1 Summer 523
The dreams Caspian shakes himself awake from are disturbing ones. They’re somewhat lucid, insofar as he’s vaguely aware they’re based on memories, of his fretting over finding out Moritz’s house is – hold your breath – alive. In his dreams the conversations continue. They’re not particularly insightful or elucidating; they can’t be, for he’s barely comprehended what Moritz has just told him, and there’s no way for him to supply himself with information he simply doesn’t have.
So his brain supplies him with what he does know. Kind of. When he was a child in Avanthal, the aunties had him all manner of stories – in his adulthood, clearly retrospectively false – meant to keep him in line. They had spoken of a great white bird with searing red eyes, talons massive enough to encircle a yak, and a screech so powerful it could shatter glaciers, that would swoop down and swallow him whole if he wasn’t careful. He supposes, now, that it was merely a ploy to keep him from wandering too far from the Hold alone. But the idea had stuck in his mind, even all these years, today melding with his fear that he’s lying right in the jaws of Moritz’s house, and that it might gulp him down.
He hasn’t told anyone this, but there’s a whole narrative his childhood mind had devised that sticks to him to this day – the most terrifying part of being swallowed alive by the fictional bird was emerging from the other end, inexplicably as an egg, that he then has to claw his way out of, or risk suffocation.
But when he wakes, thankfully, there’s no bird nor eggshells in sight, his throat de-constricts, and the house looks conspicuously just like any other. He sits up, pulls himself out of bed. Moritz is gone. That’s a relief; he wouldn’t have put it past the at times rather odd Kelvic to have sat in the corner and watched him all the while.
The hallway is empty too. Holding his breath, he strains his ears. It’s peculiarly quiet; usually one can at least hear a bird or two chirping outside. But they’re far from the city proper, and he supposes that what accounts for most of the tomblike silence. No carriages, no horses, no vagrants or scuffles out in the streets. Still, it’s a bit unusual he can’t even hear Moritz. Has the Kelvic left entirely? Does he trust Caspian that much? Perhaps he’s simply too far from Moritz to sense him; perhaps the quality of the walls here is high enough that any obvious sounds are muffled.
Out of curiosity, he quietly wanders towards the back of the house, parts he hasn’t yet seen.
The room he emerges into is larger than he expects. In the center stand wooden dummies, and the in the corner lie weapons both for practice and in-real-time stabbing of foes.
He marvels at the space around him. It’s simple but well-constructed, and entirely serviceable. No small feat, to put this all together. The dummies look a lot sturdier than the bound piles of rotten wood he’d grown up using. Drawing his dagger, he approaches one of the dummies, giving it an experimental slice.
Word count: 533
