ten_fwd | In a bower of green

Caspian might not have been searching for Marian, precisely --

But it's certainly true that he is rarely far from her. It's possible his roommate might have noticed how much time the king spends either in this lady's company, or seeking her out, but if he is aware, himself, of how those hours are spent, no sign of it lives in expression or word.

Still. He does find himself at the door to the Arboretum, and he does take a moment to watch as she walks among the plants, hand lifting at her side to slip fingers over leaves and through fronds, while the plants seem to bend to greet her.

"I should not be surprised to find you so."

He's smiling, leaning at the entryway. "Here, among the green and growing things."

It would be a lie to say some sort of smile had already found her mouth as her fingers twisted through leaves and brushed against the rough bark and stones, without displacing anything. But it would not be a lie to say it just might have curved wider and deeper for the intrusion of a new voice. One that she could and would have heard anywhere. Whether it was a bustling court function of his sister's, or this.

The Arboretum, the strange new word, that might as well have meant there was a garden room.

Stranger things had happened. Not that she was thinking on that when her heart grew two sizes just for the greenery.
Nor when it warmed for the presence of a familiar voice and face, as she turned to regard him with that shameless smile.

"Perhaps not." Marian teased, shameless about her own self in that way. It was not as if she had not been found many times in Ambergeldar's forest or gardens during the last few months. "It is a marvel though." She looked around them. The endless beauty carving out it's own small full place in this ship. Unlike the hallways just before it, and yet stretching out before them. "I might have come earlier if I knew it would be like this"

He takes a few steps into the room, fingers catching and releasing the budding tendrils of some strange pale green plant. They bob gently as he passes, calm and familiar even with their strange shape and scent. "So many thing, growing away from the sunshine and fresh air and rain," he marvels, tipping his head back to look up at the ceiling, as if expecting to find blue sky and yellow sunlight there. "Like the people."

A life he is all the more certain, day by day, that is not for him, but he has learned patience since his heedless younger years, and, truth be told, on days such as this -- when he's with Marian, surrounded by a miracle of plants and life and growing things -- it isn't such a hardship.

He pauses about twenty steps from her, and leans to examine a plant bursting with tiny, star-shaped, yellow flowers. "Even the Milliways Rose Garden is naught but a pale imitation of this. Do you suppose they're collected from the worlds the ship visits?"

Marian watches his hands the way plants lean toward sunlight. There's something more like knowledge and recognition than anything like surprise at the gentleness with which he touches the leaves in passing toward her. Hands she has watched be delicate with small china cups and even more precious small children.

They are the same hands she's seen carry a well bloodied sword and deliver a hard punch, or knot tight lines on a boat or stay firm with a young horse. He is the same man to which all of those things come naturally, when they need to, or have to, or even when they get to. Duty, and family, passion and pride, at the well sunk roots of all of them just shown in completely different ways.

The same way he leans toward a flower, rapt in the way no one else she knows would, betrayed different lost loves. Lives.

"Wouldn't that be a marvel," Marian said low, on the edge of a breath pulled in. A thought she hadn't even gotten to yet. Letting her eyes leave Caspian and travel around the area. The small sloping hill, and the water she had no idea where came from or went to, and all the plants. Trees, and grasses, and flowers. All of them from possibly as many worlds as the people she'd known had come from, but from so many more worlds than she'd ever stepped on.

To think these people had done that, though. That was something quite fantastic. Even at their costs.

"No less of one than this floating city we found ourselves in."

These tiny flowers remind him of the starry white blossoms that bloom in the deeps of the Western Woods, near Lantern Waste. Summer snowflakes, they're called, or sometimes Queensilver: named so for the drifts of the Hundred Year Winter, the snow that brought Lucy through the wardrobe and into Narnia to meet Tumnus, the Faun.

These flowers are a sunny yellow, not snowy white, but the tiny points on the petals make him smile nonetheless. They grow in bunches; he wonders if he'd be allowed to pluck one or two, to give Marian and make her smile at their cheerful nodding heads. Were they out a-Maying, he'd take these and the snowflakes and weave a crown to set on her raven hair, to tease out laughter and the sparkle in her eyes that's only just these past weeks begun to shine again --

But they have not ridden out a-Maying, searching for spring, and these flowers must be meant for something other than silly crowns.

(It will still be summer in Ambergeldar, and the woods are full of wild blossoms there; he can find Queen Anne's lace and forget-me-nots blue as sapphires and win a smile for a task so much sweeter than a joust or duel.)

