It is dusk and all the world has gone soft with color like a faded painting. The moss campion and harebell purples the hillsides and the air still remembers the scent of their sun-warmed petals, at least for a moment longer.
Caspian is, of course, picking his way along the rocky shoreline, heedless of the beauty (which is the kind of thing that happens when you’re an adolescent boy who grew up among such treasures). Overhead Benvolio sweeps back and forth over the water, snacking on mosquitos and keeping a lookout. The posture of the horse below him is relaxed, but within his ribcage Caspian’s heart is a loose fist ready to clench. No matter how many times he does this the feeling is the same, anticipation and nerves that tingled like an anemone sting.
The smugglers aren’t due until moonrise, another hour from now, but Caspian is always early to meetings like these. Everything so far is going according to plan - the tide is out, changing the landscape of the cove, and he has seen no sign of boats. Even the seagulls are subdued.
Often the paint is an impatient creature, but he is never bored near the sea; unlike the flowers that dot the grass he’s never tired of the endless roll of the waves, the chuffs and shushes and crashes, the treasures it brings.
It’s these he’s searching for, carefully pawing at half-submerged shells and bits of driftwood, when Benvolio rouses him. Someone’s coming, says the little bat, an Caspian straightens at once, ears flicking forward. They’re early, he thinks, and squints down the beach for silhouettes. I don’t think its them, Ben says, and swoops further into the darkening dusk. Caspian purses his lips, trying to decide whether he should head them off or slip away and let them pass unknowing.
It’s a kid, says the bat, and that’s enough to decide him. With a snort and a shake of his head, the boy starts forward, preparing to tell whoever it is to beat it.
The sky is bright and blue, and the clouds look as though someone has taken the colors of the flowers growing on the tops of the cliffs and used them to paint their surfaces. Bright magentas, pale peaches, deep indigos—so many colors, and they are all reflected onto the sea which tosses and turns as if in sleep.
It’s beginning to get dark, and Charlie is tracing the line of the incoming tide as she walks down the beach. Her hooves leave a lonely trail in the wet sand behind her, but the yearling doesn’t look back, only forward. High above the cliffs, Indy is keeping watch no doubt with keen yellow eyes.
The ends of her vermilion scarf flutter in the breeze, and Charlie’s chest burns a little every time she looks at it. Both from anger and from pride. She hasn’t taken it off since the day she took it in Denocte.
Sometimes, she swears she still hears the buzzing in the back of her mind, drowning out all those thoughts she doesn’t want to think.
The pegasus girl is here because when the tide is out, the cliffside has more secrets to reveal and she loves nothing more than discovering them. She’s been doing it since she was a girl. Even before she could fly, she was scaling these treacherous walls and finding all of the best hiding places.
What she’s not expecting is to find someone else out here, too. Charlie sees him coming, even as Indy’s voice warns her of his approach. The osprey begins to circle lower and eventually perches upon her bondmate’s shoulders, watching the approaching equine with a strong weariness.
Charlie, however, tosses her short black mane and continues forward, passing the boy and heading further down the shore. “Hi there,” she says, glancing over her shoulder at him. He is white as a foggy morning over the sea, with streaks of charcoal and navy in his coat. Even though she doesn’t know what he wants, she does know that she’s here for a reason and he’s not about to interrupt her.
The first thing he sees is the fluttering orange of her scarf, waving like a beacon in the breeze coming off the water. Next he watches the bird - an osprey, by the color and shape - drop down from the thermals and circle nearer and lower in a gyre that ends with the kid.
By then they were near enough he could see the determined set of the yearling’s shoulders and the surety in their stride, the outline of the wings tucked to their narrow sides.
“Hey-” Caspian begins, and then stops with an expression of disbelief to watch the stranger strolls on past him. It’s not until she speaks (her tone suggesting that this is her stretch of beach) that he realizes it’s a girl, and he turns to watch her pass, his brow creasing into a furrow.
He hopes he’s only imagining the tiny laughter of a bat somewhere overhead.
“Hey,” he tries again, falling into casual step beside her. In the growing dark he can’t make out her dusting of freckles, only the citrine glint of her eyes and the warning-yellow of her osprey’s. “Where you headed?” Caspian keeps his tone light, conversational; he’d hate to frighten or bully a girl needlessly. There’s still time before the wreckers arrive - with a little luck, she’s only passing through.
Charlie gets a deep, albeit surprising, feeling of satisfaction from the almost dumbfounded way that the other equine pauses in his tracks as she continues past him, as if he weren’t there. She’s never disregarded someone else so blatantly before, but the burning in her chest and the reminder of wasps buzzing in her thoughts is still too clear.
The day she had taken the vermilion scarf had changed something in her. Or perhaps things had always been different, perhaps she had been changing all along, and that day had simply solidified it. “Hey,” he says again, and she glances over when the older boy falls into step beside her. Charlie can tell he’s older than her, but he doesn’t seem that much older. Only a few years, if anything, and that definitely doesn’t make him the boss of her.
She doesn’t answer him immediately, instead observing him a little bit better in the growing dark. The pegasus finds she likes the way his coat takes on the colors of the sky, much like the sea, much like a fog might. His coat is tinted in shades of lilac and violet, like it’s reflecting the clouds. Hers just gets darker, steals all the shades of the world from around her.
