the golden age

[deepest_magic]

When the party has died down, Isabella, for one, is well and truly exhausted. She explores the palace until she finds a room with a bed in it, and into this bed she flops, still in her clothes and holding her staff and carrying the cordial in her pocket. She sleeps late, because the party kept her up so late and she hadn't really slept the night before; but around noon, she stirs, and gets up, and goes looking for James and wherever her backpack may have got to. The backpack she finds in the great hall where the principal mass of the party was; some enterprising creature took both bags from the battlefield at Beruna up to the castle for them, and she only wishes she knew who it was. She takes her bag to her room and carries James's with her and continues looking for her friend.

Comments

[neverbeatme]

"That would be very convenient, and I would appreciate it," she says.

[alicornucopia]

"Then I will," says Starfall. She proceeds to set up her camp right where she is so Flit will know where to find her.

[pythbox]

And several hours later, just as night is falling, Flit comes back. He lands next to Starfall's camp.

"Exciting centaur! I forget your name, I'm sorry! I told everybody about Narnia and things and they said I should go be an envoy because I'm adventurous!"

[alicornucopia]

"I'm Starfall," Starfall says. "I can lead you to Cair Paravel starting tomorrow, or I can just point you in the general direction if you'd rather fly."

[pythbox]

"I'd rather fly, I think! How far is it? Which way? How will I know when I get there?"

[alicornucopia]

"Cair Paravel is east-northeast of here and it's a big castle where the biggest river meets the sea. You can ask anyone, if you land within Narnia proper and find someone to ask."

[pythbox]

"Okay, thank you!" And he bounds into the air and starts flying east-northeast, because he is much too excited to go to sleep just yet.

[alicornucopia]

It's a very long trip; he won't get there in one evening.

[pythbox]

That's true. It takes him a few days. A very exciting few days, full of interesting new sights.

But at last he arrives, and lands near the castle, and looks around for any creatures who can tell him what to do next.

[deepest_magic]

Well, there is this teenage girl in a crown who is sitting under a tree out front of the castle while a dryad braids her hair and she writes in a notebook.

"Good morning!" she says. "Are you Flit? I am Queen Isabella."

[pythbox]

"I am Flit! Hello! What sort of a creature are you, besides a queen? You're not at all horselike! Very few creatures are at all horselike, it turns out."

[deepest_magic]

"I'm a human. Daughter of Eve," says Isabella, as the dryad ties off her braid and she pulls herself to her feet with a crystal-topped scepter. "There are a fair number of horselike creatures. There are centaurs and unicorns and apparently winged horses, in addition to non-speaking horses."

[pythbox]

"A proper human Queen! Oh my goodness oh my goodness!" says Flit, prancing excitedly. "Is Pin - I mean, is the King human too?"

[deepest_magic]

"The King is human too. Pin?"

[pythbox]

"I forgot what his name was but I remembered about the magic pin he was talking through so I kept thinking of him as 'the king in the pin' but that's too long and Pin is a perfectly nice name if you're a winged horse, it can be short for Pinion or Pinfeather," he explains.

[deepest_magic]

"The king's name is James," says Isabella. "There are winged horses named Pinfeather?"

[pythbox]

"Yes! Is that surprising?" he inquires.

[deepest_magic]

"I didn't have any preconceptions about winged horse names. But I think it's cute."

[pythbox]

"Okay," Flit says agreeably. "I think Isabella is a pretty name! It's very mysterious. Anyway, what's an envoy supposed to do? I'm not really sure."

[deepest_magic]

"Well, you come in and you join us for meals and stay in a guest room for a while - I think the ones that are set up for unicorns and so on should work all right for you - and you tell us about winged horses and we tell you about how Narnia is being run these days and eventually you go home and talk to the other winged horses about that. You can also talk to them through my scepter if you want, it will let people talk to their friends from far away, but I don't let it out of my sight so you couldn't say anything privately or very long that way. Maybe there are things winged horses need that we can supply or things we could use that winged horses could supply, or both, and then we figure out how we want to do that."

[pythbox]

"That doesn't sound too hard, I guess," he says. "Okay!"

[deepest_magic]

"Welcome to Cair Paravel."

And Isabella leads him into the castle.

[pythbox]

"I feel very welcomed!" he says, following after her and tucking his wings in close so they don't bang against the door-frames.

[deepest_magic]

"So tell me about the winged horses. How are you organized? What do you do do all day? What were you eating during the long winter?"

[pythbox]

"Well, the winter didn't make very much of a difference up in the mountains," he says. "Since it's cold up there anyway. I grew up with Gramps telling stories about how we used to live lower down and there were more things to eat sometimes and it all sounded very tasty but I didn't really understand what it was like until spring happened. Spring is very exciting! What do you mean, how are we organized?"