[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]

(you have to be able to stand)

She nods, and oh, but understanding is clear in the fog-gray eyes. "I know thee would." Soft and certain. "And thee are right, I wot. I don't kennit, why this is happening this way, but ka has its price and mayhap this is part."

Susan sighs. "They feel it too, do'ee ken? The shadow, and the pull."

[the_seafarer]

He presses a kiss to her forehead, then coaxes her to come further into his room, to sit on the edge of his bed. "Lucy and Edmund used to talk about something a little like that," he murmurs. "A pull, something telling them their time in Narnia was almost up. But that was to go home, not – "

He shakes his head and kneels before her, taking her hands carefully in his. Her scrapes and cuts have scabbed over, but he still kisses them gently, mindful of any soreness. "I'll help them, too," he swears. "And you'll all of you help each other, Su. And the morning will come, with a new day for us all."

[sai_delgado]

She doesn't resist as he draws her across the room, and sits where he guides her, listening. As he raises his head from her hands, she curls her fingers around his.

"Come whatever storms," she whispers. "Thee say true. And I'll not - I'll not give in, Caspian, as long as there's breath left to me, I'll not."

[the_seafarer]

"I know you will, dear one."

He thinks of the golden flashes he'd glimpsed on the other side of the door, and of the beloved face seen for a moment in the ship's cabin, and hopes; hopes. "What do you need, Susan? If it's in my power, I'll provide whatever it might be."

[sai_delgado]

A soft protest rises to her lips, the denial automatic, but Susan swallows it back and looks down at their hands.

“I’d not want to be more trouble to thee,” she murmurs, at last. “But if - I’d not wish to wake alone, or, or in the dark. Not this night.”

She worries at her lower lip with her teeth for a moment, then lets out a soft sigh and looks up at him. “It’s - I were asleep when they found me. Jonas and his harriers. It - it weren’t pleasant.“

(shine little sunbeam)

She shakes her head, just a little, and shifts tack.

“After, they dragged me back to Seafront and threw me in a storage room to wait. For the night and the Reap-Fire, although I didn’t kennit then. It were small, and dark. And - and when I woke this morn, it were - it were like—“

Words fail her, and she shakes her head again, leaving it at that.

[the_seafarer]

He nods and reaches up to cup her cheek with his hand. "You won't be alone, or in the dark," he promises. His thumb runs along the soft arch of her cheekbone as he considers.

"Lamplight?" he asks. "Candlelight? I've some of those – what's the word – electric lamps – "

Which he rarely uses, not being used to it, but had packed neatly away.

[sai_delgado]

“Silly, I wot. It’s not real now, and well I kennit. It just feels… strange. As if there’s something just out of sight, hidden in the glam.”

(pink everything were pink)

Susan shrugs, but then a small smile curves her mouth. “Thee has spark-lights? Trig of thee. Whatever’d let thee sleep, Caspian, I’d be fine with it.”

[the_seafarer]

"No fear, Su," he says, smiling for her. "I've slept in far worse conditions than a little friendly light."

He squeezes her knee, then rises and searches out a few hurricane lamps – oil, not electric – and lights them carefully. One he turns down to a warm glow, the flame hardly more than a line that looks more liquid than fire, and carries to the bedside table nearest the side where she'd slept before. Another, he sets on top of the sea-chest in which he keeps his books and more precious belongings; the last he leaves on the windowsill, letting the glass reflect the glow.

[sai_delgado]

She stays where she is and watches as he places the lamps—-

(spark-a-dark)

—-and when he turns back to her she’s smiling far warmer than before. “Thee very dear,” Susan tells him. “Do’ee even know it, how dear thee are to me?”

[the_seafarer]

His own smile crinkles the corners of his eyes, in an expression that – in this younger body – has not yet left the echoes of laughter and sunlight-squinting there. "I have my hopes," he tells her.

He's near enough to a chest of drawers; pulling out one, he searches a moment, then retrieves a neatly folded square of fabric in a soft off-white. Bringing it over to her, it's revealed as one of his own nightshirts, washed and worn and soft to the touch and smelling like his own clean self. "This will be too large for you, I know," he says, as he sits back beside her and offers her the clothing. "But comfortable."

