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[It was a long walk to Caer Glaem. Fortunately, Susan was close enough that that the road to it was fairly safe. She would feel better about this whole thing if her brothers and sister were here, or if she had her bow, or even her horn. Instead she was wearing her school clothes, and they were none too clean at this point. Still, Susan was hoping for a better explanation, and from what the friendly fairies and townspeople had to say the castle was the place to get it.

She was hungry. Fruit trees and handouts didn't do much in the way of assuaging hunger when one was walking all day. She hoped there would at least be food in the castle; it was looming large in her vision now and she hoped to get there within the end of the day. It was a good thing, too. She'd bathed in a stream that morning, but--

"Lawkamercyme!" cried a high pitched voice, and Susan turned her head just in time to see a small, green-tinted fairy fall into a faint. A dark shadow globbed its way towards the fairy, Susan was sure it had foul intent. Dark shadows with gleam of teeth almost always did. She wished for her bow more than ever, but didn't hesitate to pick up a large stone at her feet. She was frightened - how did one fight a shadow? Oh, she hated to fight - but she wasn't about to just stand there and watch. She shouted, "You! There! Get away from that fairy!"

The shadow did not seem much impressed. And so Susan threw the stone with impressive aim, clipping the beast right in the mouth. It hissed and abandoned the fairy, heading towards her instead. She bent to pick up another rock.]

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[For a long moment, the locket shows a beautiful face with a furrowed brow, staring intently at its own reflection. Susan has never seen anything like this before. She is at the castle now, clean and clothed and fed, so her image doesn't look quite as dire as it had earlier that day, and her dark hair is swept back neatly in a braid.] Ah - so it does work! At least, I assume it does, and this is a message going out all over the lockets and not just some sort of fancy mirror.

[In either case, she's beginning to feel a little self-conscious. She reaches for easily remembered dignity.] I don't mean to intrude, but I have heard that this is something which happens often. And I wonder, is there anyone from England here? [She misses her family; two weeks of walking among strangers in a strange land was more than enough alone time for now, thanks.] Or even [marked hesitation] Narnia?

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[She took a breath and prepared to try to make good on her word. Still, she figured that she could at least buy a little more time to recover from the power of his voice by returning the same question he had asked her.]

What would you like to hear about Narnia?

[ he tips his head consideringly before deciding ]

Will you tell me your story, Lady Susan? Tell me of the Narnia you knew.

[Ah, well. That was... that.]

Would you hear of how we first found Narnia? Or of how Narnia was when we first left it?

[Something about just thinking of talking about it drew her speech into more remembered patterns.]

[ he notes the pattern with interest but does not ask ]

Whatever you wish to tell me Lady Susan but... a good tale starts at the beginning, eh? Of your kindness, I would hear how you found her.

[From the beginning... Thinking of the time before, her cadence becomes more as it had been.]

I suppose... I suppose it begins with the war, really. Our father was away, fighting in it, and it was just our mother and my brothers and sisters and I at home in London. There were a lot of bombing raids - terrible attacks which dropped explosives from the sky - and all the children were evacuated from the city to live in the country with any stranger who was kind enough to take them in. We went to stay with the professor.

Professor Kirke, I mean. We didn't know him, but he lived in a great old house in the country. It was a lovely place, full of old and beautiful things, and with a very pleasant set of country. We couldn't wait to get out to explore the grounds, but that first day... it was raining. So we decided to explore the house.

We went from room to room, and in one room there was nothing more than a beautifully carved wardrobe. We all left, at least I thought we all left, but we hadn't gone all the way down the hall before Lucy, our youngest sister, came running after us.

She was full of a story about how she'd 'Come back' and that she'd actually gone to some entirely other world by stepping through the wardrobe. Of course we didn't believe her, but she was so insistent we went back and took a look ourselves. We came up against the back of the wardrobe, but even though it was clearly impossible, Lucy insisted - that wall hadn't been there before, she'd stepped through to a forest covered in snow, and had met a faun. It was so unlike her to lie... but it was also very evidently not the truth.

[And, you know, practical Susan was practical - not quite defending herself, since she still didn't see any way she could have believed Lucy at the time. Now, of course... now she knew better. That was experience speaking, though, rational thinking - it made perfect sense to change along with your experiences.]

Maglor listens attentively, eyes bright and fixed on her, he barely seems to move, absorbing every word she says, the gestures and the emotions she lets slip.

