I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what I ought to want anymore. At least in the past I thought I should want for duty and Orestes’ love. Now, having neither, I am lost. What would it mean to have wealth? That pursuit is foreign to me, though I know for certain that I am impoverished. Hunger prickles at my stomach every hour of every day. Should I seek fortune, then? Perfect my skills as a - a - craftsmen? I have only ever know war and the preparation for it. I sought love, once, or thought I had it, but what would it mean to simply come upon it, as others claim to? It is not real. I’m sure it’s as flimsy as loyalty in the face of hunger. The only thing that anyone believes in is gold.
Saphira stands in the midst of the Dusk Court’s market, her meager wares arranged before her: seashells, seagrass, amateurish jewelry and braided reeds. None of it is worth buying, but she does her best to convince outsiders of its Terrastellan authenticity and to tempt spoiled children’s parents. The more they whine, the more she sells.
Having been lost in thought, she returns to the present moment and calls out to a pretty little filly in a pretty little cloak, all wool and satin. ”Hi, sweetie. Looking for a necklace for your dolly? Maybe she’s a mermaid, or” - she leans in close - ”a kelpie queen?” Saphira’s smile is wide and maternal as she can muster (which might, actually, look threatening.) The little girl frowns and looks Saphira straight in the eye. “My dollies only wear the best.” She turns on her heels and marches off with her mother.
“Well, fuck you, too, you little brat,” Saphira mutters, poking at a particularly crude necklace to obscure it beneath the tattered fabric on which it is displayed. She thinks back on when she could turn into the sea and go diving for pearls, and sighs.
@Caspian || John Marr and Other Sailors ”who will grieve for this woman?“ does she not seem too insignificant for our concern?
03-13-2020, 10:49 AM - This post was last modified: 09-29-2020, 01:40 PM by Saphira
“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
—
Caspian walked until the long salt-wild grasses gave way to the smooth hills dotted and warm with wildflowers, and the hills gave way to scattered houses, and the houses began to cluster and grow larger, and he was at last in the city.
He did not look like a city-creature, with plaited hair and a groomed coat and money in his pocket like a boast. The boy’s hair was windblown and caught with a burr or two, his coat half-shed with enough dirt visible his mother would surely have chastised him if she’d had the chance. Nor was he particularly self-conscious; there was that familiar twist of jealousy, and a little of awe, but Caspian knew he was better, smarter, more resourceful than they. And one day he’d be richer and more powerful, too.
Though he’d come to visit his sister, he could never resist a stop by the marketplace. He was always interested in seeing the wares, some familiar (he passed by but so much as trade glances with a buckskin selling some liberated casks of wine Caspian had helped him hide last week) and some delightfully odd and curious. Best of all were the wares from far continents, smelling sharp and bitter of spice and adventure, or curved knives with embedded jewels glittering like eyes. But Caspian did not have the money for such treasures, and the sellers knew it, and he never lingered long at their tables.
Today it was no foreign object that stopped him, but a sight so familiar it was jarring to see it out of place. Caspian drew nearer, dark blue gaze scrutinizing. There on an old driftwood table were shells of swirling purple and pearl and seafoam green, all in spirals as tight and perfect as unicorn’s horn. Common turret shells, save for the color - those patterns and hues he’d only seen in one place.
He was wearing a shy smile when he glanced up, hiding the keen curiosity he felt. Her eyes were a startling blue, large and clear against her soft features and coloring, but what struck him most is that he didn’t recognize her at all. And he should have, if she was hunting for shells in Dead Man’s Cove.
“There are beautiful,” he said, and though he made his voice doe-soft there was at least no lie in the words themselves. “Where’d you get them?”
I might be a fan of your insolence / but that don’t make you innocent
Class and economic status weren’t things she tried to focus on, but, inevitably, she had little else to do when she stood hungry in the center of a market and some twerp told her that her stupid doll was too good for a seashell crown. Saphira came from a different concept of wealth, certainly, but the rich had excess and the poor went without. What she did now was certainly below her. She didn’t quite have it in her to be a sellsword, not anymore.
Saphira perked up half-heartedly into her saleswoman smile when the boy approached. He was colored like her, and about as dirty, with a sweet little look on his face. She did not trust him. He was a local, probably a nasty little street rat, and if he really wanted he could just go get her shells from the same place she got them. But - you know - maybe he had money tucked away in his scruffy mane somewhere with the burrs and the salt. She kept the smile on.
”Thank you, but I’m sorry to say, it’s a secret.”
She looked at him, and kept looking at him, until her smile wilted into a half-grimace and she sighed. ”You know where I got them.” She was starting to feel bad, now, and what if he wanted to pick one up for his sick little orphan sister or something? He hadn’t had the time to go scrounging around in the cove because he was so poor, and now she was trying to sell him a piece of sea-waste for tourist price!
“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
—
A secret, she said, and he tried his best to look like somebody you’d tell your secrets to. But while he wasn’t quite a street rat, she wasn’t far off the mark in her estimation, and he was getting too old and too knowing to play the pink-cheeked Oliver well.
