[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]

"Hear, hear," Cuthbert says, and it's more than a little grim. He turns to Susan. "Alain and I had some thoughts about that, and we've talked them over with your - with Caspian, here. There's a bit of a tradition we've kept over the last ten years or so, and if you'll allow, we'll keep it with you, tonight."

Susan eyes him. "Say on, 'Bert, do." Her glance travels over all of them. "Or one of ye should, anyway."

[the_seafarer]

Caspian looks to the gunslingers, and gives them a small shrug. "Go on," he agrees. "And then we'll see what we see."

[sai_delgado]

Cuthbert glances to Alain, who nods, then turns back to Susan. "We'd go out of Gilead. Away from the celebrations, into the forest or farmland distant," he says, as gently as he can. They all know why none of them would have had any taste for Reap, Fair-Day or not. "And keep watch together until it was over."

"We figured you'd not want to be around here today, or to be around many people, either. Alain and I thought to go with you into the forest here as far as we could, until we found the Dreaming or another place to bide, but it seems there's another place that might work." His glance flicks to Caspian.

[the_seafarer]

He nods, and looks to Susan. "The tree-sisters' garden," he says, knowing she'll balk at the very thought. Hadn't she apologized over and over again the morning before?

"Consider it, please," he continues, before she can start arguing against it. "We'll not go without permission. I thought to – Cuthbert and I can ride out this morning to speak with them. I think – I think they'd want to help, Su."

He keeps his glance, steady and intent, on her. "Human emotions may be a little strange and unknowable to them, but I believe the garden is a place of refuge, for any who need it."

[sai_delgado]

Oh, but this is something she hadn't known, and hearing it causes her heart to ache within her. She can just see it, as clear as if 'Bert were telling it an-tet together here -- Roland as he'd been when she knew him, turning away from aught that might comfort him save the company of his best friends, with their own grief to carry.

Her expression softens, and she starts to respond, only for fog-gray eyes to fly wide in shock as Caspian makes his suggestion. "Thee can't be serious." She turns in the circle of his arm to give him a look of pure disbelief. "Thee knows I'd not bring this trouble on them, not again!"

[the_seafarer]

"Su, the birch-woman wanted to help," he tells her. "And their magic is pure and good... it'll be safe there, as safe as it can be anywhere. And it's too cold, lately, to be out in the woods at night. But the garden is still warm."

He meets her disbelieving gaze with his own steady one and shakes his head. "Let me ask them, at least. Please."

[sai_delgado]

Too cold. His observation stops her protest before it passes her lips, which is mayhap just as well, as sharp as it were like to be. Susan Delgado kens very well indeed that the men here with her now would like as not freeze to death before they'd light a fire in her presence on this night, and never say a word.

"Ask, then," she concedes, unhappy about it but unwilling to argue without time to come up with a better option. Maybe she will seek out the Dream-lord, come to it. "But if they're in the least worried or uncertain, ye're not to press them, not in the slightest!" She looks sternly back and forth between Caspian and 'Bert, who raises his hands in the air.

"Watch and warrant," he says, amusement in his gaze. "Ye needn't be so fierce about it."

[the_seafarer]

"You have my word," Caspian tells her, and smiles a little, too. "Fierce as a mountain cat," he agrees, not without something pleased and a little proud behind it, to see her flash so. "And valiant as a – as a Mouse."

His eyes twinkle a little at Susan as he says so, knowing she knows well just how martial and brave a Mouse can be. "We'll not press, I promise."

[sai_delgado]

She sniffs at their teasing, but has to be satisfied with that. Alain clears his throat. "I'd thought to take Caspian's stable-work this morning, while they ride out. Once we know, then we can go from there."

"Then best we get to it," she says, with a glance to the stable doors and the growing light. "Before the horses get restless. Reaping Day or not, there's still chores to be done."

[the_seafarer]

He puts a hand warm on her back, then gets up off the hay bale and offers that same hand to help her up. "I'll borrow Duncan, I think," he tells her. "He could use a little exercise, anyway."