"Your pardon" He interrupts at an opportune break. "You speak of... bombs, and explosives... I fear I do not know those words?"

"Ah," Susan said, pausing for a moment. "Are you perhaps familiar with fireworks? Or have you ever seen oil poured on a fire?"

"Ah." He nods "Fireworks I know, aye - so akin to them then? Your pardon for the interruption!"

"That's all right," Susan said. That was one benefit about this place, at least: No bombs. She didn't really want to talk about the bombs any further, however. She didn't have nightmares anymore about the raids over London, but thinking about it was not, she considered practically, very helpful.

"At any rate, Lucy eventually stopped talking about it and we hoped that was the end of it. It was, for a time, until the next day it rained. This time we decided to play hide-and-seek, and I was 'It.' 'It' is the seeker, the one who tries to find where all the others are hiding," she added, trying to explain as she went. "I'd hardly begun to search for them before she came barreling out, shouting that Edmund, the brother between Lucy and me, had 'got in' two, and it was all true, and wouldn't it be brilliant?

"But when we asked Edmund what had happened, he said that they had only been pretending." She paused and added, "He was very sorry for this later. But of course, at the time, we thought that Edmund had only been playing a particularly nasty trick on Lucy and we were really beginning to grow concerned about, well, how she was taking everything."

Susan in particular had been concerned if the stress about Father and being separated from Mother and moving to a new place had been too much for Lucy and had somehow separated her from her senses.

"In the end, though, Lucy was right all along. Professor Kirke's house was such a grand old home that people would come to take tours of it, and we had been most strictly warned by the housekeeper not to get in the way of those tours. That day, though, it seemed there was no place to go to get out of the way - no place at all, but into the wardrobe. We all crowded in, and despite it being a simply enormous wardrobe, there wasn't much room for all four of us. I kept getting pressed back and back until something poked me."

Her voice softened, taking on a tone of remembered wonder with a slight hint of sadness. "It was a tree branch. It was the most peculiar thing. On the one hand, we could see the open door, the slight light coming in from the spare room, and on the other - snow covered firs, the white stretch of snow seemed to go on for miles, and right in the middle of this forest was an iron lamp post. Of course we stepped through, thinking that we could always go back if it was too dangerous."

Or maybe only Susan had been thinking that at that point. Either way.

"But by the time we knew how dangerous it really was, it was far too late to turn back."

Susan meant that too - it had been dangerous, but as soon as they had learned what had happened to Tumnus, of course they had to see if they could do something for him. And Narnia had been dangerous in other ways as well - it was in her blood, had been her life, and now she would never see it again. Hundreds upon hundreds of years had passed; all of her friends, all of those she had cared for with all the grace she had were dead and gone. She could never go back.

"Ah" he murmurs softly. "Such a marvel it must have been. Tis no wonder you did not think to turn back until too late. You come to this world better equipped than many I think, having such knowledge already. Great power this, for never had I heard of such a thing before."

"It was... astonishing," Susan said, searching for the appropriate adjective and not finding that one even close to adequate. Still, it was the best she could come up with. "But it was not, I think, quite like this world. There was a clear purpose for us in Narnia. I am not so certain of that here."

Susan did not like wars. For all that she had agreed to help the fairies, for all that she had fought, and valiantly, for Narnia and for Caspian, she did not like killing. She liked the thought of killing even less for monarchs she had never met and bits of stone supposedly embedded in another person's flesh. It seemed barbarous to her. But she had been in the castle for nearly a day now and she saw that the servants moved without fear, treated each other with relative kindness, and she could not believe that they would be so if they served such cruel masters. There was more here than she understood, and Susan did not like it.

"Oh there is purpose enough - if you consider that we are but their pawns on the board, to fight and die and kill - to be purpose." Maglor sounds grim - he has never shied from a fight, not when kith and kin demanded it so - but to be asked to do it again, to slay his own people, simply for another's war? Oh no. He has had more than enough of kinsblood. There is a reason that he left as soon as feasible and has had little to do with either court since.

"It sounds as if you loved Narnia dearly."

