(no subject)

Cora is worried.

 

Not just worried, but jittery—anxious. She has trouble paying attention to her ever-restless students, to the mathematics she’s teaching them, as her eyes keep wandering to the window.

 

The messenger arrived the night before, bringing the news of the new heir, and advising the residents to report any sighting of a young, blond stranger to the small group of soldiers now billeted in the town—they didn’t say why they were on the lookout for him, or who he was, but they didn’t have to.

 

The prince had run away.

 

Things tended to happen, to those ill-favored by the king.

 

She knows (and this is the only thing that comforts her), that he lives—she’s met him, some years older, in Milliways, hasn’t she?

 

But life in the wild could do any sort of harm to a young boy, and still leave him alive.

 

She finds herself drawn to the edges of the forest, walking deeper as the days wear on, pleading aloud with someone—maybe the forest spirits, maybe Bacchus of lore, maybe Him—that young Caspian will be protected.