused. "But I'll not make thee climb if thee'd not want."

[the_seafarer]

He opens his mouth to agree, but something behind Susan catches his eye: a flash of tawny gold, deeper than sunlight. "Go on," he tells her, instead, meeting her glance once more.

"I think I'd like a moment to look through my old cabin."

[sai_delgado]

Her expression softens, as does her smile. "Of course thee would," she says, simply. "We'll see thee after."

Susan turns to Drinian with a sparkle of laughter in her glance. "Lead on, Lord Captain, and I'll follow ye where ye'd have me go."

[the_seafarer]

"If I'm to call you 'Susan,' then you might as well call me 'Drinian,'" the man chuckles, leading her over to the rigging they'll use to climb their way to the fighting-top. "Or just Captain, I pray."

Caspian watches them go, then makes his own way back to the hatch and disappears belowdecks.

[sai_delgado]

"If ye're certain ye'd not mind." She flashes him a quick smile as she digs in her pocket for the leather cord and ties her hair back in a loose horse-tail to keep it from her face while she climbs. "I ken ye're of the court, ye see."

[the_seafarer]

"I am – or was," he agrees. "A minor courtier under the Usurper, elevated through His Majesty's generosity of spirit once he took his rightful place on the throne."

He follows her up the web of rigging in order to catch her if she slips, and points out her handholds along the way. "But I always preferred being a sailor to being a courtier."

[sai_delgado]

"He mentioned once he'd not taken up navigation or sea-craft until after the rebellion," Susan observes. She slows a little as they reach the top of the rigging, clambering carefully into the fighting-top and waiting to give him a hand in should he need it.

"How did ye come to be such friends?"

[the_seafarer]

Drinian clambers easily up and pulls himself into the fighting-top with a smile of thanks for her willingness to help. "Not all Telmarines feared and hated the sea," he tells her. "There were a few of us who knew how to handle ourselves on the water, a little. So when King Caspian called for volunteers to learn navigation and to rebuild the navy, I stepped forward."

He smiles, remembering. "A more eager lad you could not imagine. He had great plans for rebuilding the country. One couldn't help but be swept away with it all."

[sai_delgado]

The fighting-top sways a little in the wind, and Susan makes sure to keep a grip on one of the lines, even as she steps fearlessly to the very side of it to look down at the deck below with great interest before she turns back to Drinian.

"He were a good king, I wot," she says, open and honest. "I'd not have ye think I'm casting around behind his back, but if ye'd speak, I'd listen. He'd not ever boast, ye ken, so some things I've only ever learned through Sir Reepicheep and others."