The room feels emptier without Taalviel. Contrary to what one might have guessed, her absence doesn’t necessarily make Caspian feel better, which takes him by surprise. Did he change? Or, more disturbingly, did she? And when in the world had that happened? Had it crept up on them that slow, taken them both so steadily that he hadn’t even been aware when it had started?
Like the ends of autumn slipping into winter, he thinks, when the wind begins to zip and the leaves to brittle, and the ground beneath one’s feet turns hard with the coming frost.
Or a snake, coiling in the rushes. Parting through the sands.
Or, if he’s feeling particularly unkind, basic bathroom mold.
But – he isn’t. Feeling excessively unkind, that is. He suspects his present predicament, which is the inability to run away from danger should the moment call for it, has something to do with it.
He clears his throat, tries very hard to focus on Shiress when she pulls back his arm and her face swims into view. “Not to, like, vouch for my sister or anything” – and already the denials seem flimsier than normal – “but it’s not that Taalviel doesn’t trust your skills, Flutter. Very much the opposite. She just wants me to be able to worm my body up a chimney, or scamper up a garden wall, or whatever plot she’s got cooked up. Like, yesterday. …having said that out loud, I’m not sure which state of physical fitness I would prefer. To be safe, maybe you’d better break both my arms before she gets back.”
But Milo confesses why he’s in Zeltiva at all and the rhythm shifts, shoving them all into the off beats, and both the morose and jocose parts of him immediately whither. There’s a time for screwing around, and this no longer feels like it’s it.
Milo, who is your father?
“Petching sticks of shyke,” Caspian stage-whispers, feeling, to some degree, that he probably shouldn’t be here for this. Miss Beth, lovely and helpful as she is, definitely shouldn't. But he’s nosy, and he’s got the perfect excuse - the medical kind - to keep himself planted right where he lies. He doesn’t have all the pieces that Shiress evidently does, for her expression’s shifted into shapes he doesn’t have the names for, that indicate quite clearly that all of this means something.
And, perhaps, something not necessarily good.
“Alright, kid,” he says, and though his head’s spinning trying to keep up with the storm of thoughts now in his mind, he focuses. Hard. “One – where’s Graymane now? And when you say mercenary, you mean he did what you hired him to, and that’s that? The bill’s paid, the cord’s cut, no further complications? Two – to be blunt, you couldn’t stay in Ravok any longer because…? Three – wait – yes, right. Three. Is the thing that drove you out going to follow you here, to us?”
Though it makes him sick, he’s propped himself up on both elbows to look at Milo. All stitched up, all bandaged up, with more bruises and less blood than he probably had yesterday, Milo resembles more of a crone’s forgotten poppet than a precocious human child.
Like the ends of autumn slipping into winter, he thinks, when the wind begins to zip and the leaves to brittle, and the ground beneath one’s feet turns hard with the coming frost.
Or a snake, coiling in the rushes. Parting through the sands.
Or, if he’s feeling particularly unkind, basic bathroom mold.
But – he isn’t. Feeling excessively unkind, that is. He suspects his present predicament, which is the inability to run away from danger should the moment call for it, has something to do with it.
He clears his throat, tries very hard to focus on Shiress when she pulls back his arm and her face swims into view. “Not to, like, vouch for my sister or anything” – and already the denials seem flimsier than normal – “but it’s not that Taalviel doesn’t trust your skills, Flutter. Very much the opposite. She just wants me to be able to worm my body up a chimney, or scamper up a garden wall, or whatever plot she’s got cooked up. Like, yesterday. …having said that out loud, I’m not sure which state of physical fitness I would prefer. To be safe, maybe you’d better break both my arms before she gets back.”
But Milo confesses why he’s in Zeltiva at all and the rhythm shifts, shoving them all into the off beats, and both the morose and jocose parts of him immediately whither. There’s a time for screwing around, and this no longer feels like it’s it.
Milo, who is your father?
“Petching sticks of shyke,” Caspian stage-whispers, feeling, to some degree, that he probably shouldn’t be here for this. Miss Beth, lovely and helpful as she is, definitely shouldn't. But he’s nosy, and he’s got the perfect excuse - the medical kind - to keep himself planted right where he lies. He doesn’t have all the pieces that Shiress evidently does, for her expression’s shifted into shapes he doesn’t have the names for, that indicate quite clearly that all of this means something.
And, perhaps, something not necessarily good.
“Alright, kid,” he says, and though his head’s spinning trying to keep up with the storm of thoughts now in his mind, he focuses. Hard. “One – where’s Graymane now? And when you say mercenary, you mean he did what you hired him to, and that’s that? The bill’s paid, the cord’s cut, no further complications? Two – to be blunt, you couldn’t stay in Ravok any longer because…? Three – wait – yes, right. Three. Is the thing that drove you out going to follow you here, to us?”
Though it makes him sick, he’s propped himself up on both elbows to look at Milo. All stitched up, all bandaged up, with more bruises and less blood than he probably had yesterday, Milo resembles more of a crone’s forgotten poppet than a precocious human child.
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