I have an oath

 The world is larger now.

Not just larger; taller, stranger.  Everything caught in odd angles, flat and imposing.  Blades of grass tower over him, ants the size of small dogs bump into his feet, and he startles --

Sending the world into a spinning, alarmed leap.  A blink, and everything has shifted; he might be miles from the door, for all he can tell the difference.  

The tea.  It could only have been the tea.  There was a splash of warmth, and his shirt soaked in a crooked strip, and deep violet plumes of choking smoke, and then everything grew horribly large and strange.  Could it?  Truly, there have been times when he'd been warned off food or drink in this place in the past, but he'd always felt tea would never betray him in such a fashion.

It appears Milliways is not yet through with surprising him.





Be that as it may, he cannot continue in this fashion.  Large eyes blink, bewildered, at the green, long-fingered hand replacing his own; he attempts to edge towards his right and finds himself catapulted into the rough wood of the back step.  A twitch forward sends him sailing in an arc that turns steadily less graceful as he tumbles back into the ground, heart thrumming a panicked pace somewhere nowhere near his usual steady beat.

There must be a way to reverse this spell, whatever it is.  A wizard, perchance, or sorcerer, if he can find one -- but any attempt to move back into the bar proper would result in a scramble to keep from being trod upon, and in his present state, he can hardly call for help, or draw attention to himself.

He sits, for a moment, shivering in a clump of tall grass, flips into a bewildered cut of a half-leap at a bugling call sounding nearby, a sharp whinny that freezes him into a shell he cannot seem to break from for a lifetime's worth of worried breaths and buzzing pulse.

The horses.  The stables.  Possibly, there, he might find aid -- there are fewer feet to trample him, when the horses are in the stalls, and the place is peaceful enough he might  find a moment to think, or plan.



It has simply never seemed such a very insurmountable distance, before.

The Princess Royal is truly a fair sight.  White sails pile on the rigging, neatly tied now into pillows which lie along gleaming wooden yards.  If loosed, they would billow in the sweet breeze that comes sifting off the sea, and the Princess would glide as if in a cloud out to sea.

"She's larger than the Treader," he tells Marian, who is attentive and interested, though perhaps there are times when smoke-blue eyes watch Caspian when he isn't looking, and an amused smile touches her lips.  He notices not at all, caught as he is in the tour they're being given, despite the fact the midshipman assigned to them stopped talking a good twenty minutes ago and may well have vanished altogether.  "As is proper for a flagship, I suppose, but see the way she's designed, she isn't all bulk or brute force."

Larger, yes: where the Treader had one mast, the Princess has three, and the deck is longer, wider.  She doesn't rise at bow and stern the way the Treader did; she'll cut through wind and wave easier for it, the figurehead at the bow leading the way.  

Marian is all curiosity: if the Princess is larger than the Treader, she dwarfs the Hope, and Caspian details the foremast, the main, the mizzen, explains how this type of rigging will allow the Princess to sail to windward.  The Black Pearl is his other comparison, and though the Princess could never beat the Pearl as a runner, she's sleek and powerful and he suspects she'd give a fair chase.

It's like being sixteen again and seeing the Treader come, piece by piece, into being: the Princess is hardly of Narnian design, but he can imagine, mayhaps, that the great ships of her Golden Age looked something like this: the Splendour Hyaline, for example, which he's seen only in paintings.  The Princess is built for warfare and protection, not exploration or pleasure cruises, and it shows in the efficiency of her design, but Ambergeldar is hardly a sea power, and no war threatens the quiet horizon here, and that shows, too, in the detail and care taken, intricate decorations carved into wood, fine materials, cloud-white canvas and bright ropes.  The captain's quarters are roomy and fair, paneled in polished wood, the galley clean and ready for a hungry crew.

He thinks of cramped nights, caught in the doldrums, heat and lack of wind driving them all to the edges of sanity and temper, and considers that the space available below decks here would have been beneficial then, too -- though the Princess requires a larger crew, more mouth to feed and throats to quench.

