the salt is on the briar rose
the fog is in the fir trees.
the fog is in the fir trees.
There is something charming about her matter-of-factness. Caspian has never been one to give the ritual quite as much weight as some of the tourists - and many of the locals - did, and though he hadn’t expected her to feel the same he finds himself glad when she does, and more curious too.
“You chose a good first visit,” he says, and slants a considering look at her. “Let’s see…bonfires and drinking and nothing terribly different means you must be from Denocte.” He’s pleased with his sleuthing, no matter how elementary, though almost at once he wishes he would have asked her for her own opinion on what was the same, and what different. He has been part of Terrastella his whole life, and to see it from fresh eyes would be a treat.
But he doesn’t, and it doesn’t really matter, and when she steps closer his smile widens to reflect her own. Caspian laughs at her assessment, and doesn’t even pretend to be wounded.
“I’m here for the camaraderie,” he answers, and means it - after all, there is something special about tonight, when he isn’t just some muskrat from the coast selling trinket to tourists and guiding smugglers to perfectly secret coves, but just another horse who calls Terrastella home, who has salt and swamp-water in his blood and stardust in his eyes and a thousand ancient drums beating his heart ever onward. It is good to see everyone together like this, even when he isn’t making money off those too drunk to pay proper attention.
But still he grins, or half-grins - a little fishhook-curl of one side of his mouth, as he meets her eyes. They are blue, almost as dark as his own, and they shine in the firelight, and he reckons they would shine out of it too. “But also the wine. It’s free, after all.” This may not matter to a princess, but it absolutely does to such as him. Caspian does not misinterpret her look, no matter how drunk he is; he offers his glass to her with all the gravity of a jewel-encrusted chalice. “Well, that’s just bad luck on a night like this - you’d better take mine.”
Somewhere in the night, he could swear he hears the tiny sound of a bat’s cough.
CASPIAN
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