[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]

"Thankee-sai." Susan takes it with both hands and looks down, turning it over in her fingers.

"When did 'Bert and Alain tell thee they'd come?"

[the_seafarer]

"Morning," he tells her. "I can't recall if they said 'first thing' or nay, but I'd expect them sooner rather than later, I think."

He takes an apple of his own and cleans it off, then bites into it.

[sai_delgado]

"I would, too." Susan sighs and tucks her apple in a pocket long enough to pour herself a cup of coffee, then takes both to sit on a hay-bale and begin her breakfast. "We've not long to wait, then, most likely."

[the_seafarer]

He comes to sit near her and sips again at his tea, then nods. "Aye."

If anything, he's almost surprised the two gunslingers aren't here already, lurking about in wait.

[sai_delgado]

She nods, then shifts a little closer to lean her head against his shoulder. Talking seems like too much effort.

[the_seafarer]

Caspian sets one arm around her – with a breakfast like this, he really only needs one hand. He has some fruit and cheese and several more cups of tea, coaxing her gently as he eats to have a little more breakfast of her own.

[sai_delgado]

He's kind and caring and she'd not see him worried, say true, so Susan finishes the apple and an orange with it, then nibbles on a few of the pecans they'd been given while she finishes a second cup of the coffee, which is hot and strong enough to keep her moving for a week on any normal day.

Still, the waiting's difficult. She finds herself drifting, listening for the sound of whispers and feeling the pull of the front door like a dragging ache at her bones.

But when the sound of boot-steps approaches, she jerks her head up, tension thrumming through her as she stares at the stable-door.

[the_seafarer]

For a moment, he wishes he'd brought his blade – but there's nothing he can protect her from with such a thing, not for this. Still, when she tenses, he does, also, his hand falling in a thoughtless reflex to where he'd have his dagger on his belt if he'd dressed for battle today.

But it's only Alain and Cuthbert, as expected, and he relaxes a little to see them. "Good morning," he offers, though it's more a pleasantry than anything else. Regardless of the weather, there's not much good about this day, not for any of them.

[sai_delgado]

"Hile and merry greet the day," Alain says easily, ignoring the quick look Cuthbert shoots him at that. "How do ye both fare?"

"Merry see, merry be," Susan says, a little wryly. "Well enough, saving my own megrims and visions."

"Visions?" 'Bert puts in, a little sharp.

[the_seafarer]

Caspian offers out the flask of tea to Alain. "There's some left in here, if you'd like," he says, and glances at Cuthbert, then to Susan.

[sai_delgado]

"Coffee, too, in the other," Susan adds, as Alain accepts the tea with a nod of thanks. "If ye'd like, 'Bert."

She doesn't miss Caspian's glance, and gives him a small reassuring nod. "I've no secrets from them," she reassures him, softly, before turning back to Cuthbert.

"Aye, visions; but more of a bad dream than aught else." She puts all the certainty she can in her voice, and is not entirely surprised when it doesn't work. Cuthbert frowns. "Why don't you let us be the judge of that?"

[the_seafarer]

He bites his tongue – after all, Cuthbert's not wrong, but it goes against everything in Caspian not to take issue with it all the same. "She dreamed of the night she was taken," he tells the gunslingers.

[sai_delgado]

"Only a little," she hastens to assure them - all of them, all three together here. "And it were more I were - were confused, for a second or two, when I woke. Because - because I were dreaming - because everything were pink."

"Well, that's certainly interesting, isn't it, Alain?" Cuthbert's tone is carefully light, but there's bright sharp shock in the gunslinger's eyes and a sudden increase to the tension singing through his body like a tight-strung wire. Alain's already setting his tea aside.

"Did it feel like it did before, Sue?" His glance shifts to Caspian. "Did ye see it, too?"

[the_seafarer]

He shakes his head. "No pink," he reports. "I saw nothing."

Only Susan, with her eyes open and unseeing, curled into a tight little ball under the covers.

[sai_delgado]

"Good," Cuthbert observes, although his tension doesn't relax. "The last thing we need's for the damn grapefruit to show up here."

Susan shakes her head. "Not like - mayhap a little, with the shell, but not the filthy sheen of it when Rhea... not like that. It's why I - it's only a dream, I wot."

