eachdraidh | .001 Action | Video [ Open to All ]

Entry tags:

.001 Action | Video [ Open to All ]

[ ACTION ]

[It was a long walk to Caer Glaem. Fortunately, Susan was close enough that that the road to it was fairly safe. She would feel better about this whole thing if her brothers and sister were here, or if she had her bow, or even her horn. Instead she was wearing her school clothes, and they were none too clean at this point. Still, Susan was hoping for a better explanation, and from what the friendly fairies and townspeople had to say the castle was the place to get it.

She was hungry. Fruit trees and handouts didn't do much in the way of assuaging hunger when one was walking all day. She hoped there would at least be food in the castle; it was looming large in her vision now and she hoped to get there within the end of the day. It was a good thing, too. She'd bathed in a stream that morning, but--

"Lawkamercyme!" cried a high pitched voice, and Susan turned her head just in time to see a small, green-tinted fairy fall into a faint. A dark shadow globbed its way towards the fairy, Susan was sure it had foul intent. Dark shadows with gleam of teeth almost always did. She wished for her bow more than ever, but didn't hesitate to pick up a large stone at her feet. She was frightened - how did one fight a shadow? Oh, she hated to fight - but she wasn't about to just stand there and watch. She shouted, "You! There! Get away from that fairy!"

The shadow did not seem much impressed. And so Susan threw the stone with impressive aim, clipping the beast right in the mouth. It hissed and abandoned the fairy, heading towards her instead. She bent to pick up another rock.]

[ VIDEO ]

[For a long moment, the locket shows a beautiful face with a furrowed brow, staring intently at its own reflection. Susan has never seen anything like this before. She is at the castle now, clean and clothed and fed, so her image doesn't look quite as dire as it had earlier that day, and her dark hair is swept back neatly in a braid.] Ah - so it does work! At least, I assume it does, and this is a message going out all over the lockets and not just some sort of fancy mirror.

[In either case, she's beginning to feel a little self-conscious. She reaches for easily remembered dignity.] I don't mean to intrude, but I have heard that this is something which happens often. And I wonder, is there anyone from England here? [She misses her family; two weeks of walking among strangers in a strange land was more than enough alone time for now, thanks.] Or even [marked hesitation] Narnia?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

That delighted him. "Thank you, darling! Haven't been to the old rock in years, thankfully. What bit of it are you from?"

"I'm from Finchley," she said. She tried to place anything about him from his moving picture in her locket, but he looked more Telmarine than British. "Where are you from?"

Finchley escaped him, but he could picture it: small, quality hamlet. Lace at the windows. Tea prompt.

"At the moment, I'm from the Caribbean, darling. Bright sun, blue water, colorful anemoninnies, majestic sailing vessels, occasional run-ins with Welshmen and or cannibals."

The Pelegostos had only recently almost devoured him.

"Not so bad, though. Ever been there?"

"Not the Caribbean, no," she said. Though she had traveled to the Lone Islands, and spent a considerable amount of time there as a monarch. After all, she had been given to the radiant southern sun. She'd made it her business to go about them at least once a year, if she could. "I've heard of it, and it's always sounded beautiful."

A quick smile, "Even if the Welshmen sound a bit frightening."

Her tone was gently teasing, and she would probably apologize if any Welshmen overheard.

Jack would be very interested in the Lone Islands, for certain.

He grinned back at her. "The sort of Welshmen what visit you in your nightmares, aye. But not so scary as the scary things lurking in this place. Dark days in Fairy-land, lass. Very dark."

It always seemed to be dark in the days when she first arrived in another world. And while she'd encountered a shadow-creature already, Susan was interested in learning a bit more... even if, granted, she'd already given this man's word the generous category of 'dubious.'

"I've been warned away from shadows," Susan said. "But I feel as though there's an awful lot that's already been going on and I don't know which way to step."

"Which Caer are you? The glimmery-nice-pretty one or the one where they eat the mouse tails?"

"Does that matter very much?" because Susan had a guess where this one was from, and she had to admit that there was so much that she didn't understand about the war that she wasn't yet willing to take sides. She hated war. And she didn't much appreciate being drafted, though maybe her opinion would change after meeting the king and queen of her court.

And she wasn't asking just because she sensed her well of information was about to dry up - she was asking because she wanted to know just how seriously the 'shardholders' took their relative alignments. Were they, by and large, all in it together or were they strict members of their courts?