"Have you been here long?"

Edited 2014-07-15 04:23 (UTC)

"Long enough," is a more habitual answer than an active one. One of a handful that has become more readily usable when people came looking for her over the last few months. Worrying if she was left to her own devices for too long. As though she could do anything worse to herself than what had already been done, of her own hand and making.

Aside from that time with the dragon. Or the Texas bandits. Fine. Maybe they had a right.

She afforded a glance back to Caspian the beat later. "If there is such a thing in this place." This place made of metal and computers. Houses stacked side by side, with no stairs. Her mouth tugged itself back toward a curl, half motion and half real. "Perhaps, I shall make it my favorite place in this ship now."

He's watching her when she casts that glance at him: that, too, should hold little surprise, with his question and her answer.

It isn't that Marian can't take care of herself, and it isn't that he thinks -- really thinks, not just worries -- that she'll do something harmful, but it's still there. Perched like a crow on his shoulder, that digs sharp cold talons into his chest and ribs when he can't pinpoint the last time and place he saw her, or when she's been missing for longer than usual.

If she's annoyed at having a shadow, she can scold him, but while they're here -- and while that translucent fragility and inability to smile remained -- he won't let her be too alone. Even if it were to slip back to those months ago, where he would simply sit by her, silent, while she wandered in her own thoughts. Even if she were to slip back to those non-answers, the rote ones she gave to the same questions asked over and over again.

He would never try to hold her in one place. Marian deserves the freedom to go wither she will. All he requires is the ability to go with her.

But she's smiling now, though it's slight, and he straightens from his perusal of the flowers, his own mouth slanting wry and drily half-amused. "A fair choice," he agrees, before his lips press together and his expression turns skeptical.

"To surround yourself with the real, and living. Though I suppose those...hollow-decks seem popular enough."

He hasn't tried them yet.

Marian was a little uncertain about the whole notion of those still. The creation of worlds. It seems at once greatly intriguing and a little profane all at once. Not real, but real. Possibly a little bit of dozens on dozens of things, while not truly being any of them either.

It was compounded likely, even she assumed, but the fact everything she knew about it so far was hearsay. Either from an uniformed officer, or another of the people stolen like them. Which does make her consider him a beat longer before asking, "Have you gotten to seeing one yet?"

It wasn't like she could assume entirely on what he had or hadn't done outside of her presence. It wasn't the same as Ambergeldar where she knew all the places to find him, and all the likely places he, and several others would be. Along with the places to avoid to remain circumspect of courtiers and ladies in waiting.

Here there were a million different new things, and either of them could be finding things the other wasn't yet.

This room, and his turning up in it shortly after she'd located it finally, was quite the example to that.

"Not yet."

The idea makes him uneasy, and has ever since the crewmember they'd met in the library explained the concept: hollow images of light tricking you into thinking they're real.

Too much like the Island of Dreams, mayhaps. Magic, or science -- he can't distinguish between them in cases like these, and isn't sure he should.

Thus, unease. "Projections that feel, sound, and look real --"

He shakes his head. Marian, of all people, would understand, even if he were not able to find the words to express his misgivings, but he attempts it anyway. "'Tis a strange thing to consider desirable. It sounds all too like dreams come to life, or misleading enchantments."

Both of which he has experienced, and would not care to again.

"And yet I wonder if even false sunshine and open skies would ease my mind."

Things she has not been, but knows just barely enough about to know why Caspian wouldn't want to be revisited by them, and yet. He still says the last part. Even surrounded by this place, green and growing, flowers and grasses, it is a pale shard next to the worlds they have come from. Even if it were to become a favorite, it's a favorite by contrast, not by exclusive merit.

Which she understands. More than words can ever tell. It isn't like the hasn't compartment so much of her life for years.

"Do you want to see one?" If it's direct, and assumptive, it's years past when Marian thought she had to hedge her translations of his words, or his of her own. She might be leery, but she's never been one to let fear stand in her way of things both wise and un-so. She'd stand by Caspian side for so much worse if he wanted it of her. She owed him more than she could ever put into words or deeds, but it never came down to being about that either.

"Not just now."

But it's said with a smile. It might mean not today or perhaps later, but the only thing he really means it to convey is that he's not about to head off to try them out immediately.

He does want to see them. It's the same aspect of himself that had called him to the open Eastern Sea even before he decided to seek his father's friends there, the same one that sent him back to Narnia with Eustace and Tirian, the same that has led him into so many adventures since the day he woke on the mountainside and found a door that led to the end of the universe. "But I hope you'll come with me when I do."