"I do not consider fighting a purpose," Susan said after a moment's consideration, taking in his tone and all that such a tone induced with such a voice. Normally, she would not voice these thoughts to a near-stranger, but there was something about talking with Maglor which made her feel free to speak. She did not know him, nor his history, nor if he was worthy of her trust, but she spoke freely of her heart all the same. Maybe it was because she had been so lonely these past two weeks, or maybe it was the power in his voice, or maybe it was simply that this had been a conversation which was good and true, and holding back now out of caution would be discordant. "It is, unfortunately, often a necessary means to an end. The question, then, is to what end do they wish us to fight?"

That was the purpose to which she referred. When she had fought in Narnia, she had known why - there was a clear purpose. They must overthrow the White Witch and free Narnia from its oppression. They must protect and care for the land and people that had been given into their keeping. They must defeat the Telemarines and restore freedom to Narnia, put Adam's flesh on the throne again. Why must they now fight? Who was the enemy? What was their purpose?

"Narnia is easy to love," Susan said simply. "She is a land of talking beasts and walking trees, fruitful and verdant. It is a good place."

...in other words, yes, this rather reserved young woman loved Narnia dearly.

"In that, you prove wiser than many here." Maglor nods. "As to ends, now, that depends on who you ask, it seems. The Unseelie speak of the Seelie wishing to rule, to bind the wills of all. The Seelie claim the Unseelie wish only for destruction. Both claim that they seek power only to forestall the other. Which is true? I suspect the answer lies somewhere in between."

Maglor is a politician. He has been largely staying apart from the conflict, but so long as Celegorm fought, Maglor watched, his brother's support. So long as the war continues to drag his family into it, he will speak to both sides and see what might be learnt.

"Talking beasts and walking trees?" He asks "Such a marvel! My brother Celegorm was the only one of us who could speak the tongues of bird and beast alike, and I know Ambarussa spoke on the Onodhrim - the Tree Herders - but I have never met them myself."

Susan did not feel comfortable claiming wisdom for herself. All she felt was the yawning gap of knowledge growing ever-wider, and she felt completely out of her depth. She wished her brothers and sister were here, and in the same breath told herself not to wish it. "Perhaps I have simply seen more wars than some," Susan said.

Power to bind the wills of all. Power to stop those who only seek destruction. Power to destroy those who would bind the wills of all... Susan wondered how long they had been fighting.

"I do not know what Tree Herders are," Susan said. Talking of Narnia was far more pleasant than talking of war, but she still wasn't going to try to properly pronounce 'Onodhrim.' "But the dryads and the hamadryads could step out of their trees and be - tree people. Or they could move their trees on their own, often to terrible affect."

There was war again. It seemed she couldn't escape the topic. Susan tried again.

"Not all the beasts could talk, of course, but those that did were citizens of the land. Narnia belongs to them as much as it belongs to anyone."

And it still enraged her, very quietly, to think of what the Telmarines had done. They had set it to right now, yes, but the fact that it had happened at all...

"Mm, I never saw them, but my brother said it was as if a Tree walked - except the longer you spoke to them the more you understood that they were not trees at all. They are the Shepherds of the Trees, and as sheep will grow to resemble their shepherds and the other way around, so also did they. Not quite like your dryads or hamadryads, I think, although those folk are here in this world and might speak to you if asked politely."

A soft wondering noise. "To hear that beasts would be considered of equal status - how strange! But if they spoke with the tongues of Men and reasoned as such, not unseemly, I suppose. It sounds a truly marvellous land. Was it a large one? What of her neighbours?"

"I would be glad to see dryads again," Susan said softly. It was things like that which made this particular adventure seem almost familiar, and therefore more bearable. "The shepherds of trees sound most peculiar. I wonder that normal trees should need shepherds at all. It isn't as though they're about to wander off."

But then he was asking about Narnia, and... well, it had been so long since she'd talked about Narnia in any great detail. She'd found that since she'd started, it was very easy to continue.

"We were a fair sized country. Our border to the west was a great mountain range. To our immediate south was Archenland, and they have always been our allies. We are separated by a mere mountain pass. Our border to the east was the Great Eastern Ocean, and further out was the Silver Sea, all the way to the Lone Islands who were a part of our territory. To the north were the marshes, and beyond that are the giants of Ettinsmoor who needed strict reminders of our borders."

They had a horrible habit of hunting in the north of Narnia and not particularly caring whether or not the beast they caught could talk. Susan did not like them. She also did not feel the need to discuss the empire of Calormen. She did not like thinking of her time there.