"Does if you're trying to at this very moment find a safe harbor, lass."

Jack took a long view of the war: every battle he could avoid was a special bonus. He was also quite good at avoiding every semblance of actual and feigned loyalty to any court, unless it were to come in handy at a given moment.

That was a very sensible answer which didn't tell Susan much of what she wanted to know at all. She wished Edmund was here, he was better at this sort of thing than she was. She wished Peter was here too, she always felt safe when she was with him. And if Lucy was here... well, she'd always determined to be brave for her little sister. It was far more difficult to be brave for herself.

"I finally made it to Caer Glaem today," she said. She glanced around her ornate chamber, though the wall behind her was a simple supple green. "The people here have been kind enough to give me a place to stay."

And no pirate was surprised. He was heartened, though, somehow, even though he told himself no self-respecting Jack Sparrow should care where some young girling ended up.

They'd still make her battle for them, of course. Bugger.

"Of course they have. And should you ever need to flee their posh chambers, you could always stop at the Station."

"Oh?" Now this was something she hadn't heard about at all. "What's the Station?"

She decided to spend the rest of her time that evening studying the map.

"It's an odd place, really. I met a gryphon there." He'd had some very good rum there as well. "He was a nice chap.

You can go there and stay no matter what court you belong to."

"That... sounds like it would be a very interesting place to visit, at least," she said. "Although maybe once my feet stop hurting," she added wryly.

Walking for two weeks straight made a girl very glad to stop in a place with a bath, even if it was public bath, and a bed.

"Been wandering, eh? I thought all you lot rode upon magical unicorns or somesuch."

"No," she said, eyebrows arching slightly. "But I'll have to keep that in mind for long journeys."

She wondered if this place had unicorns. Maybe she could borrow a horse, at least...

"What do you lot ride on?"

"Me? The Black Pearl."

And there was Captain Jack Sparrow, chock full of wist.

"Though she's not here at the moment."

Other than that, lots of prostitutes, mainly.

Ah, now that was the name of a ship if she'd ever heard one. Still, better to ask, "Is that your ship?"

Yes, she could easily picture this man as a sailor - a 'free sailor,' probably, and her mind began to sketch in some imaginary details.

"She's mine, I'm hers." It was a mutual love, although she seemed to enjoy leaving him behind. Hrmph.

"Well, you'd best take the sailor's cure for a sore foot, darling. And I'm warning you: it involves lots of lemons."

Susan could tell when a subject was closed, although it had stirred in her a strange longing to talk about the Splendour Hyaline... well, she could take a hint. There wasn't much joy for a landlocked sailor.

So she gave the man a very pretty smile and said, "What do you do with a lot of lemons? It's not the same as a remedy for spots, is it?"

Mostly Jack didn't want embarrassing questions about where his ship was, or whose debt he was in to sail her. Ugh. Tentacle-beards.

And wasn't that just the prettiest smile. Prettier even than Elizabeth Swann.

"You halve it and rub it across the soles of your feet."

"And I thought sailors kept lemons on to cure scurvy," she said in the tone of 'you learn something new every day.

"We do!" This girl seemed so interested in pirates, like the red-haired Alayne and the dark-haired Ariadne. "You can be scurvy-free and have lovely soft inviting feet at the same time, you know. They're not mutually expulsive."

Pirate spa, apparently.

Susan laughed. She couldn't really help it. Picturing sailors with inviting feet... good Lord, all the sailors she knew would turn over in their hammocks, so to speak.

"I have to say I've not heard of that before." This was a lovely conversation, really. Lightly informative, and entirely distracting and she was glad of it.

It felt rather good to make this girl laugh. Most girls didn't really appreciate his stories, he found. It was a shame she was in the Other Court. Jack wasn't sure whether his feet would be held to the flame in an all-out war or not, but he'd hate to be placed in that sort of position.

"Put a man and a barrel of fruit out on the sea for months, it's surprising what he'll come up with, lass. Me, I survived all alone on a tiny atoll in the middle of nowhere. Just my wits, you see!"

And a cache of rum and food and plenty of shade and even an old hammock that a smuggler had left behind. It had been marvelous.

"Though I don't want to give you any nightmares, what with the intense levels of excitement attached to any given story about my life."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject