[P] as though the season became her [fall]

[Caspian]

the salt is on the briar rose
the fog is in the fir trees.

Don’t get too close to the fire, Casp.

Why - worried I might fall in?

More like combust.

Caspian snorts a laugh, though he doesn’t deign to respond to the bat as he nears the fire. Benvolio isn’t truly worried, anyway; overhead the paint can hear the faint click of his sonar as the bat swoops intricate patterns in the dark. Really, it’s the cliffside he should be careful of, as the wine has rather interrupted his equilibrium - but he’s run up and down this coast as nimble as a goat since his first day standing, so that doesn’t worry him either. (Little does, especially tonight.)

There is a girl by the fire, a unicorn. The paint leaves some room between them, a quarter-curve of the circle, but his gaze lingers on her even before she speaks, because she’s young, and pretty, and a stranger. Oh, Caspian does love the festivals, bringing new blood into town. He’s just sober enough not to stare, and looking, somewhat mesmerized, into the belly of the flames when she clears her throat.

He’s glad for the excuse to look at her again, wondering where she’s from, what she might be looking for tonight. Tourists were always easy marks, susceptible to one thing or another - though maybe not when his legs were stained with grapes, and probably his teeth as well.

She beats him to speaking, but only just. At her question (once his mind interprets it, running a few beats behind as it is) he grins, nods. “Aye,” he says, pitching his voice louder as well, though as drunk as he is it’d be like a shout in a quiet room. “Your worries to the fire and your wishes to the sea.”

At her following statement, he laughs the same way he had at Benvolio, only the snort is quickly followed by a hiccup.  That is a little embarrassing, but maybe she’d missed it over the constant snap and hiss of the flames, or the murmur of the sea, or something.

“That’s what the wine’s for,” he says, and is relieved when it isn’t punctuated by another hiccup. “So which did you come for?”

CASPIAN

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@Aspara