queenofmay | (no subject)

(no subject)

The drifts are deep and it hasn't stopped snowing for the better part of the day, which mean its white nearly as far as the eye can see in every direction where the paths of footsteps aren't tracking to and fro. There are thin trails toward the forest and the field, and well worn paths around the loop of the lake and back and forth from the stables to bar. But even those are dusted with the still falling snow.

It's really quite impossible not to be dusted with the snow, with how much is falling. Light but constant, piling everywhere, in everything. So that Marian, who couldn't care less about her own hair jeweled with flakes in a good portion of it now that her hood has fallen away from focus, is laughing and brushing it off the nose of a mare the same color of the icy flakes she dusts away, who is head and half a neck leaning out the window into her.

She could do this from inside, where it is toasty and her fingertips wouldn't be full of chill, but where would be the fun in the that. Insides are always before and after everything already, and she knows how it feels to be cooped in a space too small for too long, without wide enough windows, while people pretend it isn't so. Which is where she finds herself. Behind Lineave's stall and just under the outside eave of the roof, in front of the the window facing out into endless fields of white.

Marian grinned, as her heavy cloaked shoulder was nudged, soft snuffling that broke to a low wicker again, as she was reaching up to stoke the jowl still faintly wet from whenever they were last let free to run for the day. "I should wonder if it is winter or freedom that has made you more impatient."

But she produced an apple from the folds of her cloak staving away another minute of it.

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A few branches have fallen near where the Hope sits, on a trailer near the edge of the woods, covered in canvas and a fair few inches of creamy white snow, and he'd hiked out to make sure none had fallen on the hull, or damaged her in any way. Green needles pinprick the white around the dropped branches, but the Hope remains untouched, and he checks the knots holding the canvas in place before turning towards the stables, snow crunching beneath boots, dusting the warm winter cloak he wears.

He notes the color and motion before the sound: even Marian's laughter is muffled by the snow falling all around, resting in smooth, deep drifts by the stable wall, and when he whistles a greeting, clear and bright, it falls short, a cheerful trill kept from ringing as if by cotton.

She is crowned by glittering flakes, settling in coal-black hair, cheeks red with cold, and he brushes snow out of his own hair as he comes near, looking from Marian to Lineave with a smile.

"She knows this world is made for her. One might hardly see her against the snow, on a day like this."

She's caught up in her visit, but not so much she doesn't turn her head. An easy turn, even if there is something classical and careful to it. Even and gentle, but of a very true grace that is taught and a deep necessity to a life where you can't be caught or let surprise show long, if at all. But there is nothing of care or concealing in the smile that breaks out gentle and curling across her mouth when she spots the source of the whistle, rambling through the snow.

"She could fade away entirely," Marian replied, with some merriment.

Even if the subject was a little too close still. For long enough she'd lived with the idea Lineave, and all the other horses had likely burned with the house. Even if they were not in and of the same time or place anymore, it was nice to know she was here. In the hands of several trusted hearts.

"We had wondered if we would see you today," followed easily. Before Marian was brushing the warm, wet nose still breaking apple bits off over one palm. "Well, perhaps not her." Marian amended, eyes bright against for the winter chill. "She likely sees you quite often."

"She would be a spirit of the snow," he answers, coming close enough to lift a hand and find Lineave's warm nose, as she snuffles at his palm and fingers, searching for treats, as though she had not just had a fine one already.

Which gains a smile all its own, before he's looking back to her mistress, gray eyes bright and voice cheerful. It's been weeks since All Hallow's Eve, and troublesome thoughts are far from reach, this day. "Aye, she and I are thick as thieves, you know. Quite companionable, your mare, if not so talkative as some."

He reaches to find the closest white ear, runs a hand over it, smiling broadly when it flicks back against the touch.

"I'm glad to see you, as well, Lady Marian." He'd be hard pressed to say which makes the prettier sight in the snow; the mare, or her mistress, but in truth it is the whole scene that lightens his heart. His tone turns light, and teasing. "Do you plan to ride, or simply spoil her?"

Marian let her own fall away. Brushing her hands together, once, and then just lightly enough, in the grasp of curling fingers on her cloak. Heavy made for wear, and definitely able to brush free what little bits of fruit and juice had remained. Pulling her arms in and letting her hands rub her ams once under it. Not all all that cold, leaving them cross, as she watched them.

Never once had she doubted whether she left Lineave in good hands, when she watched them walk together from the Nottingham stables. Or when she'd seen Kate, warm smile and such sure hands, taking care of her later. Here, she would want for little if anything. It was the bet Marian could hope for, and hold to. Watching Caspian stoke her ear.

"Truthfully," She looked back from the flick ear to the warm face of her friend. "I hadn't decided upon anything past this moment. I only arrived a few minutes ago, and it seemed fitting to come visit friends first." Her, and all of any of the three she might find in this place. There were several reasons the stables were among her favorite places here.

