bakerstreet | OTHERWORDLY.

OTHERWORDLY.

Otherwordly Meme

Sometimes all you need is a word to spark off an idea.

1. Post a comment with your character's name, canon, and any preferences you may have (no shipping, no smut, etc.)

2. Leave the comment blank or post a word or two in the body.

It may also help if you list scenarios you would like to play.

3. Reply to other people, either with words you picked out, or words they posted as prompts for a thread.

( A cleanup of the previous Otherwordly Meme. )

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He offers a considering hum as he takes a proper bite of the chowder, making the mental note to express appreciation before the end of the night. Each piece of the puzzle needed to be given its proper dues, after all.

"That depends, I suspect, on what a person defines as needing clothes at all."

"Selkies wear their seal pelts, that would be clothing. Good thing too, or they would freeze in the dark months." Another breath cooled a spoonful, "In Antiva, which is sunny and warm - or so I've been told - very little in the way of clothes are worn, but they ink their bodies, so maybe that's all the covering they need."

"Clothing it seems, at it's most basic, is driven by weather."

"I'm not sure a selkie's skin counts as her clothing," he muses, spoon tapping absently at the rim of his bowl for a moment. "It's-- a piece of her. An extension like skin, not-- to be lightly discarded."

Not that he's met one, of course. It's the sort of tale Drinian used to tell him.

"Without it she wouldn't be much of a selkie, would she?" sighed. Musing, "Poor thing, leaving her seal lover behind, likely children too. But if she is foolish enough not to keep her pelt with her while wandering the shore..."

Ate, filling the hole that had been left empty by the work during the storm. Eating was difficult and it was hard to catch a catnap, the nightmares of the past two years meshing all too well with the tossing of the ship. Woke to great inhales of breath, in cold sweats, that were thankfully hidden by salt sodden clothing. Yet these few weeks was the longest, in recent time, that she had been without a tangible reason to be afraid.

His attention can't help flitting, just briefly, back out to the sea. It's often takes precedence in his life over simple things like eating and sleeping, after all.

"Have you seen one?"

"Not a selkie, no," a shake of the curly head. "But I've seen a great many other things I only read about in stories, so I believe they exist too. Perhaps even a griffin or two survived, despite that history says otherwise." Not letting him get away without a question, "What's the most imaginary thing you found out was real?"

"Imaginary?" It furrows his brow slightly, almost entirely unconsciously as he glances back to her again. "You mean-- not the norm for-- Telmarine Narnia?"

Because all of Old Narnia had been rather mythical before he properly left Castle Caspian.

"No. Something you thought was imaginary while growing up that turned out to be real once you got out in the world. Something you saw with your own eyes," thinking she had asked a straightforward question. Freya looked up the short distance between them there on the steps, his expression mirroring on her face, the spoon paused hovering over the bowl, "What is it?"

"I don't-- know that 'imaginary' was ever the right word."

He takes a moment to actually remember to take a few bites of soup, brow slightly furrowed in concentration. He's always had an active imagination, yes, but setting his thoughts into actual words didn't always come naturally.

"Doctor Cornelius always explained the-- reality of everything I've ever subsequently met, even if... the rest of the court considered them to be fairy tales."

"Ah," the frown clearing. She confessed that her teacher wasn't that way, "Scholar Aldous didn't believe stories like Dane and the Werewolves. Said it and others like them were folktale. It was my parents and gran'pa that told those kinds of stories, passing down what told and heard around the campfire during the rebellion."

"Was everything this doctor told you real?"

There's another pause of consideration, his attention dropped as if the answer might appear out of the soup. It's a little easier to concentrate on the things in his hands than the stars or the sea; he tends to get a little lost otherwise.

"I can't doubt it, although I haven't seen it all with my own eyes. I suspect that-- some of it won't be seen again."

Sighed. Grief, regret, relief, sorrow, and a year and a half all combined into one long sliding note that continued in her mind even after she stuffed a spoonful of seafood chowder in her mouth and stopped the sound hanging in the air. Would be grateful if she never saw some of it again, especially the flames that licked and flickered when she closed her eyes. There were good things, but the bad...

Swallowed. Would not cry for those lost. "Yeah."

The quiet that sinks over her isn't intimately known. Her griefs have hardly been shared onto his shoulders, even in a quiet moment like this.

So there's something halting, perhaps a touch uncertain in the words that follow, attempting comfort without a road map.