Not that he discusses those memories with Marian.  Instead, he tells light stories of the crew he remembers, the ships built after the Treader, the fleet finally in place in his adulthood, the voyages to the Lone Islands and beyond; to Calormen, along the coast.

That turns to finding members of the crew and talking with them of the voyages undertaken, the open sea beyond this harbor, an ocean Caspian has never explored.  He spends a few moments lost at the railing, looking out over glittering gray waves as the wind threatens to topple his hat and gold braid weighs heavy on his shoulders, before a soft voice breaks into his thoughts and a light hand on his arm reminds him that he is not alone, that these voyages are not his to take, that these stories will have to be heard secondhand, which is well and good and how the world moves.

Still, there is, mayhap, a light in his eyes that is not quite laughter or warmth, clear when he watches the horizon and dimmer when he turns in towards shore, though he offers his arm to Marian with impeccable manners and a smile that won't be dimmed.

"Are we off?" she asks, lightly.  "Have you taken your fill?"

"Not I," he laughs, "but I do believe we are expected elsewhere, for the moment."

His hands may itch to take up sheets rather than champagne glasses, but the pull lessens as they leave the deck, and anyway, Amy would almost surely not approve of her brother abandoning shore altogether.

At least, not this evening.

"We should take the children down to the beach," he tells Marian, when he joins her at breakfast, rubbing seawater out of his hair with a towel.  So far, the maids and manservants at Silverhall have been scandalized by the habit the Queen's brother has of wandering down to the shore in the early morning and taking a swim before breakfast, all by himself and returning for coffee and toast looking remarkably cheerful and very damp.

"Amy and Perry are going to busy all day again, and the children oughtn't to be cooped up in the Palace all day.  What do you think?  We could make it a picnic.  You know how they love picnics."

It's true that he has an ulterior motive, but a good one: simply to spend more time with his niece and nephews, and Marian can always be relied upon to both entertain the children and spend time by the sea.  Her delight in it has hardly seemed to dim in the few days they've been here, and they may as well take full advantage.

The little Caribbean inlet in Milliways is fair in its way, but nothing compares to this: the long, wide, reaching stretch of ocean, glittering under the sun, with sand shifting beneath his feet and the breeze tugging at him, inviting him further, past the horizon, to the very edge of sea and sky.

So they find themselves, not much later, walking slowly in single file down a wooden stair that leads through the dunes to the flat white sand of the beach: Marian carries a basket, Susan is tasked with the blankets, and Caspian has Merry, perched on his shoulders and searching along the horizon with the spyglass his uncle had brought for him.

"Spot any pirates?" Caspian asks, as Merry navigates them towards the best spot to settle, but his nephew only shakes his head solemnly.

"Not today."

If you're reading this, you're probably someone who played with me and Caspian in the past.  If so, welcome!  Good to see you again!  There are a few changes in his personal history you might be interested to know about.

The first thing to know is that this Caspian is essentially the same as the old one, with one major difference: he is, for all intents and purposes, alive.  If he's out of Aslan's Country, he will age.  He can die or be killed. 

The reasoning behind this, as discussed with our resident Aslan, is that it makes more sense for Aslan to have brought Caspian back to life after the events of The SIlver Chair, not just as a dead guy who looks seventeen forever.

WHAT THIS MEANS:

- Caspian aged during his previous time in the Bar.  Thus, he's approximately 22 or 23 at the time of his return.
- He did not marry Lucy. 

(In this continuity, the only difference from previous game is that Caspian was alive; therefore he and Lucy, while together, would not have married, leaving her free to leave with the other Narnians for Aslan's Country.)

- Instead of leaving for Aslan's Country, he went with Tirian and Eustace to fight in The Last Battle (which is where he enters from).


These choices are the result of a lot of deliberation and talking with other muns, past and present.  Here is what it does NOT change:

- The fact that he's been gone for approximately five years (depending on the character and how the time has passed for them).
- Management of the stables.  If you have a stable question, please continue to go to the current management.
- Almost all of his millicanon aside from his wedding.  If your character remembers him, chances are good that memory lines up with his own.


