the salt is on the briar rose
the fog is in the fir trees.
the fog is in the fir trees.
Her clear interest - fascination, even - fortifies his confidence after its sudden slip. It’s also a chance for him to keep glancing at her, slyly, a butterfly-touch of a gaze that he manages to redirect before she looks back at him. When she repeats some of the creatures’ names, a question in her tone, his mouth shapes a smile like a sickle moon.
“Utterly common things. Crusty and pointy. There,” he says, dipping his nose toward the barnacles clinging to the side of the rock they stood on. “Barnacles. Careful around them - they can be sharp.” With a snort he performs another quick scan of the tide pool, but raises his head again when he finds no urchins to point out.
As they exchange names, for the first time he catches the color of her opposite eye. The one facing him had been red as an autumn oak, but the other glints gold. Caspian has always been a superstitious boy (if not particularly religious), despite his longing to be above his humble beginnings. In his mother’s lore, two-colored eyes meant the individual was marked by the gods, and could see into the realm of spirits. The paint didn’t really believe that - there were so many strange horses in Novus; he himself is almost always plain by comparison - and yet it still feels significant.
His ears prick up when she says she’s only just seen the ocean for the first time, and he thinks of another girl - Regina - who had said the same when he met her on the cliffside in summer. It’s an impossible thing for him to imagine, when the sea was his lullaby since birth.
“Nicnevin,” he replies, mostly so he can try the name out - it trips delightfully down his tongue - “well, I’m glad you made your way to it. Which Court did you come from, then? Solterra?” Of course he can’t fathom anything else, not when their continent is surrounded by ocean - but she doesn’t seem like a desert creature. She is too much autumn.
At her question his grin grows wider. He feels much more awake than he had five minutes ago, and lucky - the sting of Benvolio’s looming hibernation fades to almost nothing. “I’d be happy to,” he answers, and, stepping carefully back from the lip of the pool, squints at the morning sea. “The tide’s coming in, though, so we won’t have too long. But I know one not far from here that never disappoints.” And he starts that direction, looking over his shoulder as he waits for her to follow, the wind making a tangle of his hair.
CASPIAN
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