"And though it's... lamentable, it... at least lets us know we're still moving-- forward."

Murmured, "Always," One foot in front of another, continuing down the path.

Or running away.

Putting it behind... Except some things couldn't be escaped. Some changes, some hurts were carried on or in the body and couldn't be shed like a snake's skin or rubbed off like velvet on a deer's antlers.

There had been amazing things, the depths of the Deep Roads, elven ruins, even the grand forests or the mages library where she couldn't have ever imagined there were than many books in the entire world, nor so many languages. There were moments that took her breath away, the view from the top of the Frostback Mountains with the entirety of Ferelden laid out below, the woosh of wings as a dragon flew over her for the very first time, the wonder of finding a lost fortress, or seeing her brother alive. Friendships. Alliances. Certain death.

"Are you intending on seeing all of it? Traveling and exploring to the end of your days?"

"All of-- the world?"

There's consideration for it. He certainly wants to find the edges of the seas he's come to know. He certainly expects that, short of finding Aslan's Country, there are probably seas beyond seas he could spend his life almost lost to.

"Likely not. I'd drive my regent into an earlier grave than I already am."

"Poor man."

Didn't say which one she pitied, Caspian or his regent.

"When will you return to lighten the burdens on your regent's shoulders?"

A question that very well might be, 'and what will become of your dragon ship then?' or 'your crew?', but not 'me?', no that final question would work itself out. Her time was not as long as she would like, yet not as short as she might have wished.

"Soon." He doesn't seem overly happy at the thought, but it squares his shoulders well. "Although I could not say for how long."

The sea had a deep pull for him, after all. Drinian had often posited that the young King might someday find love of a Daughter of Eve would keep him bound more properly to the land itself.

Hears a longing, one that echoes oddly in her. The sea is a nice place to run away to, to hide from actual responsibilities, Freya knows this first hand. When duty and responsibility is tied to the land and the people...sometimes too much can be given...taken...given - they are too intertwined to separate one from the other.

Takes a pull of the ale, still marveling that it isn't a mash made from fungus.

The calm, but steady breeze, the slap of the waves against the sides of the vessel, like sailing their little boats just off the shore in the Waking Sea, she could imagine this going on forever. Had always wanted to know what was on the other side of the Amaranthine Ocean, hoped there were others like those she knew, except they had even stranger creatures than just intelligent hounds. The fawn or satyr, he had said and she had forgotten as her opened mouth closed, caused a double take, but it was a being straight out of folk or faerie tales. Nor had anyone aboard asked overly much about the dragon, as if those were not unexpected creatures. The conversations at the trestle tables were full of talking animals and other strange things she had hoped were real...Perhaps the strangest 'imaginary' thing she ever saw with her own eyes was still yet to come.

"You seem at peace here on the water," not that she knew him away from the ship.

"At peace?"

The concept is turned over absently on his tongue, spoon clicking thoughtfully against the edge of the bowl. Drinian had always coined the sensation 'at home,' but there's something to be said for substituting in the idea of simply restive peacefulness.

"When the seas are calm, perhaps."

There was too much excitement in his heart when waters turned rough to call it 'peaceful.'

Nods. Yes, when calm.

When the times are wild and full, anything is possible and usually the worst possibilities are truer than most. No amount of strength will keep someone from being swept away, washed and buffeted away from safety. The thrill of staying alive in those moments doesn't let fears try to bubble their way to the surface. But in the calm, if she ever fully faced them base cowardliness would cause her to be inadequate to the task. Blinked away thoughts that wander down the wrong path and looked out over the dim waters.

Deep waters that one, Nan would say if she had breath to do it. Her old nurse's commentary, along with other lost voices sometimes made their way through Freya's barriers. It is difficult to draw him out no matter the questions she asks or the games of pretend she plays. Ahh well, she will stop pestering this Caspian soon enough, her replacement watch will need to be relieved after the meal is finished, no matter that she wishes the bowl contained a few bites more to delay her retreat. Had hoped to find a kindred spirit, and there's something here, but she's uncertain what she's looking at. Perhaps he's so open she doesn't realize it or his own walls are so perfectly constructed they don't register as such, after all he is not like anyone she knows or grew up with.

Hooks a wayward curl over her ear and considers his answers further as the spoon scoops up the bits clinging to this inside and the chowder is polished off.

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