Narnia fic: "Dust in the Air" (Interlude)
Jul. 5th, 2009 02:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardTitle: Dust in the Air (Interlude)
Author:bedlamsbard
Fandom: Chronicles of Narnia movieverse/bookverse
Rating: PG-13
Summary: And the end of all our exploring / will be to arrive where we started. An AU of The Last Battle, some five years after that book begins.
Disclaimer: The Chronicles of Narnia and its characters, situations, settings, etc., belong to C.S. Lewis. Certain characters, situations, settings, etc., belong to Walden Media. Title and quote from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets: Little Gidding.
Author's Notes: This begins part two of Dust.
He is boiling salt when they return.
The great salt caves beneath the earth had held out far longer than he had ever expected before they finally flooded beyond living capacity, the salt dissolving into the swirling rainwater and forming an underground sea beneath the surface of Narnia, forcing them out onto the rolling hills of the High Reaches. Not normally a trouble – they are born, live, and die on these plains; few of them have ever left and few of them ever will – but when the weather strikes such a great blow against them, they have always been able to retreat to the caves, sometimes spending whole winters there until the snow has cleared enough that the land is passable again. Instead, the caves have rejected them and spat them out to brave the rains alone and unsheltered, the endless rains that wash across Narnia and scrub the hills stark and barren. But the rains have ended now and the hills are green, softened and transformed with the sudden appearance of color, an unusual sight in these lands. The salt caves, however, are still flooded, and while they would normally be able to scrape salt off the walls, instead they are resigned to scooping up pans of water and boiling them over the fire, and that is what he is doing now. Salt is valuable; this place is sacred to the gods, one of the few places in the High Reaches where many will gather at once under truce. Nearly anywhere else in Narnia they would kill each other on sight.
The fire hisses and spits beneath the blackened pan, water steadily boiling away into steam and leaving behind a white crust of pure High Reaches salt. He scrapes at it with the tip of his knife, eyeing those approaching until they’ve come down the hill into the valley, past the bodies – some of them still alive – strung up on the X-shaped frames at the top of the hill.
There are seven of them, the marozi, the spotted lions of the High Reaches. These ones are all lionesses, rangy and lean with muscle, their coats knotted with scars beneath their fur. With them are a skeleton-thin faun with iron shackles still on his ankles and a robed Calormene man, both with their hands bound in front of them, herded along by their captors.
He rises from his cross-legged position in front of the fire as they approach, leaving it to the satyr who comes out of the low tent behind him. “What do we have here?” he declares, as the marozi drop the tight formation they’re holding and slink off, circling the prisoners and staring at them with green, unblinking eyes.
The faun drops to his knees, staring blankly off into space, but the Calormene remains standing, shaking with terror but with his chin held high. He sees the man’s eyes widen as he approaches and knows what it is the Calormene sees: a faun taller than any faun should be, skin tanned brown, muscles ropy, with an empty socket where his right eye should be and a scar pulling up the right side of his mouth, the hilts of a pair of slightly curved swords protruding from over his shoulders.
The head female of the pride, bigger than the others and with faint, faded stripes mixed in at irregular intervals with the usual marozi rosettes, yawns hugely before she says, “Calormenes and Narnians, near the woods around Lantern Waste, a lot of them.” She nods at the faun. “He ran. They chased him.”
“They?”
“The rest of them met unfortunate ends.”
One of the other marozi, a younger female that’s been agitating for the head female’s position, laughs out loud, stretching languorously, letting her claws out to scratch at the grass in front of her. Her rosettes are pure black, their edges crisp against her orange fur – bad camouflage on the hills, but she’s inordinately proud of them nonetheless; the pride leader notices the unusual and exotic. “Soft southern horses have lots of meat on their bones,” she says, and turns her head to look at the head female when she adds, “Pity we couldn’t bring any of them back.”
He ignores her. “What did they want?”
“Nothing to do with us,” the head female says, short with disdain – he is not her pride leader, after all, and not even a marozi at that – and yawns again. “Scratching away at the ground, though there’s no salt there.” She grins, showing off one chipped tooth, relic of a fight for the position she currently occupies among the pride. “Idiot humans. They’re close in on our territory.”
