Sherwood Adventures -- Part I (of II or III)

[queenofmay]

Marian leaned against one of the paddock fences, watching him finish up afternoon work she still hasn't sure he actually had to do, studying the horizon. "It is rather impossible to miss how beautiful this place is, when the sky isn't red."

It seemed so long ago, trying to remember when it was all foreign. Back before looking at all of it filled part of her heart with fondness and deep recognition. Back when, she was all too aware, they had first met and parted.

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[the_seafarer]

He's not used to the new animals here, yet. It seems impossible that in only a matter of days (was it days? or hours?) everything could change so completely.

But it hasn't been hours, or days, or even weeks or months.

Years.

He thinks he knows a little how the Pevensies must have felt now.

At her comment, though, he stops examining the tack he'd taken out to work on, and squints up into the sky, shading his eyes with one hand. "Aye, that must have been a sight. Though I can't say I'm heartbroken to have missed it."

He'd had red skies of his own to worry about, and anyway, that isn't the point. Glancing over to her, he smiles. "It is a rather nice little spot, isn't it? If a bit, well ... unpredictable."

[queenofmay]

Marian shrugged, not moving from her vantage point. It was a perfect view from where she is. The ocean, the bobbling Hope, the lake-ocean, off to one side is the forest and the mountains, and to her other, is perhaps, the greater reasons she can't stop smiling. Alive, and ever as any memory held.

"It is The Bar's way," she said, gracefully unruffled, her smile never fading. "Raining rooms of flower petals, and it isn't though it is called the End of Time and Space without reason. It should be a wonder that anything will surprise me after another few years here."

Aside from the fact the disproof of that stood so close.

[the_seafarer]

He chuckles a little.

It's good to see Marian smiling and happy. Now that there is ease all around them, he can see how strained their goodbye truly was, how forced the lightness of their voices had been.

And yet, at the time, he'd thought them both so clever. Now it's easy to point out the pretense and call it a sham, and a poor one at that.

"You've truly found a place here," he says. He has to look up at her from where he sits on a log that has been pressed into service as a bench, and the light makes him squint, but he's smiling. "It's good to see. But I wouldn't issue that as a challenge, my lady. You never know what might arise in this place."

[queenofmay]

"Better not to wish for the providence of that proof again?" Marian questioned, though the way her smile was becoming smaller and effusively amused it was less him and more to the universe at large.

She was not so flustered with shock as when she'd first seen him, but neither was she entirely sure in certain seconds she might not just turn her head and all of this would be a dream.

The best, but only a flicker of Milliways magic itself.



And not for the first time she restrains the urge, she hadn't realized had become so ingrained, to raise her hand and touch the bottom of her necklace where it rests, tucked into her dress.

[the_seafarer]

"Better not," he agrees. "The forces at work here are fickle indeed."

Sometimes hard, sometimes cruel; at times kind, but ever capricious. What was it Susan used to say? It never has been neutral ground. "My old tutor used to tell me that magic is never to be trifled with. Perhaps that is what caused your red sky and odd omens."

The laces here seem tight and the leather well-kept: he cannot fault the management of the stables for negligence, it seems, though he can feel uneasy for having left them so long. Putting his work aside, he stands, stretching his legs, and goes to lean on the paddock fence, looking out, as Marian does, across the water.

The Hope, at least, has not changed. "But you're right. It is a beautiful place, and I'm glad indeed to be back in it."

[queenofmay]

"Agreed," both to be back in it, and to be glad he was. To be glad he wasn't long since passed, on his battlefield, an unknown hope hanging forever like a star in the sky.

"Even after these last few months, I still feel like I must have missed so much." Years in days. She tilted her head to look over at him. "And yet, compared to your own."

His years dwarfed all that she'd heard.

Yet she was glad of him being there.

Even with the confusion to it.

[the_seafarer]

"Yes, well."

He leans with one boot up on the bottom rung of the fence, arms resting loose on another slat. "I had a friend who used to tell me that time is a face on the water. I don't think I quite understood that until now."

Hours, to years.

Reaching up, he rubs, wry, at the back of his head, leaving his hair in a tousled mess. "I've always known that in war, time is either rushing past or has slowed to an infinity." He slants a look over at Marian, half of a crooked smile curving.