"Some of our dearest advisers were beavers," Susan added. "And I had a great friendship with a raven."

And - oh - there were so many more. Her heart ached to think of them.

"They say that Lady Yavanna, who we call Kementari, Earth Queen, who loves all things that grow - whether those that walk or fly or that have their roots planted deep - that she grieved that her trees would have no protection against those who wished for wood. So were the Onodhrim born, Ents, I have heard Men name them.

She sounds a fair country indeed! Ravens are good birds for speech,thry say - cetainly my brother Celegorm said so. You speak of advisors - did you hold positions of power, then?"

Ah, well. Whoops. She hadn't really meant to get into all that as titles seemed to be a Very Big Deal here and she... she wasn't in Narnia. How could she be a queen when she was not responsible, when she had no rule? It gave her a very pretty set of rooms and she hadn't hesitated to take advantage of that, but it didn't make any sense.

But there wasn't much point in keeping it back at this point, she'd gone this far. There was a certain wild joy in telling the truth of it as well, after being silent for so long.

"My brothers, sister, and I were - are - kings and queens of Narnia," she said. "We reigned under the highest of all high kings, Aslan. He gave the country into our keeping, and we did our best with it."

It was hard not to remember now, the ruins of Cair Paravel - the times, good and difficult when the court was alive and whole, and what it had come to in the end. She hoped Caspian would rebuild it, their shining palace by the sea. She hoped he would rule well, and that the forests would once again be filled with talking beasts. She had some faith in him, but she wasn't like Lucy - it was out of her hands now, and maybe it would be better to forget.

An eyebrow crooks up and he sweeps her a bow, courtly and correct.

"Your majesty! Well met, indeed."

Relaxing again he crooks a wry smile at her. "Titles mean little here, I suppose, but I grieve that this place would sunder you from your land, although, your pardon, but you seem passing young for a mortal ruler?"

Aslan, Aslan - to a bard who hears the Music, the Name whispers of something greater.

"And who is Aslan, majesty?"

Oh dear.

"It's Susan, please. I suppose I am here as Queen Susan, that's what they put me down as, but it doesn't feel quite right." It didn't feel quite right out of Narnia and alone. "And I suppose all mortal rulers must seem young to someone upwards of several thousand years old."

But there was a more important question than explaining about her age, or what exactly had sundered her from her land - it was a somewhat difficult story to tell, regardless.

"Aslan is... is Aslan. He is a very difficult sort of person to explain, he simply... is." She tried again, "He's very much himself."

A breath, and a strange strength grew in her as she began to speak the words, "He's The Lion. He's the son of the great Emperor over the sea. According to the beasts and the songs of the fauns, he's the one who sang the world into being from nothing."

Edited 2014-09-03 02:07 (UTC)

He smiles gently and nods. "Lady Susan then. Mm, I suppose you are, a little. But you have a good head on your shoulders, and in that you do better than some much older."

"Sung the world..." Maglor murmurs softly, watching her with bright eyes. "I wonder... they say Eru has many names amongst the peoples of the world, although we know only those the Valar name Him by. But He too, they say, He Is. That is what 'Eru' means, you see. 'The One' or 'Alone' - for He Was, before all else."

"I... have heard similar things said," Susan said slowly. Hadn't Aslan, in that private discussion she and Peter shared, mentioned something about finding him in their own world? Sometimes the words were lost to the tone when she spoke with him and the tone had been one of comfort, confidence, and hope. "I have certainly never heard of any other world being sung into being until now."

"Nor I, although, in fairness, I do not often ask."

Maglor shrugs and smiles a little. "Tis a little comforting, I confess, to know that there are, perhaps, other lights, other places, which hold a thread of kinship."

...a thread of kinship. Well. As Susan was currently feeling quite alone, that certainly was something. She had become somewhat reserved in the year since they had left Narnia, and the diplomat's skill with words sometimes fell flat when she most needed it. Instead, she was left with a simple sort of honesty.

"Yes. It is comforting."

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private video <3

private video

private video

private video

private video and have some tl;dr

yes good /rolls around in it

yes good ^^;

<3

<3 /deep breath - more tl;dr

/chinhands happily

XD <3

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XD things that happen when two authors are best friends who pinch ideas from each other

True that XD I think playing off of it is really neat

^_^ me too

<3

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sorry, work went crazy and I kind of got buried

sob I know this feel, this was me today/yesterday