She was the first one to drop pretenses, but Caspian was glad to follow suit.
He gave her a quick little grin at her next remark, not yet feeling sorry for her despite the way her smile had melted like the last drifts of snow on the first true-spring day. When she called him kid he decided he wouldn’t feel sorry for her at all, scruffy old pony though she was, though he only responded with a little soft-nosed huff. He still did not like the thought of her, digging around one of his coves.
“They are pretty,” he said, considering, and tilted his head with his eyes considering and corvid-bright. “But I could find better. Are they selling? I could do the collecting for you, let you focus on the peddling. Only cost you thirty percent,” he said, and shifted his gaze back up to hers, to try and read the blue there like he would the mood of the sea.
The scruffy little rat looked at her like she might believe he was a sweet thing, a pink and white blossom from the Deluminian nobility. He withdrew the act as she spoke, his demeanor eventually shifting into a clever-eyed magpie. Saphira thought it suited him better.
She snorted at his words. ”If they were selling…” Her mouth twisted into something cruel, disentangling itself before she went on. ”They’re not. Thirty percent of what I’m getting isn’t enough to feed one, nevermind two.” Saphira grinned welcomingly at a pair of passersby, who gave the salt-washed pair a concerned glance before pressing further through the crowd. ”Not much for peddling, either.” She huffed a sad almost-laugh, setting her gaze beyond him. Some pair they were, a washed-up warrior who should’ve had a whole life before her and a scheming street urchin. Hardly a pair, really; she’d be just as glad to be rid of him. This she told herself firmly as a willow switch, which is to say, not at all.
Saphira shuffled around her wares a moment. ”You’re smart,” she started, though how smart was he to approach her over selling shells, she wondered, ”you think of something that feeds two and that you don’t want to do yourself…” she trailed off, not sure of how to proceed. What did she want to reveal about herself? Not her past, no, not her true skills, never. She couldn’t do that anymore, wouldn’t. She thought about the man on the shore, how he’d shaken her sand foundations, but she wouldn’t let them crumble. Not twice in one life. ”I’m sure there are other mean old ponies to do your work for you.”
“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
—
To his surprise, she looked like she was at least considering what he said before turning him down. Neither could he argue with her reasoning, he thought as he also watched the passing pair pick up their pace a little as they ambled away.
“Good thing the grass is free and it’s spring, eh?” He knew what those seasons were like. Caspian had never lived like the horses in the capitol, sleeping in sheets and feeding on honey-oat mash and blackberry scones; except for winter, he could fare for himself. Money didn’t mean food but influence, and he didn’t have nearly enough of that. He watched another gaggle of horses go past, and nickered at a one of them, a chestnut with a charming heart-shaped snip she giggled and turned away and Caspian shook his head, looking back at the blue-eyed peddler. “I’d offer to do the selling but I keep busy enough as it is.” Enough so, anyway, that he didn’t want to keep making the hours-long trek to the city daily.
For a moment he was quiet, watching her readjust necklaces and bracelets, not fighting the curiosity that still rose in him like water in a tide pool. When she said you’re smart, he looked up, ready to laugh or retort, but only tilted his head when she continued. He ended up grinning, thinking of the mean old ponies he knew - cranky vicious thieves, smugglers, and rum-runners who’d happily drown them if they didn’t need him. “Plenty, but I generally prefer to do my own work.” Well, with the help of his partner - but his companionship with Benvolio was not widely divulged information, and Caspian liked it that way. “Just thought I’d make a friendly offer to a new face.” If he was hoping she’d take this opportunity to reveal more about herself, he didn’t show it; instead his gaze dropped back to the table.
He motioned to a spiraling turret shell of swirling shades of indigo and violet and rich ivory, strung on a thin cord of braided hemp. “I’ll take that one.” From a small leather satchel he withdrew a worn pair of signs and set them down. “Such unique color! I’ve never seen its like,” he said, loudly enough that a couple of young mares nearby turned with interest. Caspian lifted a brow and smiled at the stranger before slipping the necklace over his head, the curl of the shell cool against his throat. “See you around.” As he turned to go, the paint nodded at the horses now approaching the table, stepped beyond them and continued through the marketplace, beginning to whistle.
“Spring could stand to come a little sooner,” she grunted. Saphira reckoned he was busy enough, busy enough with something that she didn’t need to get involved in. This life wasn’t good, and it wasn’t even alright most of the time, but the alternatives required a piece of her that she could not give.
”Just thought I’d make a friendly offer to a new face.” Friendly! The little rat had taken the first opportunity to weasel his way into a business offer that was never meant to have him in it. He could probably outsell her in an hour, with all that talking of his. She wasn’t meant for sales and everybody knew it. The gray mare was starting to think she ought to learn a new trade - a peaceful one.
But then - he surprised her. ”I’ll take that one.” Saphira frowned at him and his signos, even as his voice rose to a salesman’s pitch: ”Such a unique color! I’ve never seen its like!” Her ears flicked forward as a pair of girls wandered over, intrigued.