“It will be taken care of,” he says, seeing her shrug one tawny shoulder, her interest fading.
“Something else,” she adds as he’s turning away. “Centaurs and humans, watching from the edge of the forest. They weren’t with the Calormenes. Came from the south, down past Lantern Waste, the Western Wild. The rosewood, maybe. Had some kind of uniform on.”
He turns back to her, stares hard at her grass-green eyes. “Did they see you?”
“Don’t be insulting, two-legs,” she says, standing up and shaking the ruff of fur around her neck. Her gaze flickers past him into the assortment of tents, where her pride leader has appeared. He’s striped and spotted like she is, with barely the hint of a mane around his neck, and he’s watching his females with ill-concealed impatience. “Thought you might be interested in knowing there’s someone else in the area, since you’re playing head of the pride.”
He earned the position with blood and steel; they don’t usually gather so closely together for so long, but the Calormenes are pushing in on their territory; it has become harder and harder for the long-ranging inhabitants to survive, even spread out as they are across the vast rolling hills of the High Reaches, and so they group close together as they usually would only on the sacred days of the year. Tension has been growing even here at the salt caves; the old truces are falling apart under the pressure.
The marozi walks past him without another word, her fellow females following her. They’re a motley mixture, as the marozi tend to be – mostly spotted, with rosettes that run the gamut from faded brown to a distinct black, and a few with faint stripes. One of the youngest females isn’t spotted at all, just a plain sandy brown, like a southern lion of old.
“What do you barbarians want with us?” the Calormene demands boldly in heavily accented city Narnian, seeming to relax a little once the great cats have gone.
He ignores the man and turns back to the satyr who’d come to tend the salt pan. “Put them with the others,” he says, scraping salt up from the pan with the blade of his knife and crumbling it in his hand before he throws it onto the fire, making the flame crackle and flare briefly yellow, “and make sure they’re given something to eat. That one could use some fattening. The gods are hungry, and they need something to feast on tomorrow. It’s Winter’s End.”
----------
The High Reaches are first mentioned in These Little Girls.
Part One 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17
Part Two 00 | 000 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | Interlude | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31
Author:
bedlamsbardFandom: Chronicles of Narnia movieverse/bookverse
Rating: PG-13
Summary: And the end of all our exploring / will be to arrive where we started. An AU of The Last Battle, some five years after that book begins.
Disclaimer: The Chronicles of Narnia and its characters, situations, settings, etc., belong to C.S. Lewis. Certain characters, situations, settings, etc., belong to Walden Media. Title and quote from T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets: Little Gidding.
Author's Notes: This begins part two of Dust.
He is boiling salt when they return.
The great salt caves beneath the earth had held out far longer than he had ever expected before they finally flooded beyond living capacity, the salt dissolving into the swirling rainwater and forming an underground sea beneath the surface of Narnia, forcing them out onto the rolling hills of the High Reaches. Not normally a trouble – they are born, live, and die on these plains; few of them have ever left and few of them ever will – but when the weather strikes such a great blow against them, they have always been able to retreat to the caves, sometimes spending whole winters there until the snow has cleared enough that the land is passable again. Instead, the caves have rejected them and spat them out to brave the rains alone and unsheltered, the endless rains that wash across Narnia and scrub the hills stark and barren. But the rains have ended now and the hills are green, softened and transformed with the sudden appearance of color, an unusual sight in these lands. The salt caves, however, are still flooded, and while they would normally be able to scrape salt off the walls, instead they are resigned to scooping up pans of water and boiling them over the fire, and that is what he is doing now. Salt is valuable; this place is sacred to the gods, one of the few places in the High Reaches where many will gather at once under truce. Nearly anywhere else in Narnia they would kill each other on sight.
The fire hisses and spits beneath the blackened pan, water steadily boiling away into steam and leaving behind a white crust of pure High Reaches salt. He scrapes at it with the tip of his knife, eyeing those approaching until they’ve come down the hill into the valley, past the bodies – some of them still alive – strung up on the X-shaped frames at the top of the hill.
