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."

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?