Lion's Gift

Interview With Caspian Sawyer Luxor

Caspian wakes up to darkness and finds himself tied to a comfy armchair. He starts struggling before he grows calm and takes note of his surroundings, a focused look on his face. He is in a pitch-black room, and the floor underneath his bare feet feels like cold concrete. He notices he has complicated binds around his wrists, ankles, torso, and neck. Someone even loosely tied a long strip of cloth around his mouth, preventing him from screaming effectively. He stops struggling and a light abruptly switched on directly above him. He looks up to see a single light bulb hanging by a chain. In front of him is a sturdy metal table, nailed into the floor, like in an interrogation cell or something.

A few fluorescent lights turn on all over the ceiling, temporarily blinding Caspian. He blinks before staring in front of him. The walls are solid black, and there is nothing else in the room except for someone fitted in loose black clothing and a mask sitting in an uncomfortable-looking metal chair across from him near the table.

Caspian can't guess anything about the person, except for their eye color. Their eyes are the stunning brown with gold and black highlights that are the same as Vivienne's. But this person cannot be Vivienne. Vee is about five feet and ten inches, and he didn't know this person's height, but they certainly were shorter than her. Caspian stretches against his bindings, muffled please for help coming through his gag.

The person in front of him produces a clipboard filled with a stack of paper and a yellow pencil with a little smiley-faced yellow eraser top, a little used.

"Name?" They ask, the voice sounding surprisingly feminine yet hardy, reminding Caspian of someone. He tries to tell her that he has a cloth around his mouth, mumbling coming through it. She sighs like this is a common mistake she always makes before coming behind him and untying the gag but still keeping it around his neck like a high collar.

"Name?" She asks again, her tone sounding strangely weary.

"Why am I here? Who are you?" They meet eyes for a second before she looks down at her clipboard, keeping her spine straight.

"Caspian Sawyer Luxor," She murmurs under her breath, scratching the pencil's lead onto the paper.

"Ho-how – "Caspian tried to speak but was cut off when she pointed behind herself. A large screen that Caspian somehow didn't notice. It flashed white and black letters filled the screens. Who is this psycho? My name is Caspian Sawyer Luxor. Wait, how didn't I notice that screen? What is it writing? Oh my goodness, it knows what I am thinking! Wait, if it knows what I am thinking, am I actually thinking? Or-

Before Caspian's head would explode from all his confusing thoughts, the person switches off the screen and sits down, her eyes flashing.

"Well, Caspian Sawyer Luxor, you may call me M," M tells him, probably since he's been calling her 'the person' in his head since he first noticed her. Caspian gives her a nod before letting out the loudest plea for help he has ever sounded out. She doesn't appear to move at all but remains sitting in front of the boy quietly.

"Mr. Luxor, you might want to know that no one outside these walls can here you. All I want to do is ask you a few questions, I promise, I mean you no harm. If you answer with the truth, to the best of the ability," M gestures behind her at the screen, and Caspian knows that she will know if he is telling the truth, "I will let you go back home and you will remember nothing of this event. Everything will resume as you left it," Caspian nods, defeated. What could he do at this point?

"Alright, first question: Which of your three siblings are you closest to?" M asks nonchalantly, giving him the notion that she probably won't use the information for harm.

"Honestly, I am the closest to Belle," Caspian replied. M gestures for him to go on while scribbling words down onto her clipboard. "Well, I think I'm closest to her because there is only a one-year difference between our ages. I've always been there for her, and she's always had my back. The twins were born much more recently, and they were sort of babied by everyone, so we don't have as close of a bond with them,"

"I see. Well, then, let's move onto the next question. What is Belle's laugh like?" Caspian pondered for a moment, deciding to be as specific as he can.

"Well, when she laughs it's like you can't help being happy along with her. Her green eyes sort of sparkle, and I just want to ruffle her hair. She always complains of having an ugly laugh, but it's really cute when she sort of giggles," Caspian looks toward M, who tuts disappointedly. He's confused for a moment before she snaps her fingers, without looking up from her papers. He gets a dreamy look on his face.

Vivienne would have smacked me silly if she were here. Caspian thought, a little mournful. Vivienne, he thought, imagining her in his mind, her amazing hair, beautiful eyes, cute slightly crooked nose, deliciously fair olive skin with rosy cheeks, and fu-

He was thrown out of his thinking with a sharp pain in his right cheek and his head shot up. He saw the furious sight of M holding her left hand in the air as if she just slapped him. She cleared her throat and gestured toward the white screen on the wall behind her. Caspian's eyes almost popped out of his head and his ears turned pink while he kept his head down.

"I hope you weren't about to say what I think you were going to say, but let's move on. Next question: What does Vivienne look like when she's laughing?" M asks, and it's like Caspian isn't control of his body when the words come pouring out of his mouth.

"When she laughs, it's like the whole world lights up from her radiance," He begins, getting lost in his vision of her, "Her face lights up, she flashes her bright white teeth, parts her beautiful pink lips, and lets out a melodious sound of laughter and giggles," He sighs and M smacks him on the head with her clipboard.

"Pay attention," He nods. "Describe Noah Castor,"

"Oh, that son of a-" M gives Caspian a glare and he gulps before backtracking, "I meant to say that son of a mother ducker. Anyway, he's the usual popular boy, blond hair, brown eyes, tall, lean, sports maniac, sort of smart but still very dumb type," M nods, sighing knowing that's all she'll get out of him. Then she does the unexpected. She lifts up the bottom of her mask so only her lips and the bottom of her nose are visible.

"That fudging mask, I could hardly talk properly," She says, but Caspian is surprised into silence. Her voice is exactly like Vivienne's, smooth and melodious, and her lips look like hers too. Seriously, he would know, he's spent a lot of time staring at her mouth.

"Wait, aren't you-" Before he could finish his sentence, M put a hand over his mouth and let out a curse under her breath which Caspian was sure that it was in a different language. The last thing he heard before falling into darkness was 'sleep', softly murmured by M in an alluring voice.

Caspian woke up, startled. He looked around with the expression of a cornered rabbit before realizing he was in his room and completely safe. He didn't know why, but the dream he just had scared him more than he would like to admit, and he didn't even remember anything. After a little bit, he looked at the time. Midnight exactly, and it was Vivienne's birthday party earlier. They had celebrated, but not at the one with her relatives in the city, instead at the one she threw yesterday morning with him and Belle. Caspian wasn't exactly invited, anyway, he just tagged along.

A foreign feeling took over and his heartrate began to increase for some unknown reason. He felt like someone was in trouble, but soon a determination took the feeling's place. Caspian got up from bed, put on some decent clothes and flip-flops, and went out to the small Luxor garden.

As if in a trance, he jumped the fence and took determined strides into the small untamed forest behind it. He walked almost a mile before he regained his senses, and there he was shocked at where he ended up.

Caspian was looking down at a bunch of sharp boulders, sand, and beyond that, the ocean. He was standing on Smythe's cliff. A sharp pain in his head cut through the shock.

Jump, my Vessel, jump. Both a man and a woman's voice resounded in his head at the same time. He looked back at the trees and the lights of his garden in the distance before running.

And he jumped.