High up there with Security and London Below and the myriad faces she missed between each leaving and arriving.

"I'm sure she appreciates the thought."

He shifts to look more directly at her, hand resting on the arch of Lineave's neck, under her mane, where body warmth thaws his icy fingers as his smile slides a little sidelong. "You are missed, in your absences."

By the mare or others, he does not say, but perhaps it hardly needs to be detailed. "And I suppose the snow had not a thing to do with your decision."

Idly spoken, as though such a practical concern would, naturally, be front and center.

Truthfully, it had drawn him here, too. The bar is full of warmth and light and the pleasant anticipatory glow of celebration, but the snow settles deep and silent and coats the world in glittering blankets, and he never has been able to resist walking out under the falling flakes. So frosted, the familiar world of Milliways turns strange, like an old photograph, reminding him of Narnia and the woods in winter.

Marian looked up, pleased by the way of almost easily shifting focus, toward the snow. Even when the curve of her mouth lingers, tucked to a corner, pleased and fading slow. Not as though it were fading out, the way candles guttering in a breeze do, but as though it were being tucked somewhere deep away. Like warmth permeating winter's cold, into a place were cold winds could never touch.

Or, perhaps, had too frequently. Either way. To a place somewhere deep and true and hers. As she looked toward the snow.

Before she tossed her hair over a shoulder, giving an archly almost teasing look toward his direction, like somehow he should know. Without any special power, or knowledge from whence came her door this time. "It is still early fall fading from the highest summer back home."

The days full of golden sunlight that only narrowly find purchase in strips of light here and there in Nottingham, she doesn't say. She finds it where she can. When she can. But still warm, definitely, everywhere. A world made for lighter garments and skin posed to breathe air where appropriate.

"But," She persisted, with a cant of her head, thoughtful, though only just, as her smile flickered back. "I cannot say to have ever been stopped by a snow drift in my time. To the detriment to my father's heart and patience-" And at least a dozen dresses through her childhood. At the least. "-or not."

No, if she could not be stopped by men who claimed to rule a world, she could hardly be said to be stopped by the weather.

"High summer seems but a fantasy here," he teases. "Even in Ambergeldar, winter has crept across the world."

Christmas preparations at the palace are therefore in full swing, a feverish, hectic chaos of activity that Caspian avoids as much as possible -- not least because the Lady Cecily has taken to appearing rather suddenly, hinting strongly at the presence of mistletoe. Amy would, he's sure, hardly condone such a a treacherous plant spread about the halls, but it isn't worth the risk, and he's taken to helping with preparations if he isn't with the children, Amy, or Perry. Lady Cecily might be about, but even she can hardly interrupt if he's attempting to aid the organization.

Even if she did manage to corner him at one point to congratulate him, eyelashes fluttering as if she were blinking away a dust storm, on his commission, while lamenting the fact that it will take him so far away and for so long, and swearing to write every day.

Since he's fairly certain she'll simply write his replies back, he hadn't dissuaded her.

Not that Marian needs to know anything about Lady Cecily or her strange, if mainly harmless, delusions.

"I cannot possibly conceive that a drift of snow might be able to even give you pause," he says, instead. "And Sherwood Forest in the snow must have been an irresistible temptation, indeed."

Oh, how fast time tended to move here, while not moving at home. At least some things held true, unchanging.

"A kingdom of ice, untouched except by the wind and the last of the leaves," she gives, with the air like somehow it is a great secret. This thing seen by many, and bypassed by them like it is an everyday occurrence. This falling snow and endless drifts, eaves made by criss crossing branches like a creaking, sprinkling roof.

"Is there such a person who could pass that up?" Marian smiled, with a small shake of her head. Which, in turn, set of the snowflakes caught and melting in her hair. Sending them down in a small snow fall of their own. "I shan't believe there is any heart that could miss that call."

Perhaps, there are hundres. But she wouldn't be one of them. Racing through the winter drifts, racing the chill-bitten wind. Warm body of a companion beneath her, and the winter spread out like cloak all across the world around. It will be a very different winter when it comes this time. Within the walls of Nottingham. Where racing the forest from itself would not be on Vasey's docket for her.

"Truly, it would be impossible," he agrees, leaning back against the stable wall with one shoulder pressing into wood, mouth half-turning to a smile. "You'd have loved Narnia in the winter. The fauns would dance in the snow for hours, and there would be hot mulled wine and cider, and the best sort of hot chocolate, when all was done and we wanted to come in from the cold."

And the woods, the Western Woods, stretching to Lantern Waste and the ancient frozen palace between the hills, trees glassy with ice and coated with thick frost.

"Not to mention rather large snowball fights in the courtyard, as I recall."

Not that winter in Narnia was all fun and games and celebrations: there were wars fought, tricky negotiations made, long, bleak stretches of cold and dark, when it seemed the whole land dreamed nightmares of the Hundred Year Winter and the return of the Witch, but it was cheerful and lovely more often than it was not, and Spring did always come with a relieving thaw, in the end.