“The tide is out,” Charlie says, as though he should have noticed, “It makes exploring here much more interesting.” He seems like someone who would know about that kind of thing, otherwise why would he be out here pawing at the beach during low tide? Whatever his deal is, the girl keeps going—a determined set to her shoulders.
He can’t begrudge her answer, not when it was true, and he would have said much the same thing (only ruder, probably).
But this is not the time for exploring, unless she wanted to discover what it was to have angry men with rusty swords convincing her that she’d seen nothing, nothing at all. Caspian sticks close beside her, one ear tuned to the flapping of her scarf in the breeze off the water and the other turned down the beach, straining for the sound of voices or hooves against the stand or stone.
“It does,” he says begrudgingly, then is struck by inspiration and shrugs a shoulder cavalierly. “Though I’ve already picked this cove clean of anything worthwhile. The next one over, now-” he raises a brow at her, as though to suggest that there are great riches there, just out of view around the next jut of cliffside. ”I think I saw a selkie there, once.” Now he squints toward the breakers, as if looking for a seal now, though he watches her from his peripheral vision, hoping she takes the bait.
Just then a bat swoops overhead, tracing an erratic pattern over the cove. They’re coming, Benvolio’s voice echoes high and strained in his mind. They’re early, he thinks, disbelieving, looking back over his shoulder - and sure enough, there on the dimming horizon are figures, dark against the sand, distant but growing larger.
Caspian curses beneath his breath, then jerks his attention back to the girl, silently begging her to move on before trouble finds them both.
Charlie glances sidelong at the older boy as he shrugs his shoulder and tells her that he’s already taken everything of value from this area of the cliffs. She narrows her vermilion eyes incredulously, “Really? And how do you know what I find worthwhile?” Granted, he might be right and she might just be acting stubborn, but she’s not that easy to get rid of.
What does he care if she wasted some time looking in empty crevices anyway?
“A selkie?” now the young pegasus really is incredulous. Kelpies are one thing. The Dusk Court has had tales of kelpies in their waters since long before she was born, so coming across one of them might not seem like a big deal. But a seal that turns into a mare on land? She’s never heard of anybody seeing one of those around before.
Charlie is about to push ahead when she catches movement from the corner of her eye. He’s looking over his shoulder at something behind them, and her curiosity gets the better of her as she turns and stops. “What are you looking at?” Maybe he really was trying to get rid of her.
Maybe he had hidden all his good stuff nearby, and was trying to get her to go away so that he could move it all. He turns back to her and she raises a brow, expecting some sort of answer. As though he obviously owes her one. “You’re hiding something.”
If it were any other day, he’d admire her pluck. (Then again, he isn’t much more than a boy, an age when girls - especially younger ones - are nothing more than an annoyance, so maybe that’s being generous.) Today, he simply doesn’t have the time. Instead of simply asking her, he snorts. “I mean, unless you’re out here for barnacles and washed-up bull-kelp…” As for her incredulity about his selkie spotting, Caspian only has a shrug to offer for that.
High overhead, Benvolio arcs toward the silhouettes on the beach, himself no more than a speck of black against the dark sky. The paint flicks an ear toward the girl’s question, though his gaze remains focused on the same figures. “Some not-so-nice men.” It does not seem worthwhile, in this instance, to lie, and he hopes the words will move her - literally.
At her next comment, his mouth curls in a smirk. “Always,” he quips simply. Ironically, though he was hiding something (on behalf of those men, hidden behind a table-sized boulder in one of the caves) all he was trying to do was keep them both unharmed.
The wreckers are close enough now that their voices echo over the water and the pebbles of the beach. Caspian’s ears flick back, and he turns toward the girl. “If you must stay, go hide in those caves - and stay quiet! But it would be best if you just listened to me and got out of here. We’re both fish food if you don’t.” Then he whirls from her (barely keeping from nipping at her cheek) and trots toward the men, praying he hadn’t waited too long. If they saw him standing with someone else, their suspicion would be grounds enough for more crimes than they were already committing.
“I mean, unless you’re out here for barnacles and washed-up bull-kelp...”
She isn’t, but that’s really none of his business. Whoever he is, he has no right to tell her what to do and frankly, right now, she isn’t in the mood for it regardless. All her life nobody has bothered trying to do what he’s doing, and now here he is, some stranger, who thinks that he can just tell her what to do like a child? She’s hardly a baby, anymore.
Charlie watches as he looks down the beach toward whatever has gotten his attention, but is a little surprised when he responds the way he does. Both by his honesty, presumably, and by what it is that he’s looking at exactly. Suddenly, this whole situation has gotten a lot more interesting.
Is he some sort of smuggler or something? The pegasus doesn’t know, but she really wants to find out. So when he gives her the perfect reason to, it’s impossible to pass up. Charlie’s lips tilt up in something of a mischievous smirk as she heads the opposite way of him, toward the caves he pointed out.
She carefully tucks the edges of her scarf in close, so they don’t go fluttering around, and for once can thank her missing father for looking so much like him as her deep blue-greys will blend in nicely with the wet coastal cliffs. Then, she hunkers down and waits for all their secrets to be revealed.
![[Image: 13222742_95oVYzdeR5MVhK5.png]](https://file.toyhou.se/images/13222742_95oVYzdeR5MVhK5.png)