Now, I certainly don't want to rewrite everyone's memory.  If you want, feel free to have your character remember him exactly as he was from the previous game.  Just be prepared to have them be really confused at each other for a while.

Questions? 

Oh, and PS: he's delighted to be back, and so am I.  Hello, Milliways.  It's been so very long.

"Get on, warriors," said the Tarkaan.  "Kill the beasts, but take the two-legged ones alive."

And then the last battle of the last King of Narnia began.

He'd come through the stable door at the calm in the middle of the chaotic storm: the Tarkaan and his men stood by the stable and the blazing fire while Tirian and those loyal to Narnia regrouped by the rock that protected their backs, the Dogs panting heavily, leaning heavy doggy bodies against his legs and barking loyalty and defiance into the clear night air.  The air thrums with the Calormene's drums, as their reinforcements march up the hillside towards the little group of rebels.

He does not recognize this place: this is Narnia generations after he last saw her, and there is little to see aside from the flash of the fire and the thick shadows of trees and bodies, the tracked-up grass and dirt from the first desperate skirmish.  By his side, Eustace is white-faced but standing firm, and Caspian claps his shoulder, drawing his attention for a quick moment, enough for his friend to smile, wanly.

"Not much of a homecoming, is it?"

"I would rather fight for my home than come back to a Narnia destroyed," says Caspian, drawing his sword as the Calormenes raise their blades and ready for the charge.  "Steady, cousin.  Raise your blade and stand firm.  Courage, now."

It's the last thing he gets to say for some time.

__

They'd started at the white rock, but it had all gotten confused from there, and when Caspian next makes note of his position, he finds he is closer than he cares to be to the still blazing fire.  Tirian, he sees as he knocks aside a curved Calormene blade, is dueling the Tarkaan; Eustace is nowhere to be seen and he thought he'd seen Jill dragged off in the direction of the stable.

It's all he can take note of before he stumbles on a loose, half-charred log and the man he's fighting presses the advantage, landing a numbing blow on Caspian's arm.  He's nearly forced down, but ducks quickly to toss a handful of ash and cinders at his opponent's face, leaving his hand stinging but regaining the upper ground.  No sooner has his man been cut down, though, than another appears, launching into the fray with a flurry of steel against steel that leaves Caspian's hand aching and his arm numb with the vibrations of each heavy hit.  Behind him, he hears a howl of misery as Tirian pulls the Tarkaan into the stable, but he has almost no time to react to the knowledge that their line is scattered and their defense lost before he, too, is pushed back into the dim doorway.

Dwarves, he's always held, make the best steel. His armor in Narnia had been light and flexible, but sturdy, able to keep him from harm despite the fervor of his foes. He's long considered dwarves to be the finest of craftsmen when it comes to the art of weaponry, and Gimli is no exception. The sword he'd forged in payment for aid is light but strong, sturdy, but sharp, and the steel gleams like crystal. Caspian studies the roaring lion at its pommel for a long while, then sets the point of the blade against a barrel top, and sets to whetting its edge.

Shiiiiiiiiiink. The stone makes a slithering, silvery sound against the steel. It shivers into his blood, makes something in his heart wake up, pay attention. Behind him, Kiseki tugs some straw from his manger, unconcerned.

It takes a while before he's satisfied, before the blade is so sharp it can cut as cleanly as he wishes, but once it does, he sheathes the sword and sets it against the wall.

One more night. They'd agreed to stay long enough to form some sort of plan, to say ... whatever goodbyes might need to be said.

When he steps out into the beginnings of a dusky evening and turns his face to the sky, hands in his pockets, he's not sure he knows, precisely, what it is he's saying goodbye to.

Isn't he going home, in a way?

It was a very fine party, but someone must be sure the horses are fed and watered and that all is set in the stables for chores tomorrow, and so Caspian moves quietly from stall to stall, whispering low words into this flickering ear or running a hand fondly down a rough mane.

It's hazy and warm and the wide doors to the stables have been pushed open to let in some air. It's the sort of night where everything feels a little dreamlike. It reminds him of Narnia, and he smiles to himself.