the salt is on the briar rose
the fog is in the fir trees.
the fog is in the fir trees.
To her credit she takes it well, though he could have done with at least a moment of belief before the laughter; but Caspian settles back, just a little, at the sound. She has a good laugh, he thinks, one he wouldn’t mind hearing again.
“You’re terrible and I don’t believe you,” he parrots back to her, but his smile has settled back into its usual self, and for now at least he isn’t offended. Maybe that will come later, with sobriety and a headache in the blurry morning - but maybe not even then. The paint is not a man easily knocked down; he is too young, and the world too full of possibility.
But even he falls silent and still at the sound of the wolf.
It is not an entirely new noise, not here where everything was still a little wild at the fringes, but it still raises the hairs at the back of his neck. Caspian does not look into the darkness, though, but at the unicorn, with the firelight glancing off her horn and her eyes now dark and deep. He can tell the interest there is something more than curiosity, or fear - still, when she says my wolf, an eyebrow arches without his asking. “You have a wolf?” he asks, and it plays pranks? wants to follow, but does not - anyway, Benvolio would probably play pranks, if he were bigger or bolder.
(Hey,) says the bat into his mind, and Caspian thinks you know what I mean. And come on - a wolf!
“I hope he isn’t hurt,” he says, but there was something wild and beckoning in that howl that young boys like himself were not immune to, and he almost - almost - asks if he can go with her.
But then she touches his cheek, and she is going already, and he is too drunk to follow with any kind of grace. So he says “I will,” and then calls “I’m Caspian!” after her into the darkness, which holds the moon-color of her like an after image even when the sound of her hooves is swallowed up by distance and the crackle of the fire. He watches where she vanished until Benvolio swoops down out of the darkness and clings to his mane, then he returns to his wine, laughing softly to himself.
CASPIAN
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