YOU KNOW HOW LIGHTNING NEVER LASTS LONG ENOUGH TO GET A GOOD LOOK AT IT? and your eyes do this thing, as if they could grow larger, widen out of your face, trying to see enough, longer, more --
It is dawn when I come creeping down to the shoreline.
The light cast on the sands – nearly reflected, in the many places where it holds shallow pools and skims of seawater – is pale peach and hazy, and much of the sky is still dark, though I cannot see it; my back is to the west, and my eyes are trained on that pastel brilliance to the east. The sun is jewel-bright, and, where it touches the water, it seems to ripple.
(I was told, after a few ill-advised attempts to look directly at it, that you shouldn’t. It was wise advice; and, fortunately, looking at the effect of the sun, rather than the sun itself, does very little to diminish its brilliance.)
It has grown cold in a way that I still struggle to comprehend. I knew about the seasons, technically – enough to know that my homeland exists in autumn and autumn alone. I am beginning to understand, however, that knowing something and experiencing it are two different things entirely.
I assumed that, in spite of its permanence, the autumn of the Wynding Gold was natural. It was startling enough to learn that it was unnatural for the weather and the temperature to remain unchanged at all times; a lukewarm heat that was never stifling, a pleasant breeze that was never too strong, sunlit dapples, filtered through the leaves, that only differed from day to day with the passage of time. This world is not the same. It changes with each moment that passes.
I have come to wonder, on occasion, if that is why outsiders value their lives so much. I know that, when I die, I will return again to home, and home will be just as it has always been – the people change, and the creatures of the wood change, but never too much. Never in a way that is unrecognizable.
When I look at the sea, it is never the same as I remember it.
My hooves slide on the salt-slick steps that lead down the cliffside; I take them too fast, as usual, and I nearly lose my balance, as usual. I am getting better at flying, but there is something about walking those ancient, worn, and likely dangerous stairs that appeals to me. I am not afraid of stumbling, though I usually do, at least a time or two. I have too much confidence in my wings for that.
The air smells saltier the closer I get to the ocean. It is far out, this morning; there are miles of sand between me and the water. It also smells profoundly of fish, a scent that I am only just beginning to recognize after spending a bit of time around Terrastella’s docks. I clamber out onto the sands, relishing the way that the wind picks up and tousles my hair, though I know that the tangles will be trouble to deal with later. The air still bites - my nose is still unaccustomed to the sting of salt and early-winter chill.
I am several steps into the sand when it hits me – really, really hits me – that I am experiencing my first winter. I can barely believe it. (It also barely feels like winter. I expected some major shift, like the difference between day and night, but it really feels no different from the day before.) I wonder what it will be like to see bare-branched trees and, if I’m lucky, snow. The very idea of snow is a mystery to me, like rain was only weeks ago; I hope I get to see it soon, even though I have been assured that it is very, very cold.
The notion gives me pause – but only for a moment, and then I am off again, bounding across the sand with the kind of vigor and relish that I’m sure I only possess because this body and mind are still rather young. I run with my wings outstretched, like I am about to jump into flight, and I consider it for a moment – the idea of finally daring to fly by the sea, in spite of the wind and the cold – but my (fleeting) attention is caught by a spiral of stones, dipped inward to collect saltwater. I slow, then finally stop at the mottled grey edges, tilting my head and staring down into the shallow pool.
I gasp - audibly, I’m sure, though the wind is quick to swallow my voice up.
A small, purple thing with lots of pointy edges is stuck to one of the walls. A gossamer blue thing, with numerous, moss-like tendrils drifts in the shallows. A fish with very long, sharp fins and stripes that remind me of a forest cat wriggles near the bottom of the pool, as though trying to dig through the stones. On a waving, green plant that extends to the surface, where it clumps up and bobs, numerous small creatures clutch the vine with their tails – their faces almost remind me of another horse.
I climb up on the edge of the pool, ignoring the way that my hooves slip unsteadily on the thoroughly sloshed surface, and I stare with amazement into the water. I’ve never seen any creatures like these before – I only recognize one of them as a fish, and, even in its case, I’m not sure about its nature.
