the salt is on the briar rose,
the fog is in the fir trees.
the fog is in the fir trees.
His smile is lost in the darkness when she says she’s in no doubt of his future. Caspian says nothing in return, only tucks the comment away like a little bit of treasure. The boy walks beside her, near enough to note the slight valleys of her ribs, the points of her hips before the details are lost in the dark. He wonders why she is so thin, when it is summer and all the world is a banquet - at least for those who aren’t too good for clover and meadow fescue.
I don’t like her. The pronouncement from Benvolio surprises him; all the rogues they interact with, and he takes issue with a girl? Well I do, he thinks, defensive, and the bat responds No, it’s just that-
But Caspian ignores him, because Sereia is talking about pirates. “You watch them? Where?” Yet she is already continuing, talking of trouble, and though he wants to preen a little under her gaze he shakes his head at her question. “I aim higher than that,” he says. Something seems to have changed in her gaze when she looks at him next, or been revealed; her eyes are bright, the glow from a lighthouse beckoning him nearer and warning him away. When she steps closer the smell of the sea comes with her, so familiar Caspian feels no urge to withdraw. Instead he wants to reach back, to find out what her skin feels like, which looked so otherworldly beneath the lights -
He doesn’t get to tell her of the dragon cakes, how they’re enchanted to make you breathe smoke after you eat them and taste of spices he can’t name. They are coming together like a wave and shore when there is a child’s cry and Sereia steps back. Moments later she is gone, and he’s left calling goodbye to the empty dark, a little dazed, staring at the crowd where she disappeared.
Who knows how long he might have stood there, had Ben not bitten him, sharply, on the shoulder. “Ow!” he says, appalled, but the spell is broken; with a shake of his head (and a nip at the bat) he continues down into the city.
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