[sai_delgado]

She takes the shirt from him, brushing her fingers lightly over the fabric to feel its texture. "Thankee-sai," she murmurs. Susan leans in to kiss him on the cheek before she gets to her feet.

"Give me but a moment, an'ye would, to wash up."

[the_seafarer]

"Take as long as you need," he offers, looking up at her with a sweet smile. "I'll be right here."

[sai_delgado]

She beams a cheerful smile back at him and disappears into the little bathing room.

It doesn't take her all that long to finish her ablutions, as she's washed her hair already that morning after everything - and if it still has a hint of sea-salt air and wildflowers yet, what of it? Susan makes quick work of everything, folds her clothes neatly and sets them on a little shelf, then makes her way back out once more.

The nightshirt he's loaned her is soft and comfortable and floats around her like a cloud, hitting her mid-thigh. She pads barefoot across the room, combing fruitlessly at her hair with her fingers as she goes.

[the_seafarer]

She's a tall girl, Susan, and his shirt doesn't swamp her the way it had swamped the young Lucy on board the Treader, but her shoulders are slim beneath it and he feels a certain warm delight to watch her come, bare-foot and long-legged and lovely in her undress, moving around in his own borrowed clothing.

He rises from the side of the bed and solicitously pulls back the covers for her, then comes to put an arm around her waist and to kiss her cheek as she'd kissed his. "My turn," he tells her. "Make yourself comfortable, Su."

[sai_delgado]

She leans into the curve of his arm and smiles at him, sweet and warm. "As thee'd have it," she teases, gentle.

[the_seafarer]

He laughs and embraces her – how could he do otherwise? – then kisses her other smiling cheek. "If this is where you're comfortable, how could I move you aside?" he teases back.

[sai_delgado]

"Thee very dear." Susan separates her hair into a split fall and pulls it forward over her shoulders, then lifts the golden locks to drape them over his as she leans up to kiss him.

"Nay, I'll not keep thee," she murmurs. "Not longer than thee'd want, any road."

[the_seafarer]

His washing-up can wait. The locks of gold are the gentlest, sweetest chains he can imagine, but he's held as securely beneath them as he might be under iron. "Lady, thee have me."

Which isn't what she meant, precisely, but his heart demands to be laid open. He shifts back, coaxing her along with him, meaning to sit back on the bed and to draw her onto his lap. "Keep me, then, Su."

[sai_delgado]

He draws her down and she follows, perching on his lap lightly as any butterfly for the first instant, to be certain-sure before she settles more closely against him.

Her gaze is soft and searching as she studies his face, curving one hand against his cheek. "If thee'd have it so," she whispers. "Keep me, and I'll keep thee."

[the_seafarer]

"I would have it so," he murmurs, and leans up and forward to kiss her, his hands flattening on her back. The lamps he's set turn his room into a snug haven, the light just a strong enough glow to see by. No shadows cling, dark and menacing, at the door or behind furniture; it's as peaceful a place as he can make it.

[sai_delgado]

She makes a small soft sound and presses close as she kisses him back, putting her arms around his neck to draw him to her.

[the_seafarer]

Her arms nudge the silken mass of her hair up against the sides of his neck, and he shivers at the sensation and holds her closer, parting his lips to kiss her more deeply. One hand slides up along her back, reverently tracing the line of her spine with his palm, as the soft material of his own shirt shifts and bunches beneath his touch.

[sai_delgado]

Her breath catches at the feel of his hand on her back, and she gives herself willingly to his kisses. Susan threads her fingers into his hair, tangling them in his golden curls, and traces an aimless pattern over his nape with her thumb.

[the_seafarer]

He shivers again, then wraps his arms tight around her and lifts himself, lifts her, so that he can lie back on the bed and bring her with him, covering him like a blanket as he kisses her and kisses her and kisses her again.

[sai_delgado]

The world spins dizzyingly around her as he moves, as he carries her with him. Susan ignores it, utterly lost in him as she returns each sweet kiss. She stretches against him, one hand in his hair and the other at his shoulder, and shivers a little at the soft scrape of fabric against skin.