- 50 Winter 519
The orange walls seem to strenuously beat down even when Caspian closes his eyes.
They’re the morning sun, if he wills them to be, or the humid haze of the late afternoon, the skyward setting of somewhere dry and arid and preferably as far away from here as one can get. Everything in the room is colored citrine, or else some similar hue in solar glow, and it’s a ghastly sight to behold, or so he remembers pronouncing the first time he’d discovered it – but the lurid strain is something he runs to now, and for the past few days his primary escape.
It’s been 30 days since he and Taalviel had taken on the job; 30 days since the funeral, and Nicolette had taken him home. More than 30, if he’s being honest – but to consider the number in greater and more definite terms is precisely the kind of thing that has him running for the orange room. Before that it had been the green, and before that –
There he goes again, counting ever higher.
Nicolette doesn’t like him peering out the windows. To a certain point he’s not sure he likes it either – all it shows him are people who move from one place to another of their own free will, who, as far as he knows, didn’t tail a stranger home in the name of long-lost treasure and the promise of mizas and that thing he mildly refers to as his day job when so much of it, in fact, trickles on into consecutive nights. To date, here, thirty –
“Mattie, darling -?”
Caspian jumps. Nicolette had crept into the orange room in her unsettlingly undetectable way, and is now hovering just behind his armchair.
When Caspian opens his eyes, it’s not him fawning up at Nicolette, but the stolen amalgamation of a persona he’d dubbed Marcus Matterly.
“Up rather early, aren’t you?” he asks. He’d hoped he’d have at least another half-bell to himself.
“I had the most awful dream…” she begins to simper, sliding around and onto his lap.
The old gaudy ruby pendant glitters at her breast – to which he finds his face suddenly duly pressed.
“Oh?” he dutifully inquires. “What of?”
“It was horrid!” she exclaims with a wide-fluttered warble that wouldn’t have been out of place on a stage. “Why – I dreamed that you’d up and left me, Mattie. Imagine how terribly distraught I was when I woke and you weren’t there.”
“I’m sorry, darling,” he murmurs in Shiber against the skin exposed by the gap in her robes, the pendant etching its outline into his cheek.
She giggles, shifting her weight in what would have been an enticing way had it not been for the fact that the last time she’d let him outside was a fortnight ago, when she’d allowed him to lie under strict supervision in the backyard. The walls were high and made of stone, and the sun seemed further and filtered away.
“Say something else,” she orders – she’d asked him a while back where his features come from, the depth of the tones of his skin, and unable to come up with a reasonable falsehood but also not sure the general truth would necessarily be of any detriment to him, he’d told her his mother had been among the Benshiran. She had found this incessantly exotic – and maybe that had been it, then, the real nail in his coffin that he’d hammered of his own making. Fool he was to make himself more compelling to her than she already found him.
“Drown me in the dune,” he whispers, as he’d sometimes heard his mother curse.
She laughs with delight and hops off his lap, pulling him to his feet. “You must teach me that one later. But for now – breakfast! And a bit of dictation.”
By now, he knows better than to ask if he might linger here alone for even a moment longer.
With Marcus Matterly’s rakish tilt, he gestures grandly towards the door. “Lead the way, my duchess dear.”
With her back to him, he allows Marcus’ grin to falter.
Tonight, he’s going to get a message out to Taalviel – because the Powell jewels or not, he’s not certain he nor Marcus can stand any of this much longer.
WC: 714
They’re the morning sun, if he wills them to be, or the humid haze of the late afternoon, the skyward setting of somewhere dry and arid and preferably as far away from here as one can get. Everything in the room is colored citrine, or else some similar hue in solar glow, and it’s a ghastly sight to behold, or so he remembers pronouncing the first time he’d discovered it – but the lurid strain is something he runs to now, and for the past few days his primary escape.
It’s been 30 days since he and Taalviel had taken on the job; 30 days since the funeral, and Nicolette had taken him home. More than 30, if he’s being honest – but to consider the number in greater and more definite terms is precisely the kind of thing that has him running for the orange room. Before that it had been the green, and before that –
There he goes again, counting ever higher.
Nicolette doesn’t like him peering out the windows. To a certain point he’s not sure he likes it either – all it shows him are people who move from one place to another of their own free will, who, as far as he knows, didn’t tail a stranger home in the name of long-lost treasure and the promise of mizas and that thing he mildly refers to as his day job when so much of it, in fact, trickles on into consecutive nights. To date, here, thirty –
“Mattie, darling -?”
Caspian jumps. Nicolette had crept into the orange room in her unsettlingly undetectable way, and is now hovering just behind his armchair.
When Caspian opens his eyes, it’s not him fawning up at Nicolette, but the stolen amalgamation of a persona he’d dubbed Marcus Matterly.
“Up rather early, aren’t you?” he asks. He’d hoped he’d have at least another half-bell to himself.
“I had the most awful dream…” she begins to simper, sliding around and onto his lap.
The old gaudy ruby pendant glitters at her breast – to which he finds his face suddenly duly pressed.
“Oh?” he dutifully inquires. “What of?”
“It was horrid!” she exclaims with a wide-fluttered warble that wouldn’t have been out of place on a stage. “Why – I dreamed that you’d up and left me, Mattie. Imagine how terribly distraught I was when I woke and you weren’t there.”
“I’m sorry, darling,” he murmurs in Shiber against the skin exposed by the gap in her robes, the pendant etching its outline into his cheek.
She giggles, shifting her weight in what would have been an enticing way had it not been for the fact that the last time she’d let him outside was a fortnight ago, when she’d allowed him to lie under strict supervision in the backyard. The walls were high and made of stone, and the sun seemed further and filtered away.
“Say something else,” she orders – she’d asked him a while back where his features come from, the depth of the tones of his skin, and unable to come up with a reasonable falsehood but also not sure the general truth would necessarily be of any detriment to him, he’d told her his mother had been among the Benshiran. She had found this incessantly exotic – and maybe that had been it, then, the real nail in his coffin that he’d hammered of his own making. Fool he was to make himself more compelling to her than she already found him.
“Drown me in the dune,” he whispers, as he’d sometimes heard his mother curse.
She laughs with delight and hops off his lap, pulling him to his feet. “You must teach me that one later. But for now – breakfast! And a bit of dictation.”
By now, he knows better than to ask if he might linger here alone for even a moment longer.
With Marcus Matterly’s rakish tilt, he gestures grandly towards the door. “Lead the way, my duchess dear.”
With her back to him, he allows Marcus’ grin to falter.
Tonight, he’s going to get a message out to Taalviel – because the Powell jewels or not, he’s not certain he nor Marcus can stand any of this much longer.
WC: 714
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