the salt is on the briar rose,
the fog is in the fir trees.
the fog is in the fir trees.
She looks a little like she’s underwater - deep blues with the light soft on her, diffused through the glass like the skein between water and air. Still, now that he’s looking closer, it doesn’t do much to disguise the juts of her, cut like the sharp face of the bluffs along his favorite coves; shadows pool along her hipbones, between her ribs, beneath her cheekbone and jaw. Caspian is not a stranger to hunger, but it is strange to see such an angular horse at this season; he hopes she isn’t sick, that her question wasn’t born of that kind of longing. It’s impossible to read the intensity of her gaze in this dark dream-wash of color.
Her question is not unexpected; that kind of boasting always draws nickers of laughter or incredulity from those he knows, which is why it’s a nice change to tell a stranger instead. “You’ll have to wait and see,” he answers, grinning a little fish-hook grin, and he can almost feel Benvolio’s tiny sigh against his skin. When she swims through the light he follows her, sure-footed, and catches another whiff of salt-grass and brine between the waft of bonfire smoke.
For a moment he doesn’t think she’s going to answer. She seems lost in the faint music, her chin tipped to the sky and her eyes drifted closed, and his curiosity circles again like a widening ripple in a pond that’s never quite still. Her laughter is more musical than the fiddle, and her reply makes his grin widen a degree before vanishing, and he raises a brow at her. He wants to say not yet you don’t, but he isn’t interested, tonight, in how far he has to go, and how much work lies in between him and his future. Caspian is only interested in being a boy in a place he’s never been, come to revel with strangers and follow the night with no more plan than a bit of ember on the wind.
“And if you were me, what part of the festival would you see first?”
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