I lean down until my nose is almost in the water, suddenly wishing that I could swim. The pool, of course, would not require any swimming to wade into (but it is terribly small, and I don’t want to bother all the little creatures within it), but, if there are this many strange things in one, small bit of ocean, I can hardly imagine how many things live inside of the rest of it.
(This may well be my only life spent outside of the Gold – I am beginning to wonder if I will have enough time in it to see everything I’d like. I never realized that the world was so big; the revelation is wonderful and overwhelming all at once.)
@Caspian || ya girl is rather close to taking an ill-advised tumble into a tide pool and possibly dying from lionfish-related complications...if the jelly doesn't get her first. | "ars poetica," sally ball "Speech!"
EVERYTHING IS RISK, SHE WHISPERED.if you doubt, it becomes sand trickling through skeletal fingers.☙❧please tag Nic! contact is encouraged, short of violence
the salt is on the briar rose
the fog is in the fir trees.
Caspian is fighting back both yawns and shivers this morning, as the breeze stirs up the beach and reminds him (as if he needs another reminder) that winter is coming.
But it is not here yet - not as far as he’s concerned, because Benvolio is still joining him at dusk every evening. Today, though, when they’d parted in the cool wet dark, the little bat had said Soon, I think, before wrapping his wings around himself in a way that always looked so comfortable it made Caspian envious. The paint had wanted to argue, but held his tongue - a rarity that didn’t go unnoticed by Ben. They both knew if it weren’t for their bond, the bat would already be hibernating with a thousand others of his kind; the frosts had come already, and the snows would be following soon.
The moral was, Caspian was not very good at saying goodbye.
It wasn’t that he was lonely - he had plenty of acquaintances his age, and his sister lived in town, and anyway he never minded being alone. It was that nobody else understood him the same way (or maybe that nobody tried, or knew to try).
These were not thoughts the boy liked to sit with, much less on a dark newborn morning, and abruptly he shakes himself, snorts at a passing crab, and begins to pick his way from the stony cliffs to the beach. May as well watch the sun rise, see what the tide’s brought in, and not head home for a nap empty-handed.
He spots the figure from several hundred yards away, not much more than a dark silhouette against the level beach. Caspian’s curiosity is caught at once (and a bit of defensiveness, too - he views this bit of coastline as his, nevermind that it isn’t anyone’s save, perhaps, the queen’s). He trots nearer as the pegasus steps to the edge of a tide-pool, watching with ears forward and head cocked as she bends her nose down. It doesn’t look like it would take much for the stranger to topple in, and a mischievous little smile curves his mouth.
“Whatcha find?” he calls abruptly, rather more loudly than the distance between them necessitates.
This happens also when the heron passes: too quickly. today I lucked into seeing how richly blue / are the tops of his wing-feathers.
Whatcha find?
The – sudden – voice is louder than the wind in my ears, louder than the faint lap of water along the stone edges of the pool – and I was so utterly engrossed in the strange, new things in the water that I didn’t hear anyone else approach. Before I can think about it, a startled (and incredibly high-pitched) yelp has escaped my throat, and my hooves have slid on the wet rocks. I must have jumped. I don’t have time to consider it; I lose my balance and go cascading towards the water below.
I catch myself, but only barely. I am still only halfway accustomed to having wings; before this life, I only had them as a firefly, and they felt quite different when they were so small and fast and fragile. They snap out at the very last moment, sending up a spray of salt water as they connect with the shallow pool. I still think, for a moment, that I am about to go cascading into the water, and I snap my eyes shut; but the cascade of cold water never comes, and neither does the sensation of colliding with the creatures in the pool.
When I – tentatively – open my eyes, I find myself hanging a few inches above the water, wings beating almost subconsciously; my hooves drag against the surface, and I can feel a biting chill on my legs and chest, where a spray of water clings to my coat. My teeth are chattering, and I feel strangely shaky, in a way that a knight should absolutely not be shaky, but I pull myself together and beat my wings a time or two, just enough to set me back down on the rocky edge of the pool.
