the salt is on the briar rose
the fog is in the fir trees.
the fog is in the fir trees.
Her laughter feels like a prize, something he wants to earn again. The bonfire smoke softens the outside edges of things, and the wine softens the inside edges, and for the first time Caspian feels like it could be a special night. Not just in the once-a-year sense, but once in a lifetime.
But her question brings him down from that feeling, just a little bit, which frustrates him in a restless kind of way. Home is always a sore subject to dreamers and wanderers of Caspian’s caliber; no matter how well he knows the caves and the shoals and the tides and the cypress swamps, no matter that he loves them too, his thoughts are always out, away, beyond. “That’s the wine, too,” he says, not quite kindly, with a shrug of one blue-freckled shoulder. Then he sighs, which feels close enough to an apology to Terrastella. “Nah, it’s alright. All the trouble’s kept hushed here.” Better that way, Benvolio intrudes, and Caspian bites back just boring.
His grin isn’t gone for long - it never really is - and it resurfaces like a sun-slick curve of a dolphin’s back when she takes a gulp and calls him friend. “Cheers,” he says, and finishes whatever’s left in the glass until only sugar and shine remains, glowing with firelight.
Until she speaks again, he’s caught by the tongues of flame, tasting the darkness and reaching higher. Fire is a mesmerizing thing even to the uninebriated, and it takes the bat’s laughter for him to realize what she’s said.
He’s too accustomed to the comment to feel truly embarrassed, though it isn’t just the wine that makes his flush grow warmer. To be called fish-boy was one thing from the village children, whom he could (and did) ignore with great alacrity, but to be so accused a stranger, and a pretty one -
But Caspian recovers quickly. He looks at her, a brow raised, and turns his grin wolfish. “‘Course I do. That’s what all us kelpies smell like. And you smell delicious.” In his drunken judgement, he leans over and clicks his teeth playfully near her ear.
He studiously ignores the Oh, Caspian that sighs in his mind. And anyway, she does smell delicious - like woodsmoke, and wilderness, and the crisp leaves of autumn. Probably that’s all he’ll be left with, in a moment.
CASPIAN
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