[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]

"Aye, 'tis. When it sets, she keeps it in a box under her bed. In a magic place she makes with passes," she confides, then blinks again and reaches up to catch his hand against her hair.

"Thee'd not have me cut it too, would'ee?" Even as she asks it, distress fills the fog-gray glance... along with sudden recognition. Susan gasps in a sharp, ragged breath.

"Caspian?"

[the_seafarer]

His breath rushes out of him with sudden, sore relief. "Susan. Thank the Lion."

Caspian does his best to smile, wanting to soothe the distress in her face. "There," he murmurs, his hand gentle on her hair. Cut it; never. Never in life, as Susan herself might say. "You see me now, eh?"

[sai_delgado]

"I see thee," she tells him. "I see thee clear."

And oh, what she sees in his eyes, in the strained way he tries to smile--

Susan pushes herself up to sitting in one swift, sudden surge and stares back at him. "Did I -- what did I--"

[the_seafarer]

He shifts back to give her room, lifting his hand from her head as she moves. "You were dreaming," he tells her, steady. "Or... remembering, mayhap, I'm not sure which. It may have been both."

Caspian shakes his head to her stuttered question. "It matters not," he promises. "I'm only sorry to wake you so early, Su."

[sai_delgado]

"It matters!" she flares. "I hurt thee, I can see it, so aye, it matters!"

Susan holds out both hands to him, pleading. "Cry yer pardon, Caspian, I do - I'd never have wished, I'd not--"

[the_seafarer]

He takes her hands instantly, squeezing her fingers. "Asked and granted," he says. "You have my pardon, always."

His own words come back to him –

(I know more than I could ever care to... when someone you know and love looks at you and cannot recall your face)

– and he lifts her hands to press a gentle kiss to her fingers. "For a moment, you didn't know me. You were caught in your dream."

[sai_delgado]

Her hold tightens as she goes breathless with dismayed shock. She understands well the hurt she's given him by that, oh aye.

"Oh, Caspian," she whispers.

[the_seafarer]

He shakes his head, not to refuse her apology, but to move past this for a moment to what he suspects is the far more important question. "Do you remember what you were dreaming?"

Her empty and unknowing eyes, the sharp smack of her words; he puts all these with the memory of Rilian looking at him with blank politeness and locks the door behind them.

[sai_delgado]

She frowns again as she thinks it over. Suddenly chilled, Susan shifts to her side and frees one hand from his to reach for the cover - but only the one.

"I woke, I think," she says, after a moment's consideration. "Only not all the way, do'ee ken? I were watching the lamp burn low like it did before, and drifting the way I did when Roland hypnotized me with the shell."

[the_seafarer]

He tucks the sheet and blanket up around her, frowning. "Like it did before?"

Caspian settles next to her, keeping her hand in his, his other on the blanket that he's pulled up to her shoulder. "You did sound as though you were in a trance. For part of it, anyhow."

[sai_delgado]

She nods. "At Old Soony's hut. Where I waited, before. I were outside, but I could see it on the table, if I looked." Susan glances over at the lamp beside the bed, as if assuring herself of its reality, then back at Caspian.

"Only it changed. The glow changed. And it were pink. Like the grapefruit."

[the_seafarer]

Chagrin crosses his face – to have, after all, surrounded her with something that would remind her of that terrible night – but he nods, running his thumb over her knuckles.

"You said," he murmurs. "The pink moon."

His glance flickers to her hair, her long and beautiful hair in which she takes such pride, and back to her face. "You told me she kept it in a box under her bed."

[sai_delgado]

"She did. Rhea. She didn't ken - I saw her hide it, through the window, and she never saw me." Susan shakes her head.

"She'd have killed me then if she had, and not waited, the vicious, hateful thing."

[the_seafarer]

"I've no doubt she would have," Caspian says, grim, before he forces himself to lighten his voice. "But you, my clever Su, you stayed hidden and she didn't see you, after all."

[sai_delgado]

"It's how I could tell Roland of it at all. Only I couldn't, without Alain's help," she says, softly. "It's an evil thing, Caspian, say true."

[the_seafarer]

"I know it, dear one."

(always winter, never Christmas)

"But you did, as sure as you're telling me now." He falls silent a moment, but the certainty that he needs to know eventually outweighs his concern at worrying her. "You mentioned... blue-marked hands."

[sai_delgado]

Sudden anger twists her features. "Jonas. Him and his harriers --"

She frees her hand from beneath the blanket and spreads her fingers wide, angling it to show him the web between thumb and forefinger. "--they'd tattoos, there. Their sigul; a blue coffin. Called themselves the Big Coffin Hunters, they did, and swaggered about as sheriffs, but they were naught but murderers and killers. Farson's men."

[the_seafarer]

So it was as Alain had worried it might be after all, but at least she did manage to see him clearly once she woke.

Caspian is under no illusions that this day – and later, this night – will be anything but harder, but for now he nods and runs his thumb over the spot she indicates. "Cowards," he says, pushing aside any thought of how she'd believed him to be one and the same. "Evil men masquerading under a pretense at law; I know it well."

[sai_delgado]

"They were, aye." But she's frowning again as she searches his face, and turns her hand under his to catch his fingers.

(for a moment you didn't know me)

"What did I say?"

[the_seafarer]

He smiles, slight. Clever Su, brave Su. "To get my blue-marked hand off you," he tells her.

That's enough; she needn't hear the curses that came along with it.

[sai_delgado]

She sighs, soft and sad and weary, and gathers his hands together between both of hers. Susan bows her head over his hands, golden hair falling down over them in a cascade, and kisses his fingers, then his palms, before she raises her head to look him in the eye once more.

"It were only 'cause thee were trying to wake me, I wot," she murmurs. "Thee were, weren't thee?"

[the_seafarer]

"I was," he confirms, letting her take his hands to coddle them. "It's all right, Su."

He lifts one hand away to curve it at her cheek, a little inordinately proud of the fierceness she'd displayed. Though it hadn't saved her in the end, still she'd been as valiant as any knight of his acquaintance. "Do you think you could rest a little longer?"

[sai_delgado]

It's not, and well she kens it, but there's no use blaming ka for its workings, or herself for what she'd said a-dreaming. Jonas, mayhap; he'd earned it, and more than.

(clever girls go to hell)

Susan leaves it be, for now at least. She glances at the dim gray dawnlight and shakes her head slightly, so as not to dislodge his hand. "Nay, not this morn."

[the_seafarer]

He nods, unsurprised and unfaltering. "Cuthbert and Alain will meet us at the stables a little later," he tells her, lifting the hand at her cheek so he can tuck the fall of her hair back behind her shoulder. "Could you eat a little breakfast before then, do you think?"

[sai_delgado]

She's not hungry, but she's also under no illusions that Caspian won't worry if she refuses a second meal in a row.

"If thee will also," she says, instead, and tries for a smile. It wavers a little, but it's there, and mayhap that'll have to do.