I turn back, finally, towards the source of the voice, and I briefly consider glaring. I don’t (though I suspect that my eyes narrow by a fraction or two; it is difficult to contain the brunt of my annoyance) and tell myself that it was probably unintentional.
(As I stare at the smile curved across his lips, I find myself thinking that it might not have been as unintentional as I’d like to believe.)
The boy is mottled and faintly bluish, like the rocks that compose the cliffs, and it takes me a moment to remember his question. “Oh, I’m-“ I stammer, stabilizing myself on the rocks, “I’m not sure, actually. I’ve never seen anything like these creatures, before…I think one of them is a fish?”
As far as the others go, well – I have no idea. It’s hard to say exactly how I’m looking at him, but I think my gaze turns faintly hopeful. Whoever he is, I’d say he knows more about the sea than I do; if he’s generous, he might even be able to tell me what those things are.
EVERYTHING IS RISK, SHE WHISPERED.if you doubt, it becomes sand trickling through skeletal fingers.☙❧please tag Nic! contact is encouraged, short of violence
the salt is on the briar rose
the fog is in the fir trees.
Caspian receives the outcome he’d hoped for, but he still winces after her yelp, and his little grin fades into a line of concern as the figure scrabbles on the rocks. He knows from experience how slick they can be, coated in algae and ocean-spray, and if Benvolio were awake he’d be chastising him, maybe even with a nip of needle-sharp teeth.
Luckily, the pegasus doesn’t go toppling in, and the paint watches, impressed despite himself, when its wings snap out, flinging water turned to gemstones by the sunrise. It might look like an angel rising in reverse from the froth and stone, were it not for that yelp still echoing in his memory.
When the stranger turns, Caspian’s look is almost contrite. To his relief, there’s no anger on the other’s expression - but what he does notice makes his curiosity return, and he steps nearer still, until they are only a few yards apart and he can make them out clearly in the growing light.
She - for he can tell, now, even before she speaks - gleams like gold, like she’s been dipped in it or painted with it, such color as he’s only seen on the aspens before their leaves fall. Her hair is auburn, red like oak leaves, and ram’s horns curl from behind her ears. And on her forehead is a clear oak-leaf shape, as if Vespera had pressed the most perfect leaf of fall there to keep it safe forever.
He is smitten at once.
Somehow, he manages to comprehend what she’s said, and his nose wrinkles (how did you think something was a fish) but he chooses not to tease her. Instead he says, “Well, let’s have a look,” and crosses to her side in his most confident, self-possessed strut. Once there, he finds it difficult to meet her gaze, and is glad to have an excuse to instead study the tidepool.
Caspian is instantly chagrined when he sees the lion fish and realizes the danger his little joke might have put her in. That’s not something he wants to mention, either. But as he scans the inhabitants of the miniature sea his genuine love of where he lives takes over.
“That’s a lion fish,” he says, motioning to where the spiny creature floats, paddling the water with its fins, “and those are seahorses - no relation - and oh! There’s a royal starfish. I don’t see them often. This is a great find - some of the tide pools around here are only barnacles and urchins.” He glances up at her through his tangle of forelock, feeling unnaturally shy. “I can tell you anything about this stretch of shore,” he says, boasting only a little. “Sorry I startled you. My name’s Caspian.”
OR I THINK SO, I THINK THEY WERE a kind of luminescent dark cobalt, / but it was over so fast
At my inquiry, the boy all but saunters up to me, a look of almost-pure confidence on his face, in his stride; it’s almost charming, and it almost makes me giggle. He comes to stand with me on the rocks, and I notice that he won’t meet my eyes, but that’s probably because he looks down almost immediately at the water – and, more importantly, at the creatures dwelling within it.
