It was a warm evening, late spring, and the sunset stuck itself to every flat surface like a kid fighting its bedtime. I was that glorious age where one is always hungry, and never tired, and the daylight’s rebellion felt like my own.
It was easy living, I knew it then and know it now. I knew childhood was slipping away from me- I was a citizen, no longer a youth, and perhaps one day soon a Warden- and I took every opportunity I got to savor it. (I did not quite yet realize that youth was more than anything a frame of mind, that being old was a choice. But how could I? It doesn’t matter; I would learn.)
That evening I was tromping through the streets I knew and loved most, the labyrinthine passages near the market district. Furfur prowled by my side, and we were discussing strategies for my upcoming spar. He was very sour that I wouldn’t let him join the fight, and took every opportunity to remind me of it. I ate as I walked (I know, I know, it’s a terrible habit. And so rude), a fat fresh slice of honeycomb from the older mare with the gap tooth.
“If I was with you…” It was Furfur’s favorite way to start a sentence that evening, and I was sure it was going to end neatly with some elaborate description of August’s death. I would have cut him off there, but I stopped in my tracks and he quickly shut himself up. “What is it?” He hunched low, instantly on defense, attention zeroed in on the boy down the street slowly walking toward us.
“Caspian?” I laughed, half in disbelief it was him. “It’s Caspian, you can relax” I told my wolf. “Who is Caspian?” He scowled, revealing an abundance of teeth. As a general rule, he did not like boys who got close to his human.
“Oh stop that,” I nudged him roughly, and walked closer to the stallion with a grin. “Hi! W-What are you doing here?” I glanced past him, as though the answer might be written in the street; it was not, or at least not clearly.
I thought about him from time to time, but not in a way that meant anything... I just had the tendency of carrying people inside of me. It made no difference if we had only met once or if we were close friends or, in some instances, if we had never met at all-- I’d see or hear or smell something completely random and it would remind me of someone. Sometimes it was the oddest details, like a leaf falling in the cold autumn sunlight, or the scent of a room right after opening the window, that first wave of fresh air. Other times it would make more sense, and this is always how it was with Caspian- I would smell the ocean in the evening, just after the sun had gone down and the fires had been started, and wonder where that sea-swept boy was, and what he was doing.
“It’s nice to see you.” I know now it was nothing, but in that moment it took a lot of bravery to make such an admission. My smile came a moment later, delayed, everything in slow motion compared to the manic flutter of my heart.
@Caspian