"But years seems a tad extravagant. I've missed so much. I have three new nephews I never knew existed. But the people are still those I knew." Now his smile grows warmer as he meets her eyes.

"And my friends are still here."

[queenofmay]

Marian nearly opened her mouth to say always. It had hovered for a second. But years had passed her by here, too, and people had been here, while she wasn't, in the passing time. She did not make promises she could not keep.


"And hopefully much of what you loved so in this place." His great love and joy of it had been one of the many inspirations in her earliest times.

[the_seafarer]

Many of his friends. Not all. But those still here are no less dear because others have gone, so he turns a mock-thoughtful eye on the clouds marching slowly above them.

"Well, Kiseki is still here," he teases.

"I suppose some things never change."

His hair had been freshly nibbled on just this morning. Kiseki, it seems, remembers him still. "But aye. I think so. 'Tis still a haven for many, it seems. But truly, it's difficult to say. I suppose I ought to look around these old haunts and see if they are still as I remember, but so far, I admit, I have merely kept within sight of the Bar."

[queenofmay]

That she understood, and she had smiled at his errant joke. Before, offering, "Perhaps, then, it is time you gave Her the faith of still being there when you look back, and let yourself see to the rest of it?"

[the_seafarer]

"I think, perhaps, you are right."

As a boy, he'd ever longed for adventure, imagining himself King Caspian, riding to revolution with Queen Susan's horn hanging at his saddle. These waters and woods might not lead to the edge of the world, but they still provide a man with a will to wander a place to do so.

And a place to return, it seems.

Straightening, he looks past her to the woods, then nods.

"Jolly good. It seems I've about finished my work here, anyway." Sea-gray eyes smile at her.

"I don't suppose you'd care to come along? Make certain all is satisfactory?"

[queenofmay]

"I have already done my shift for the day, and have no appointment in Arch for the evening, thus-" Marian drew it out slowly, considering those same clouds. Though the edges of her mouth fought to break her of her mock-seriousness.

"I do suppose I have no true excuses for say no."



She stood from the fence, letting her smile slip back free. "Where would your heart most like to start first?"

[the_seafarer]

"'Tis my good fortune, then," he says, his own smile threatening to turn bright and laughing, "that you can think of no good excuse."

When her smile shines, though, his follows: it's irresistible. And why bother with serious things on a day as sweet as this, back in a world he'd have sworn would never be seen again?

"Well..."

Turning slowly in one spot, he looks over the paddocks, the meadows, the wide calm lake, before his eyes light on the dark trees that mark the beginnings of the forest. "There are -- or were -- several fine riding paths through the woods. Shall we see if any of them are still there?"

[queenofmay]

"I would be glad to," Marian said, relish touching into her tone she had quite realized she felt until that moment. "I haven't yet had the time to explore them since I returned either."

New or old, that was a freedom that sung out suddenly from some dark corner of her. A horse and the wind and the canopy of treetops, kept from her so very long, except for that one night she'd carried the pass for Daniel.

[the_seafarer]

"Well, then," he says, hefting the bridle and letting it drape over one shoulder, "no time like the present. Shall we?"

He can't exactly offer her his arm like this, but it doesn't matter: the formalities that had been such fragile walls during the last conversation he ever expected to have with her are lighthearted now. The stables aren't far from the paddock, any how, and he hangs the bridle before going to one particular stall, all his complaints and wry jokes belied by the way he rubs the white star on Kiseki's forehead, and how he smiles when a soft nose pushes at his shoulder.

"There now, thee mischief. Time to earn your keep."

[queenofmay]

The great horse who, still needed name years later, and someone's more dedicated care, still comes at her call. The click she makes her tongue at the roof her mouth. Petting his nose, and into the broad line of a cheek, over the divider. "What do you say, shall we be friends today, you and I?"

Even as he snorted and stomped the ground, almost like a restless demand in return, and Marian couldn't help feeling even if the answer was no, that they both felt the exact same way about being in tight, enclosed spaces, and even were it not friends, comrades in escape might be just as livable for both of them.

She walked back to gather all the pieces she needed, hefting and carrying them without any request or look toward Caspian. Seeing to her horse without pause, as would anyone raised with their own, until each strap was tightened correctly and she could lead him out from the stables and into the open air.