I stare down at each creature that he gives a name to, wholly mystified by his explanations. (His eager tone, too, does little to assuage my enthusiasm.) The lionfish has a pattern more like a tiger, I think, but then the fact of its spines occur to me – they protrude almost like a lion’s mane. The seahorses perplex me immediately. He claims that they have no relation to us, which assuages some of my confusion, but I don’t really understand the name until I take a closer look at some of their little faces. They are long, and the angle of them almost resembles the face of a horse.
The royal sea star is utterly incomprehensible to me, however. I am newly-acquainted with the concept of a star, and the purple creature doesn’t seem to resemble one at all. I don’t doubt his explanation at all, however. He’s far too enthusiastic about the creatures in this tide pool to be lying to me. (I think.)
He informs me that this is a particularly good “tide pool,” too, and that some of the others only contain barnacles and urchins. I cock my head at him, eyes widening a fraction. “Barnacles? Urchins?” I don’t, of course, know what either of those things are – or why they aren’t particularly good or interesting finds. (That is, perhaps, because everything is good and interesting to me at the moment; it is easy to be easily impressed when everything in the world is new.) The boy introduces himself as Caspian, apologizes for startling me, and informs me that he can tell me everything there is to know about this stretch of the beach.
I am only too happy to take him up on his – heavily implied – offer.
I smile at him gently, too enamored with the prospect of more knowledge to hold much of a grudge about my near-tumble into the so-called “tide pool.” “No worries - I’m Nicnevin,” I say. “It’s nice to meet you, Caspian.” I wasn’t so sure about that at first, but I don’t think that anyone who could talk so happily about sea creatures could be a bad person. Almost shyly, and well-aware of my own ignorance, I add, “I just saw the ocean for the first time a couple of weeks ago, so I’d really appreciate anything you can tell me.”
I don’t even know where to start with my questions, though; I don’t even know how to ask half of them. But - the sight of the lionfish moving around in my peripheral vision gives me a rather good idea. “Do you think that you could show me what more of the creatures in these…tide pools…are?”
EVERYTHING IS RISK, SHE WHISPERED.if you doubt, it becomes sand trickling through skeletal fingers.☙❧please tag Nic! contact is encouraged, short of violence
the salt is on the briar rose
the fog is in the fir trees.
Her clear interest - fascination, even - fortifies his confidence after its sudden slip. It’s also a chance for him to keep glancing at her, slyly, a butterfly-touch of a gaze that he manages to redirect before she looks back at him. When she repeats some of the creatures’ names, a question in her tone, his mouth shapes a smile like a sickle moon.
“Utterly common things. Crusty and pointy. There,” he says, dipping his nose toward the barnacles clinging to the side of the rock they stood on. “Barnacles. Careful around them - they can be sharp.” With a snort he performs another quick scan of the tide pool, but raises his head again when he finds no urchins to point out.
As they exchange names, for the first time he catches the color of her opposite eye. The one facing him had been red as an autumn oak, but the other glints gold. Caspian has always been a superstitious boy (if not particularly religious), despite his longing to be above his humble beginnings. In his mother’s lore, two-colored eyes meant the individual was marked by the gods, and could see into the realm of spirits. The paint didn’t really believe that - there were so many strange horses in Novus; he himself is almost always plain by comparison - and yet it still feels significant.
His ears prick up when she says she’s only just seen the ocean for the first time, and he thinks of another girl - Regina - who had said the same when he met her on the cliffside in summer. It’s an impossible thing for him to imagine, when the sea was his lullaby since birth.
“Nicnevin,” he replies, mostly so he can try the name out - it trips delightfully down his tongue - “well, I’m glad you made your way to it. Which Court did you come from, then? Solterra?” Of course he can’t fathom anything else, not when their continent is surrounded by ocean - but she doesn’t seem like a desert creature. She is too much autumn.
At her question his grin grows wider. He feels much more awake than he had five minutes ago, and lucky - the sting of Benvolio’s looming hibernation fades to almost nothing. “I’d be happy to,” he answers, and, stepping carefully back from the lip of the pool, squints at the morning sea. “The tide’s coming in, though, so we won’t have too long. But I know one not far from here that never disappoints.” And he starts that direction, looking over his shoulder as he waits for her to follow, the wind making a tangle of his hair.