He doesn't doubt it, but he won't make any assumptions. Not if he can help it. Not with Marian.

"Onward and upward," Marian said softly, a little deprecated and a little amused all at once.

Definitely, also, in words that are not hers. But then that's another of those things she doesn't really think of. Rather like she doesn't quite reach up to touch the ring hanging behind the front of her dress, even if she considers it. There are worlds, and there are worlds. Words. Choices. Daring to be brave, whether you are ready or not. Because the world is born to and continued of those who dare.

Gesturing with a hand for him to come join her, at her side, so she can keep walking around the room, seeing everything that these people have gathered. "It would be amiss for us to not see one before any chance of The Door made it only a figment we'd considered and not dared."

Further up. Further in.

Within this new ship and across this new universe. They may be adrift now, but he and Marian have both seen and lived far worse, and, besides -- they're together. He could never have thought to even ask for such a favor.

So when she gestures to him, he comes without pause, measured, easy steps to reach her side, and tailoring them to hers as they walk further into the room. "Truly," he agrees, and when he looks down, there's a twinkle in calm grey eyes. "To imagine Lady Marian shrinking from any such challenge would be folly, indeed."

She might not be headstrong as Lucy, but the years and her life have done nothing to temper the fearlessness of her spirit, no matter what the world tried to crush her with, and even here, in this floating, sealed city, she is free as a raven in flight. "If we could see some of these worlds, with our own eyes, walk on them and breathe their air --"

He pauses, glances over at her. "I admit, there is some part of me that still thrills to exploration and adventure."

Marian, not to be outdone by any censure to her name, even one that comes so sweetly on laughing grey eyes, totally takes a step to one side, just enough to knock into his shoulder. She even almost manages it without her smile escaping her control entirely. "As though you would know how to turn away from the horizon of a new adventure, either, My Lord Caspian."

That one, titled, with just the hint of matching teasing to his own.

Even though she doesn't completely step away after that either, simply continues her steps onward, next to him at the same pace and nearness. "I have to admit there is a part of me that wonders about it. About the idea of million worlds kept safe and close for the use of so many people when they find themselves in time of trying. It should be impossible to miss a marvel that brings so much comfort to so many people of this time."

The way she lists for herself the things that seemed foreign, profane, impossible when she arrived in Milliways. Before everything there became normal, and suddenly things she hardly even thought about except when she wasn't there.

"At least as much as I think," she went on gamely, as though maybe if she said the words she'd stop feeling them lip around the quiet, dark spaces of her heart. "It would be impossible to simply walk away from this place, now, if The Door did appear."

It's such a little thing.

Such a small thing, the bump of a shoulder; hardly a touch at all, just a lean in and out of the space next to him, with enough force to knock his arm without pushing him off balance or lingering.

It's such a small thing.

But so is the strike of a match, which lights a campfire. So is the nail which holds together the frame of a door. So is the first far-off flash of lightning, before a storm sweeps its thundering curtain over the world. The touch of her shoulder is only a touch, there and gone again, but her warmth lingers, spreads from that small square inch of space across his chest, through his veins.

Without thinking too much of it, he lifts a hand, rubs idly at a spot just below his collarbone, where something throbs with a dull itch, and drops it again to swing easily at his side. "Aye," he agrees, "I feel the same. Now that this door has been opened to us, loathe would I be to leave with it unexplored and unquestioned. This ship, I feel, must have some thing or place or person it has yet to show us, some adventure that is yet to be revealed."

"And these people," Marian added right on his words. Layered right under with something akin to deadly seriousness.

But little less could really be expected of the girl who chose her people over herself for more than half a decade. Or the one who chose the work of helping to guard and vouchsafe those of Milliways even before she could really get used to hot running water.

"We could not leave them here and simply return to whence we came, while they were bereft of the same ability to leave." It might be the way of Milliways, and The Door. People got stuck places. Other places that weren't there. For a short time. Much shorter than this. But the doors always came back. And she couldn't imagine leaving this many people in this situation, and just going back to her own make-shift new home because it was offered. Even if her heart did so long for Ambergeldar, and Milliways.

She'd never be able to sleep. She'd get there only to want to come back. To feel she had should have never left. That she needed to find out if they could come through, too. If she could help find them ways home, through other doors in Milliways, and the marvels of the several there who knew of other magic of the same type. Moving between places. Opening Doors. Owning space-faring crafts that could travel great distances through the stars.