[the_seafarer]

They ready in companionable silence, the sounds of the stable all around, mixing with the scent of hay and leather and horse -- all friendly smells and sounds so unlike that stable on the hilltop that Caspian cannot think of them as anything like the same thing.

Puzzle would, he's sure, much have preferred this place to the other.

But this day is not one for reminiscences, unless they are fond ones of times spent here before, so he simply saddles Kiseki and coaxes him into bridle and reins before following Marian out into the sunlight again. It's an easy swing into the saddle, and he sits there for a moment, testing the feel. It hasn't been long for him since he's ridden along these paths with Kiseki, but three years (or is it four? Five?) is rather a while to expect a horse's memory to last.

Kiseki seems content, however, so he waits while Marian mounts and clicks, starting off towards the green smudge of trees. "Still no name for that fellow, eh?"

[queenofmay]

Away, is a quiet mutual thrum, because he follows her direction toward the woods without argument. If anything, it's that she can already feel the first one coming will be against the so far sedate pace. 

"It has troubled me a little lately," she admitted, the note of apology in her tone if not her expression. "I am uncertain anyone should have gone five years without him. I had gifted him away years back, only to be surprised he'd never been taken away."

[the_seafarer]

"Gifted? To whom?"

He's heard some of what has passed for his friends here, but he thinks there will be new things to hear for some time to come.

Five years. It's an uncomfortable thought, and it makes him shift in the saddle as Kiseki shakes his head heavily.

The trees are ahead, with the path leading a tempting, winding way in, and he taps Kiseki with his heels to move him into a trot as he grins at her. "Well, named or no, shall we stretch his legs a little?"

[queenofmay]

He starts and her stallion matches his Kiseki more than her, even if her movement is barely a second later.  Maybe she doesn't mind. Faster, herself. Or the question. Because the secret joyful escaping smile. The one that lights her eyes up like stars. It could be both, couldn't it. the answer is one word. 

So differently said from its first, and last. "Robin." 

[the_seafarer]

"Ah, I see."

The beats come faster now, sending his sword bouncing gently in its scabbard and finding a breeze to tug at his hair and shirt, but Kiseki will never be as strong or fast as the stallion Marian has yet to name and he can see that if this becomes a race, he will lose.

(What he would give to have his old Destrier back again -- though perhaps that is an uncharitable thought. He's fond of the gelding, more so, mayhap, due to the memory of her who gifted him.)

"A noble gift, indeed."

[queenofmay]

"Their need was greater," Marian said easily, into the wind. Wanting to correct the word 'gift' but thinking to the few moments Robin had gotten to be here. The day she'd told him of Caspian's leaving. Corrected, herself. "Is."

Even as a prisoner she had more than them. Than their people, like those who had been subject to a mad man's poison experiments so recently. 

"I had hoped to give him a greater purpose there than being cloistered in by the paddock." 

[the_seafarer]

"I'm sure he'd prefer it," he replies, looking with admiration at the proud stallion. "He doesn't seem the type to enjoy being cooped up any more than his mistress does."

It's difficult, though, bringing something through the door, when you never know when it might open or close on you.

"Perhaps he may yet find a home with your friends."

[queenofmay]

"God and the Bar willing," Marian agreed, with some errant distraction to it. The words and notion. Robin hadn't return here, and the horse had not left. 

"But that is the hope for another day," Marian added. Before flashing him a bright smile, and urging the horse to go faster. Calling over her shoulder and the cascade of untied hair in the wind. "Shall we?" 

[the_seafarer]

"With a good will, lady," he laughs, and urges Kiseki forward. The stallion, nearby, seems eager to be unleashed, and Marian rides ahead, her smile a flash of brilliance in the dappled shade and her hair fluttering like raven wings. Kiseki is no match for the unnamed stallion, but even he seems to feel the delight of speed and Caspian can feel him gathering himself to give chase.

Leaves and branches flash by and the path winds closer into the wood: a log appears that the stallion leaps easily and Caspian's laugh as Kiseki follows, startling birds from a nearby bush, rings through the trees. The delight in movement and a fair day and a good friend is such that he could not pinpoint when it is that the trees seem to change and the path widen, but when he spots a trickling brook making a merry sound off to the right, he holds Kiseki from a gallop and slows to make a careful circle, while the gelding snorts, impatient to be off again.

"I do not recognize this part of the wood," he calls, frowning at the little stream. "It seems these paths have changed, after all."