"You're probably right." Alain's voice is easy and warm. "But if this day's bringing some trap left buried back to the top of your mind, I'd have it out and no mistake. Will'ee let me look?"

[the_seafarer]

His arm is still behind Susan, though not around her, and he shifts to look at her.

"Alain may be right," he says, gently.

[sai_delgado]

“It were just a dream,” she argues. “I trust ye, Alain, so aye, if ye’d wish then of course ye may, but it were only a dream. If it’d been aught else ye’d have found it before.”

“I didn’t look for other traps before.” Alain doesn’t let the guilt that spears through him now interfere. They’d all failed her in Mejis, and he’d failed her a second time here by not finding the not-man in the stables before she’d been approached; there won’t be a third. “And I’ve learned a few things since then, of Rhea’s tricks and the Bends both.”

It’d been one of the things he’d sought Vannay for, after they’d returned.

“I still say ye’d have found it.” But Susan holds her hands out to him, and he takes them lightly in his before he looks up at Caspian. “I’ll need to take her deep. Don’t be alarmed.”

[the_seafarer]

Caspian meets his glance and nods, though he has more than a few worries about all this himself. "Go on," he murmurs, and braces himself for whatever's to come.

[sai_delgado]

"Do you need the shell?" Cuthbert asks, intent and serious. Susan's glance flicks back and forth between them, wide-eyed and unafraid. Alain considers for a moment, then nods. "Best we not risk I not reach far enough otherwise, not for this. Make sure she can hear all of us."

Cuthbert nods, draws one of the weapons at his hips, and shucks a bullet from it into his fingers. He hunkers down on his heels in front of Susan and gives her a quick smile. "You know how this goes. Watch the shell, Sue. Watch it close, I beg." As he talks, he makes it dance back and forth over his fingers, deft and nimble, and light winks off the casing. Back and forth, back and forth. "That's it-- gods."

For Susan, watching the flickering light from the shell, is already gone. Her lashes flutter as fog-gray eyes close. Cuthbert swallows hard. "Do ye hear me, Susan?"

"I do." Soft but clear, in a dreamy tone. "Cuthbert Allgood of Gilead. I hear ye, 'Bert."

"Good girl," he murmurs. "There's two others here with me as well. Alain, and Caspian. I'd have you hear them when they speak, as well as myself."

He nods to Caspian.

[the_seafarer]

He takes a quick, hard breath. "By the Lion, that was quick."

Cuthbert seems to think so, too, gauging by his response. Caspian breathes in and settles himself, then speaks to Susan, his voice quiet but clear and steady. "Here I am, Susan. Do you hear me?"

[sai_delgado]

"She's been hypnotized before," Cuthbert murmurs. "It takes her quicker every time, since the first."

Susan, meanwhile, stays perfectly still, her eyes closed and her breathing even. "I hear thee, Caspian." She smiles, sweet and unshadowed. "Did thee wish to ask me something?"

[the_seafarer]

The sweetness in her dreamy smile sends an arrow through his heart. "Alain and Cuthbert would like to hear more of your dream, dear," he murmurs. "Won't you tell them about it?"

[sai_delgado]

"It were pink," Susan tells them, and Alain trades a grim look with Cuthbert and shifts a little forward. "What was pink?" he asks, gentle, sending into her with the gift he's always carried. "Something you saw? Something you heard?"

"Everything." Simple and clear and certain. "I was floating in the fire, and everything were pink."

"Gods be kind." Cuthbert's voice is a little choked.

[the_seafarer]

Caspian frowns at this – she hadn't mentioned anything about fire before. But perhaps she simply hadn't wanted to worry him.

He casts a worried glance at Cuthbert as the gunslinger speaks.

[sai_delgado]

Alain takes a deep breath, and squeezes her hands. "Was it because of Rhea? Did she do something to make the fire pink?"

"Nay." No resistance at all, but her hands are cold in his and he knows he'll have to bring her out soon or risk worse. "She didn't. She wouldn't have. She wanted me to feel it. Charyou tree."

As she speaks, her voice shifts as Alain's heard before, becoming an eerie mimicry of the witch's horrible cackle. "Take this murdering bitch and cook her red-handed! Charyou tree!"