"You believe that, were we to be released, the others would not be, also?"

It's a strange thing to consider. Responsibility. Whether they have any, and how they could possibly act on it if they do. Would they need to take strangers through the door to Milliways? If they did, would a new door open to lead them back home again? "I wonder if a door will open here for us, once we've returned. I admit, I would be loathe to leave this place for good. If we could journey back and forth, I would consider it a great boon."

Their doors open only to Ambergeldar, now: their lives, lived between the two worlds of Milliways and Amy's kingdom, but to have a third, filled with glorious new worlds and skies, full of new adventures and lessons...?

Truly, he would never have thought such a blessing could exist.

The look she passes in his direction is more complicated than a simple disagreement. But then she had to come to terms, and keep coming to terms, with being just one of too many who should have. Of Nottingham, it was just her. Whose needs she would never claim was as desperate as so many of her people. Even the men who came, for them it had been briefly, then never again. Just her.

Where it came to her escaping her end, it was just her, too. She lived. Of her father. Robin. Even Vasey.

The only other person to make it out resided as a shade of his once self, and someone she could still hardly look at.

It's a fast, too deep set of answers, that really only touch her eyes, before she's looking away to the greenery at her side and not answering at all. She might like The Door. She might be grateful to The Door, somewhere just under the surface, in a twist that still called its self selfishness, too, that it have given her the means to survive both situations. But she would never call The Door or Fate or God, or whatever you wanted to call it, fair to all those who were in need.

"It would be, wouldn't it?" Marian said, a beat late, looking at a flower to her side, answering the rest of his words instead. A swirl of red petals and a purple-yellow interior that likes of which her world, and the end of the universe, had never seen. All the new things that were still in the universe to be seen.

Kate hasn't been adjusting to the ship as well as she thought she would, all those times her friends talked about what it was like to sail the stars. It seemed like such an adventure to her, so romantic, so exciting; now that she's here, though, she's homesick.

She's just not sure which home she's sick for.

She knows Marian isn't in Ten Forward or her new room, so she goes exploring. Honestly, she wouldn't mind stumbling across anybody she knows, but her mind's on Marian tonight because she needs her friend's steady affection.

"Lord have mercy."

She's not been to the arboretum yet. It's — beautiful. There's so much color, and so many plants she's never seen before.

She wanders each corridor, blue eyes wide with wonder, until she stumbles upon her friend.

"Kate." There's an exhale of surprise, that can't help but be colored with pleasure as well.

Marian looked up from not too far away, easily forgetting the flowers with the purple fronds she was studying curiously, for walking toward her friend. A small bit faster than she'd actually been touring the room. After all, she's been doing that for a while. "Isn't it gorgeous?"

It's not absolutely everything a forest could be -- in Ambergeldar, in Milliways, in Sherwood, in the sturdy daring scrub trees of Texas -- but it was green, and it was gorgeous. It filled up the hole her heart hadn't realized had become so thin until just after walking in here poured water in it.

Kate's attention is pulled to her friend, eyes still wide with wonder. It's like the room has filled her up as well, and she has to blink a few times to really see Marian. She smiles, slowly at first and then all at once, her whole face lighting up.

"Marian, I was lookin' for you. I — "

She shakes her head, at a complete loss for words. Laughter spills off her tongue as she takes another look around.

"I've never seen anythin' like this before. The color an' variety is — it's marvelous. It's so — so different. So many things I've never seen on Earth."

It's a beautiful thing to watch. The way Kate smiles. It's one thing to see Kate Barlow smile. She does is often. She takes care of people and holds their heart, helps them out. But when she smiles, really smiles, like this, Marian swears for a moment she can see straight through to that preciously guarded most center heart of hers.

It makes it easier to smile brightly, pleased, right along with Kate at the glory of this little place.

"I found it a little while ago, and Caspian and I were supposing, earlier, perhaps, that, maybe, all the different plants and flowers and trees came from all these worlds their people talk about having visited. A little garden of all the most beautiful things they touched and taken with them all the way."

What a lovely idea.

Suddenly, that romance is back in her eyes, wistfulness giving way to admiration and curiosity. How many worlds, she wonders? How many places has this grand ship been and touched and changed? Flowers and plantlife from a broad universe that, in her time, is just specks of light on a big blue blanket.

"How wonderful. How long d'you think they've been collecting? Oh, can you imagine? Different worlds with different peoples, and all of us gardeners in some way or another."

How many millions of hands touched the blooms and bark of just these numbered plants? It's humbling.

In a bower of green

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