[P] and there was the wordless, singing world

[Nicnevin]

COULD NOT COALESCE INTO SOMETHING I KNOW.
come back! I'll be better, I'll see --

Barnacles, Caspian says, are utterly common. He gestures at a clump which seem to be growing off the side of the rocky outcrops of the tidepool, and I look at them, intrigued – they remind me of certain fungi I’ve seen growing in the woods. He tells me to be careful, because they can be sharp, and I amend my mental image of them. The fungi are many things (generally, poisonous), but they are never sharp; the resemblance is only superficial.

I am so perplexed by the barnacles – I can’t decide if they’re some kind of plant, or some strange animal – that I very nearly miss the next thing he says to me.

He tells me he’s glad I made it to the sea, and he asks me where I’m from. (He mentions Solterra; I’ve only learned it by name, and I’ve heard it’s in a desert, though I have no conception whatsoever of what that means.) “So am I,” I say, and mean it, “but I’m not from any of the courts. I’m from a land far, far away from Novus.” I mean – I don’t actually know exactly how far. After all, I didn’t come here through physical means; one moment I was in the temple, and the next I was on the cliffs above us. I just assume that it’s far, because it is so different. “I haven’t been to Solterra, yet, but I think I’m going to stay in Terrastella for now.” Elena had offered me a place to stay, after all, and she is a member of the Dusk Court. It isn’t as though I have anywhere else to go, and, besides, everyone that I’ve met in Terrastella has been kind to me, so far. I’m not much sure what I can do for them, but I’d like to do something kind for the Dusk Court – or, at the very least, Elena - in turn.

She told me that I could start a knightly order. I’m not sure that it is a good use of my time, but, then, having a network might help me find who I’m looking for. (Besides, I can hardly defend most of what I’ve done since arriving in Novus as a good use of my time anyways.)

I still want to imagine that it is a worthwhile endeavor. The barnacles will bring me no closer to finding the heir, but, in my next life, for all I know, I could be a barnacle (or a seahorse, or a lionfish); I can’t help but think that every common minutia of this world is valuable, and brilliant, but maybe that is simply its newness. (I am old enough by now to recognize infatuation. I still want it to mean something more than that, regardless.)

Caspian grins broadly at my question, and he tells me he’d be happy to show me more of the tide pools and the little beings that linger within them; he mentions the tide coming in (I am barely beginning to understand that as the word for the way that the ocean moves in and recedes, though I don’t understand it at all), and he tells me that we don’t have long, but I don’t mind at all. Any time is more time than I’ve ever had before.

He assures me that he knows of a tide pool that "never disappoints." I can barely contain my enthusiasm.

“Oh – thank you,” I say, my smile growing by measures, “I can’t wait!” (Of course – I don’t have much waiting to do.) With that, I skip down from the rocky edges of the tide pool and follow in his wake, my thoughts turned to strange, tentacled things and fish with many eyes.

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@Caspian || <3 <3 <3 | "ars poetica," sally ball 

"Speech!" 

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