[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

[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."

[the_seafarer]

"Nay, I know he wouldn't."

Drinian keeps a sharp eye on her, making sure she's safe, and grips the railing in his own hand. "Modest, my King. He always was. Do you know what he said, when the Lion asked if he thought himself sufficient to take on the kingship of Narnia?"

[sai_delgado]

She thinks carefully over everything Caspian's told her, but has to shake her head. "Nay, I don't," she admits. "Oh, I knew the Lion himself had helped him to his throne, but not that."

[the_seafarer]

"He said 'no.'"

Drinian looks out over the water, then back at her. "No, he didn't feel himself sufficient. He was just a kid. After the Usurper, murdering his way to a throne he didn't deserve but to which he felt entitled, to hear the rightful king say he wasn't certain he was enough for it was a strange thing. A good one, too. And it never did go to his head, the way it might have with some others."

[sai_delgado]

"Thirteen," Susan says, softly. "Younger even than the youngest gunslinger there ever were."

Roland had been fourteen, after all.

"Of course it didn't. That's not the kind of man he is." Hearing her own words, she gives him a rueful smile. "Which ye kennit, of course. Ye've known him longer far than I have."

[the_seafarer]

"Aye, he was only a lad in those days. Younger even than he looks now."

His sun-faded blue gaze is keen and curious, but not unkind as he studies the girl. "I had the good fortune of being by his side nearly all my adult life," he agrees. "I flatter myself that you would have a difficult time finding someone who knew him longer, or better."

[sai_delgado]

“I’m glad ye have such a friendship between ye,” she says. “I kennit, how much it means.”

His gaze is clear and considering, missing nothing, and Susan meets it with her own, without challenge or evasion. “Ye’d have questions, I wot. I’d answer them, if ye wanted, and not mind it.”

[the_seafarer]

"It would be unseemly to question a lady as though it were some sort of interrogation," he tells her. "Perhaps we ask questions of each other, for I'm certain you're as curious as I."

[sai_delgado]

"As ye'd have it, then," she says, with a smile. Susan moves around the fighting-top a little, looking out across the sea and down to the ship below, trying to make sure Caspian's not waiting on them, before she looks back to Drinian.

"What were it like for the two of ye, on that first voyage?"

[the_seafarer]

"Exciting," Drinian says, thoughtfully. "Sometimes boring. Sometimes terrifying. We re-took the Lone Islands with only this single ship and a ruse; has he ever told you that story?"

[sai_delgado]

Susan shakes her head. "Not that one. I've heard of Eustace and the dragon," she explains, "and the not-people with the one foot who hopped until Queen Lucy freed them of the spell, and of the Dream-lord's isle, but not that."

[the_seafarer]

Drinian throws his head back and laughs heartily. "The Duffers," he agrees.

"Monopods – Dufflepuds – whatever they called themselves. Aye, that is a fine tale. I'm only glad none of them ever took a fancy to coming aboard. No, this was our first adventure after plucking King Edmund and Queen Lucy and their kinsman from the waves. I'll tell it to you, if you'd like to hear; I expect his Majesty might not tell it himself, for fear of sounding boastful."