cabeswater revisited [for eliot]

[formicine]

[backdated to closely post their meeting]

There's a short walk into the woods before Cabeswater springs out of general Darrow countryside trees. It's not something that demarcates itself, but gradually and then suddenly, the trees are all tall and ancient, ashes and oaks. The soil is rockier, little ditches off the main path lined with stone, kindred more to Virginia foothills than more northerly, glacier-carved areas.

Shadows flicker here, creatures that shouldn't be and won't be seen. Even in autumn, it's comfortable, the trees forever dappled with just a little yellow but nothing more, sunlight streaming in.

And it whispers, a little. Blue tips her head up, feeling the power rise up out of the land and into the trees. She wasn't always able to feel it, but she's older now. She knows, too, who she is and what trees mean to her. Hello, she says in her head to it. The wind flutters through the leaves.

Once again, a tall young man and a very short young woman walk into a sentient forest.

"The trees speak Latin," she says calmly, warning or trivia. "They might not talk to you. But they know we're here."

Comments

[eliotwaugh]

The place feels old, older than the rest of the Darrow countryside, and the magic around it feels heavy. Eliot has no doubt that he wouldn’t be able to find it on his own; perhaps he’d get turned around back towards the city, or maybe he’d wander forever. It’s not a thought he cares to entertain.

“Fascinating,” he says to Blue, wondering why Latin, of all things. “I don’t really know much beside curse tablets and Pompeiian graffiti, but ah...” It’s only polite to greet them. There were magical forests in Fillory of course, always slightly unnerving places where magic tended to run a bit wild and you could never really be sure of your safety. He always felt reasonably all right there, being High King perhaps gave him better odds than a random farmer chasing a lost sheep into the trees, but...not here.

Eliot gives a low bow. Maybe too dramatic, but he’d rather be safe than sorry. “Magnam silvam, salvete,” he says, feeling only a little ridiculous. He’d brought a few supplies and notes with him, but he’s not foolish enough to attempt anything flammable here. This is place is too powerful to be out of its good graces.

“After you, Miss Blue?” He asks once he straightens up. This forest might not operate on the same rules as the Queenswood, but it’s only polite. Also she’s the one who knows where she’s going.

[formicine]

Blue shrugs a little and just smiles. She always tries to be calm and cheerful in Cabeswater, because the magic that creates in here attunes to her powers as well, and it has the ability to create some things that aren't very nice, although she's not sure how much of that was limited to Henrietta, where it had a link with Adam, where Ronan could pull things from his dreams there.

Still, she had a hand in restoring it, when Aggie revitalized the ley line, and so she's fairly certain it knows her. Maybe better, here, even, than at home, because she had let it flow through her.

Her smile deepens when Eliot dips it a bow and says hello. She doesn't speak Latin, and the forest would understand him -- probably even if he didn't speak -- regardless, but it's so endearingly polite. After a moment, a sort of murmuration picks up, and in the wind, the creak of branches, the sudden change of the river tripping over rocks, she can hear it:

Salve, magi.

Blue grins, pleased. "I suppose to Cabeswater, being a -- wizard? -- is more important than being a king." She hasn't asked him what word he uses, and magi seems like it could mean anything from magician to wise man.

"Mr Waugh," she says, and gestures for him to walk beside her further in. "There's not one where to be," she explains, "we're on the Darrow ley line. As you get closer to the heart of the forest you can feel it more, but anywhere in here is close enough to soak up the power."

She touches one of the trees, carefully picking her way through the desire-path that's been trodden through it. "It doesn't tend to throw weird stuff at you unless something's wrong. If someone's trying to tap its power, or steal from it, or if you're in a really dark place yourself, things can happen. It can create, and it protects itself, but there aren't -- you know, fairy rings to step in or wild beasts that are going to attack. It's more a place of potential."

It strikes Blue that at some point she's gone from being overawed and a little frightened by Cabeswater to fond and protective. Without any of the Raven Boys here, without Adam to be its avatar or Gansey inexorably drawn to its quests, she's its only storyteller, and in Darrow, with all it's been through, it's somehow more hers than theirs now.

[eliotwaugh]

For as little time as they've known each other, he can tell Blue is...different here in the forest. Eliot feels out of place, relying on etiquette as if he's meeting a foreign diplomat. Blue is calm in her bearing, and maybe a little sad, but it's hard to tell. The magic, though, he can feel a wave of something that's not just the wind, and it feels the same as the current that Blue carries. She smiles, apparently having gotten some response that he didn't. 

"Well," he says with a smirk, "I suppose wizard isn't inaccurate? They learn from books, right? Although I don't own any pointy hats with stars and moons on them." 

As they walk among the trees Eliot marvels at the power in this place. Raw, almost overwhelming if he tries to think about the scale of it. He nods along with Blue's explanation, or maybe it's a little bit of a warning--but he's not here to steal magic from this place, only trying to gain an understanding and get his bearings.

"It's really quite lovely," he murmurs, trying to school his expression more towards 'awe' than outwardly intimidated. "Thank you, again, I'll have to make it up to you somehow."