[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]

She'd woken in the night, before even false dawn, choking and gasping for air as she clawed her way out from fire-poisoned dreams.

(charyou tree - come, Reap - die ye faithless)

But oh, there's no peace to be found, not for her. Reaptide's too near, now, and the weary exhaustion of days that had dragged her down is now given to the dark blur of nightmare. She can smell the memory of smoke, and can almost feel her hair blazing to ash--

"Not real," Susan whispers, desperate as a child's plea against monsters in the dark. "Not real, nay, not now, not again--"

Nothing answers, and the shadows threaten to swallow her up, but she couldn't strike a candle-light now to save her life, say true. Susan dresses hastily in the dark, only barely remembering to wrap herself in the coat Caspian gave her before she quits the room, then the bar entire.

She'd thought to go down to the lakeside, that surely the icy waters would clear her head, but shies away at the shadow of the bonfire lying ready to be set alight.

Shivering, she turns away from the shore. She thinks perhaps the stables, but no - her fear and upset'll spark the same in her charges, oh aye, and she'll do what she can to spare them and those who care for her.

With a sob, Susan flees into the forest, and is soon lost in the darkness.

[the_seafarer]

Caspian wakes slowly, uncertain at first what had disturbed him. No sound, he thinks, hazily. The lamplight still glows, warm and steady, but there's the first tinge of grayness to the sky outside that speaks of dawn.

Not enough light to wake him, though. He shifts, and as he does, he realizes Susan's warm frame is no longer tucked against him. Turning onto his side, he reaches for her.

The relief he feels at finding her – curled into a tight ball beneath the sheet and the blanket he must have pulled up over them at some point in the night – is swept away shortly on a wave of adrenaline that wakes him faster than the morning sun.

For she's sleeping – he thinks – but her eyes are open and blank, and it's clear that whatever she's seeing, it isn't him. "Susan," he says, his voice rough with sleep, and runs his hand over her shoulder. "Su?"