COULD NOT COALESCE INTO SOMETHING I KNOW. come back! I'll be better, I'll see --
Barnacles, Caspian says, are utterly common. He gestures at a clump which seem to be growing off the side of the rocky outcrops of the tidepool, and I look at them, intrigued – they remind me of certain fungi I’ve seen growing in the woods. He tells me to be careful, because they can be sharp, and I amend my mental image of them. The fungi are many things (generally, poisonous), but they are never sharp; the resemblance is only superficial.
I am so perplexed by the barnacles – I can’t decide if they’re some kind of plant, or some strange animal – that I very nearly miss the next thing he says to me.
He tells me he’s glad I made it to the sea, and he asks me where I’m from. (He mentions Solterra; I’ve only learned it by name, and I’ve heard it’s in a desert, though I have no conception whatsoever of what that means.) “So am I,” I say, and mean it, “but I’m not from any of the courts. I’m from a land far, far away from Novus.” I mean – I don’t actually know exactly how far. After all, I didn’t come here through physical means; one moment I was in the temple, and the next I was on the cliffs above us. I just assume that it’s far, because it is so different.“I haven’t been to Solterra, yet, but I think I’m going to stay in Terrastella for now.” Elena had offered me a place to stay, after all, and she is a member of the Dusk Court. It isn’t as though I have anywhere else to go, and, besides, everyone that I’ve met in Terrastella has been kind to me, so far. I’m not much sure what I can do for them, but I’d like to do something kind for the Dusk Court – or, at the very least, Elena - in turn.
She told me that I could start a knightly order. I’m not sure that it is a good use of my time, but, then, having a network might help me find who I’m looking for. (Besides, I can hardly defend most of what I’ve done since arriving in Novus as a good use of my time anyways.)
I still want to imagine that it is a worthwhile endeavor. The barnacles will bring me no closer to finding the heir, but, in my next life, for all I know, I could be a barnacle (or a seahorse, or a lionfish); I can’t help but think that every common minutia of this world is valuable, and brilliant, but maybe that is simply its newness. (I am old enough by now to recognize infatuation. I still want it to mean something more than that, regardless.)
Caspian grins broadly at my question, and he tells me he’d be happy to show me more of the tide pools and the little beings that linger within them; he mentions the tide coming in (I am barely beginning to understand that as the word for the way that the ocean moves in and recedes, though I don’t understand it at all), and he tells me that we don’t have long, but I don’t mind at all. Any time is more time than I’ve ever had before.
He assures me that he knows of a tide pool that "never disappoints." I can barely contain my enthusiasm. “Oh – thank you,” I say, my smile growing by measures, “I can’t wait!” (Of course – I don’t have much waiting to do.) With that, I skip down from the rocky edges of the tide pool and follow in his wake, my thoughts turned to strange, tentacled things and fish with many eyes.
EVERYTHING IS RISK, SHE WHISPERED.if you doubt, it becomes sand trickling through skeletal fingers.☙❧please tag Nic! contact is encouraged, short of violence
the salt is on the briar rose
the fog is in the fir trees.
She says she’s from a land far, far from Novus, and Caspian opens his mouth to say But how - before closing it again with a little shake of his head. He is content, for now, to let her have her mysteries (they fit well with the mark on her brow, and her two-colored eyes). Nicnevin does not sound like she’s joking, does not watch her expression to see if she’s succeeded in fooling him - but how one came to an island without ever seeing the sea, he can’t imagine.
It is enough, he supposes, that she intends to stay in Terrastella for the time being.
He is warmed by her grin, and the last of his weariness (it had been a chilly, long night, his vigil with Benvolio) is left behind with the barnacles and anemones in the little pool. Caspian can’t help but be as full of chatter as a sandpiper as they go, pointing out everything from the types of gulls to the little crabs they pass - as much a result of his enthusiasm as to keep from blushing simply by looking at her.
