called_lioness | (no subject)

(no subject)

The hike to the castle is easy enough. It would likely have taken less time if Mary hadn’t been curious and wanted to stop and look at some of the older trees.

But that’s what holidays are about, really.

The plan is to ride to Port Caynn tomorrow and swim in the sea before spending the night at an inn of…slightly dubious reputation. (Alanna assures her it’s safe now. Lucy makes a note not to mention any former smugglers to Archibald Craven.)

But tonight is for camping, and as the evening approaching Lucy heads out to stroke her borrowed mare’s neck and make sure the supplies are all ready.

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"Yes. You shall. You may light one tomorrow too, if you like."

Lucy is busy shifting logs into place, slowly, to let the fire build.

"Would you like to find sticks for roasting things?"

"I did not know we were meant to find sticks for roasting too. I should have found them before otherwise," Mary informs her, but heads off to the outer edge of the clearing to pick up more sticks.

"Your arms were already full," she points out cheerfully and reaches for one of the packs.

"I was not carrying so much."

Mary comes back with four sticks, and hands two over to Lucy, with Great Dignity.

"I am very sorry, Mary," she says with a grin, "that I didn't think to ask earlier. Will you forgive me?"

Lucy may be teasing.

A little.

"It is not a thing to be forgiven for." Mary is very dignified. "It is only that it should have been more efficient, that is all."

"Sometimes I am not efficient. It is one's prerogative," she says airily.

"Well, as this is your trip," Mary concedes, graciously, "you may be inefficient this time."

"Ta, dear. I appreciate that. Perhaps you'll take someone on a trip, someday, and then you'll be inefficient in turn."

"Oh, no," Mary says, loftily. "If I ever take someone on a trip it shall be awfully efficient. Except I do not have a way to get about many places - so I think it shall be other people taking me on trips for a good long while."

"I'm sorry," she grins, "I shan't go on a trip of yours, then. I should like to see how efficient you could be."

She's sliced an apple and put it on her stick. "We'll hold it over the flame and dip it in the cinnamon and sugar, if we've some, afterward."

Mary eyes her, but follows suit, taking an apple slice and copying Lucy's method of stick-piercing as best she can.

"Do we have some?"

"I suspect so, yes."

She asked for it specifically.

"Well, then."

Mary watches the apple turn brown over the fire, rather dubiously. "Is it meant to do that?"

"Yes. Though you might like to hold the sick a bit higher."

Mary promptly lifts the stick.

"When is it done?"

Lucy is dignified, and thus does not need to choke down a laugh.

Really.

"Now's good, I suppose."

And look! There is a box with a mix of cinnamon and brown sugar in it!

"We can roll it in this."

"Do you want to go first?"

Mary would like to see a sample of proper sugar-coating procedure.

She laughs and carefully pushes the apple slice off her stick using fingertips, dropping it into the granules and flipping it after a moment before carefully picking it up again and offering it to Mary. "Bite?"

"I shall make my own," Mary says, with predictable dignity, and rolls her own slice in the brown sugar before taking a bite.

Beat.

Then, triumphantly: "It does taste like a turnover."

"Almost," Lucy says with Great Dignity.

"Of course almost," Mary agrees, tolerantly. "It has no pastry."

"Thus, different," Lucy maintains, as she bites her own apple slice.

Mmmmsugar.

Well-fed, and well-warmed by the fire, it's not long before Lucy and Mary finish setting up camp and go to bed in their respective bunkrolls - though Mary stays awake for a fair bit, staring up at the stars in some fascination.

(She's never slept beneath them before.)

And then it's morning, and they are suddenly surrounded by birds.

Very loud birds.

They are, in fact, quite loud.

Not as loud as Squirrels, though.

Lucy sighs in her sleep and rolls onto her back, cracking one eyelid open to look at the trees.

Bloody birds.