That Caspian leans on the cold, semi-snowed building doesn't surprise her, but that he starts talking of his Narnia does. It's not so much that she doesn't think everything might remind him of his once-home, but that he speaks of it freely without question or curiosity. The loss of a world she does not think can be much like the loss of a person, and the loss of a person can take more than years out of a person.

When he's had still but months to grapple with the loss of his everything once in Narnia, gone in flames.

Words she has tucked away, not like treasure, but like the deepest of secrets shared on the coldest of nights.

"I think I would have," Marian agreed gently, stepping back to the window and Lineave, watching her mare rummage for the best parts of new sheathes of hay on the ground near her food bag, before looking back to him. "It does sound like a very beautiful time of fun to be had by all. I don't believe Nottingham's had a winter festival the likes of that since I was a younger girl."

Which is, maybe, her own small step in admission without turning the topic from his Narnia. He's seen her world now. There's no use to pretending what they do get to is nearly as grand as it once was. Food for the heart of girl-child raised beloved among once-happy people. Then, it had been. And they still managed what they would in villages, but it was not the same as it once had been.

Narnia, in winter. Truly, a few perfect diamond days, more so than the worst. When even storms blowing across the land, raging at icy water below the castle walls, simply drove them all inside to fires and warm blankets lining every available surface, furs to tuck into at night, heavy cloaks lining the throne by day. The Narnian winters, now gone, enveloped in darkness and flame.

(for there is nothing left)

Gaze gone a little distant, at the memory of ghostly boots tramping slow along the stable floor, of his uncle's iron-hard eyes, his iron-gray beard. So real he could have sworn it happened, truly. Telling him the things Caspian has tried without success not to know.

"Well," he says, in reply to words he'd heard, though faintly muffled, "you simply cannot stop the fauns from having fun, you see. Anyone who tried would, without fail, be pulled into the merrymaking and not released til at least the night had passed."

Amusing memories, surpassing those of winter nights now turned to nothing. "There's a faun here, actually. I don't suppose you've met him? Mr. Tumnus is his name."

Caspian dips, distracted, and Marian actually isn't that surprised.

Sometimes he mentions it, and more likely are the times he doesn't at all. She knows how sometimes the best memories are the ones far harder to hold in ones hands than the truly painful, horrible memories. More fragile than glass and distance stars, and dreams of a world that isn't your own now.

But Marian smiles as he goes on, the fingers of one hand curling on the windowsill, as she watched him speak. The faintest ghost of a smile, on the backdrop of that suddenly somber set brow, and the the world of snow falling beyond him and the eave of the roof.

It brightened at the question, even, "I have, in fact. He shared a cup with me not too long ago-" Well, as it was for her, perhaps. "-and spoke short, but dearly fondly, of your Lucy, and all of her siblings."

How very Milliways it was to suddenly wonder, amid the thoughts of knowing Caspian's Narnia was gone, whether winter of a non-lethal kind had newly returned to the forests of Narnia where Tumnus still came and went from. To tempt, very gently, with some teasing mirth, "I could believe him to be a snow-dancer given another winter or two with no Queen to fear."

For now, he was a little nervous, if quiet kind and endlessly loyal in word as well as deed.

"Yes, he's quite close with the Pevensies. Rather an irreplaceable advisor, from what I heard, though he's from well before my time."

Hundreds and hundreds of years before the seas came crashing into cracked earth and the stars fell from a split sky, so perhaps it is no surprise that Caspian has not, precisely, sought out the company of the faun as much as he may have, previously.

Besides that, it's always been a bit odd to know that Tumnus was going back and forth between Milliways and the Golden Age of Narnia, where ruled High King Peter, hundreds of years before Caspian knew him or his siblings. Still, he smiles at her jest, coming back to himself with barely a blink. "Oh, I think so. No doubt he'll be relieved to see the Spring, but winters here hardly last for a hundred years, witches about or no. Truly, I believe him to be more scholar than dancer, snowfalls notwithstanding. His histories of Narnia are unparalleled, for his time."

A very long time before him, if Lucy's books are to be believed.

A magic and a deep faith that took them there, and to Caspian's own time, and back to their same home rarely hours apart from whence they came. Which, in all true honesty, is far less hard to believe when one has been coming to Milliway for the better part of half a year before hearing that it is possible of other lands, as well as this one.

But it is not hard for her to catch the edge of reticence in Caspian either, right up until he smiles. A smile that washes away the slowly pooling shadows in his face. Perhaps, chasing them right to the edges of his grey eyes, while he's giving a vote of confidence she could not have known herself. "Truly?"

"Perhaps, I should see about acquiring a copy from him, to go with the rest of my little library on it."

When she sees him, again, if she did. The fluidity of Milliways had it's own ways and votes on that.

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