The salt is on the briar rose,
the fog is in the fir trees
the fog is in the fir trees
It’s afternoon in Denocte, and the merchants haven’t even arrived yet to the fabled Night Markets; it’s all empty stalls, crows and the occasional miniature dragon in the streets, bright blue banners sewn with a silver moon snapping in the brisk wind off the harbor.
There is a decidedly different energy here than to Terrastella’s sleepy pier. Caspian weaves between sailors and dockhands like a salmon between nets, relishing the shouting and swearing, the snap of the sails, the salt breeze. He pauses to watch a ship board, burly stallions rolling barrels up a plank; Caspian’s never been on so much as a rowboat, but when he closes his eyes and feels the sway of the dock beneath his feet it’s easy to imagine the pitch and roll of being on the deck.
At first another bout of shouting only adds to his vision, but at the third bray of Hey! You boy! Caspian opens his eyes to find one of those burly stallions staring at him from a much closer distance, wearing an expression of displeasure that the paint is not unused to having directed at him. The younger man glares at him, tensing, but when the dark bay snorts and says “Goddess’s biscuits, you young curs are useless. Get back to work!” Caspian only shakes his head emphatically and says “Aye, sir!” before turning and running down the dock, grinning at the consternated shout behind him.
He slows but doesn’t stop until he’s a few blocks away, and his hooves clop pleasantly on a street paved with uneven stones, buildings leaning like bad teeth above him. Some are multiple stories, an oddity he isn’t used to. Somewhere ahead, he knows, Benvolio is sleeping the day away in some unused chimney. On a whim Caspian steps into a dark shop, strolls to the counter and asks the young mare working it if she knows where he can find a girl named Aspara. “The princess?” She says, incredulous, and laughs with a voice as harsh as a jay. She doesn’t stop laughing even as he turns, brow furrowed, and heads for the door with a last glare shot her way. The sound follows him back out onto the street.
“Princess,” he says, trying out the word, then shakes his head, unable to square it with the girl he’d shared wine with beside the fire, the air perfumed with salt and smoke. It seemed impossible, not least because princesses did not have pet wolves. Still, he picks at it like a knot as he wanders the streets, gradually getting lost.
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