[sai_delgado]

She takes his hand and lets him draw her to her feet. "Aye, he'd do well with it, and he kens the trail," Susan agrees, and then looks thoughtfully at Cuthbert. "I'll saddle Kiseki for ye--"

"Sue, I can saddle him myself," 'Bert protests, but gives her a quick grin all the same. "But say thankya for letting me ride him."

[the_seafarer]

"We'll be back before you know it," Caspian promises. He squeezes her fingers and lets go, then moves over to Duncan's stall. "Come now, sir," he murmurs, reaching to greet the horse, who nuzzles over his palm with a soft, curious nose. "Shall we take a ride?"

[sai_delgado]

Alain fetches Kiseki's tack before she can step to it, with a patient look for her. Susan throws up her hands and goes to the other end of the stables to start her work there before impatience can get the better of her.

It's due to nerves and strain, what with all the day's to bring, but there's no reason to take that out on any of them, and she'd not be pleased with herself if she did.

[the_seafarer]

He has the big chestnut gelding saddled and ready soon enough, and leads him outside to the mount-post before climbing up and onto his back. Leaving her fills him with trepidation, but she's with Alain, and it's more than possible Reepicheep will come by the stables, as well, little as he likes the horses.

Lifting his face to the sky, Caspian breathes deep of the crisp autumn air and waits for Cuthbert to join him.

[sai_delgado]

He trades a look with Alain before he walks Kiseki out of the stable, careful to do it where Susan can't see, and receives an equally speaking look in return. Alain'll keep a close watch on her until they're back, and she'll be safe as houses with him.

Cuthbert swings into the saddle, clicks sidemouth to Kiseki, and moves up. "All right, where's this garden of yours?"

[the_seafarer]

Caspian nudges Duncan forward with legs and a cluck of his tongue, and nods toward the forest path. "About half a league hence, the path splits," he tells the gunslinger. "The garden is a little ways past that."

He glances over at Cuthbert as they ride past the paddocks and towards the woods. "Have you encountered dryads before?"

[sai_delgado]

"Treewives, aye?" He looks back at the other man with an easy smile and a glance that misses nothing.

"Not personally."

[the_seafarer]

"Perhaps," Caspian allows. "The tree-sisters aren't quite dryads, anyway. Only one of them is even conscious enough still to speak and to move about, but there are several there."

The weeping willow by the stream. A tall and queenly beech. A pine, with long needles soft as a cloud. "They're very gentle."

[sai_delgado]

"How'd you happen upon them to begin with?" Kiseki snorts at a whirl of leaves, and Cuthbert sighs, but gives him a consoling pat. "Easy, knot-head."

[the_seafarer]

"The path led us there."

He thinks of the swirling leaves and the scent of flowers, the gay blue and yellow spots of the silkflower lining the sides of the path. "I think they were lonely, and wanted a little company. So they used their magic to call some."

And there, in the garden, she'd held a sweet berry to his mouth and he'd let himself go, falling into the depths of his feelings for her. By the time they'd left the garden, everything had changed between them.

[sai_delgado]

"That kind of lure never meant anything good where we're from," Cuthbert observes. "Glad to hear this was different."

If it hadn't been, by now they'd know, probably.

[the_seafarer]

"It's difficult to explain," he says. "It felt the way it felt to blow Queen Susan's horn, or to run about with Bacchus and Silenus – like Deep Magic, not White or Dark. One could feel the love in it – and the loneliness, too."

Caspian shakes his head as they pass into the stand of dark trees. "I've felt that other sort of lure before – "

(Deathwater)

"– and this, thank the Lion, wasn't anything like."

[sai_delgado]

Cuthbert, say sorry, isn't paying as much attention as he should be to everything Caspian's just said.

"Queen Susan's Horn?"

There's an odd sort of intensity in the way he asks it.

[the_seafarer]

"Aye."

He gives the gunslinger a curious glance, but is happy enough to expand on it. "Queen Susan the Gentle, she of the Golden Age. Susan Pevensie, if you know her. Aslan gifted her a horn, and it became one of the treasures of the realm. It was said that blowing it at one's darkest hour would bring aid."

[sai_delgado]

Cuthbert reins up sharply enough to draw a protest from Kiseki.

"Aye? And you've blown it?"