There are seven of them, the marozi, the spotted lions of the High Reaches. These ones are all lionesses, rangy and lean with muscle, their coats knotted with scars beneath their fur. With them are a skeleton-thin faun with iron shackles still on his ankles and a robed Calormene man, both with their hands bound in front of them, herded along by their captors.
He rises from his cross-legged position in front of the fire as they approach, leaving it to the satyr who comes out of the low tent behind him. “What do we have here?” he declares, as the marozi drop the tight formation they’re holding and slink off, circling the prisoners and staring at them with green, unblinking eyes.
The faun drops to his knees, staring blankly off into space, but the Calormene remains standing, shaking with terror but with his chin held high. He sees the man’s eyes widen as he approaches and knows what it is the Calormene sees: a faun taller than any faun should be, skin tanned brown, muscles ropy, with an empty socket where his right eye should be and a scar pulling up the right side of his mouth, the hilts of a pair of slightly curved swords protruding from over his shoulders.
The head female of the pride, bigger than the others and with faint, faded stripes mixed in at irregular intervals with the usual marozi rosettes, yawns hugely before she says, “Calormenes and Narnians, near the woods around Lantern Waste, a lot of them.” She nods at the faun. “He ran. They chased him.”
“They?”
“The rest of them met unfortunate ends.”
One of the other marozi, a younger female that’s been agitating for the head female’s position, laughs out loud, stretching languorously, letting her claws out to scratch at the grass in front of her. Her rosettes are pure black, their edges crisp against her orange fur – bad camouflage on the hills, but she’s inordinately proud of them nonetheless; the pride leader notices the unusual and exotic. “Soft southern horses have lots of meat on their bones,” she says, and turns her head to look at the head female when she adds, “Pity we couldn’t bring any of them back.”
He ignores her. “What did they want?”
“Nothing to do with us,” the head female says, short with disdain – he is not her pride leader, after all, and not even a marozi at that – and yawns again. “Scratching away at the ground, though there’s no salt there.” She grins, showing off one chipped tooth, relic of a fight for the position she currently occupies among the pride. “Idiot humans. They’re close in on our territory.”
“It will be taken care of,” he says, seeing her shrug one tawny shoulder, her interest fading.
“Something else,” she adds as he’s turning away. “Centaurs and humans, watching from the edge of the forest. They weren’t with the Calormenes. Came from the south, down past Lantern Waste, the Western Wild. The rosewood, maybe. Had some kind of uniform on.”
He turns back to her, stares hard at her grass-green eyes. “Did they see you?”
“Don’t be insulting, two-legs,” she says, standing up and shaking the ruff of fur around her neck. Her gaze flickers past him into the assortment of tents, where her pride leader has appeared. He’s striped and spotted like she is, with barely the hint of a mane around his neck, and he’s watching his females with ill-concealed impatience. “Thought you might be interested in knowing there’s someone else in the area, since you’re playing head of the pride.”
He earned the position with blood and steel; they don’t usually gather so closely together for so long, but the Calormenes are pushing in on their territory; it has become harder and harder for the long-ranging inhabitants to survive, even spread out as they are across the vast rolling hills of the High Reaches, and so they group close together as they usually would only on the sacred days of the year. Tension has been growing even here at the salt caves; the old truces are falling apart under the pressure.
The marozi walks past him without another word, her fellow females following her. They’re a motley mixture, as the marozi tend to be – mostly spotted, with rosettes that run the gamut from faded brown to a distinct black, and a few with faint stripes. One of the youngest females isn’t spotted at all, just a plain sandy brown, like a southern lion of old.
“What do you barbarians want with us?” the Calormene demands boldly in heavily accented city Narnian, seeming to relax a little once the great cats have gone.
He ignores the man and turns back to the satyr who’d come to tend the salt pan. “Put them with the others,” he says, scraping salt up from the pan with the blade of his knife and crumbling it in his hand before he throws it onto the fire, making the flame crackle and flare briefly yellow, “and make sure they’re given something to eat. That one could use some fattening. The gods are hungry, and they need something to feast on tomorrow. It’s Winter’s End.”
----------
The High Reaches are first mentioned in These Little Girls.
Part One 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17
Part Two 00 | 000 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | Interlude | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31