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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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He picked apart a piece of sausage with his fingers. "It was an accident?" He stuffed the piece of meat in his mouth, but that did not stop him from looking skeptical. But then, he'd looked skeptical nearly the entire time.

"The first time," Susan said. "Yes. We had been Narnia for so long, you see, that we had quite forgotten England and how we had arrived. It seemed as if we had always been there."

Soup finished, she stared at the empty bowl for a moment. How this hurt to tell.

"How long was that?" She'd mentioned something about a thousand years and becoming younger again, but he hadn't made any sense of that. She looked younger than him and so his guess was that she must have began her rule as so small a child that it was only natural she'd forget where she was born.

"Fifteen years," Susan said. She shook her head slightly and gave a little wry smile. "But it wasn't just the time, it was the place. The air. It was so different... if we hadn't stumbled upon the lamppost again, we probably never would have gone back to England."

Susan could anticipate his next question. After all, she was fifteen now. She glanced back up at him.

"Time worked differently, you see, in Narnia. We were there for fifteen years, but hardly a minute had gone by in England. And when we stepped through the wardrobe again, we were no longer the kings and queens we had been, but children again. It was... rather disorienting."

He frowned, not because he strictly disbelieved her, but because he was trying to imagine her being older than the girl he saw now. He knew well enough that the elves he'd met were not quite so young as they looked. It was an unsettling notion not to be able to know a person by what could be seen.

"So you've grown up twice. Seems that would be trouble. This one time 'round has been hard enough for me."

Susan laughed, surprised and appreciative. "Yes. That's exactly what is. Quite annoying, I will say."

She gave him a smile, because it was nice to feel that he at least understood that part of it, and rather troublesome to have explained all this, but she was coming to appreciate Gendry's practical nature. She wondered, if she'd bothered to tell anyone else, if they'd have cut to the heart of it so quickly.

And now the sandwich demanded some attention, and she took a bite. Food is so excellent when you are hungry.

He picked at his food a bit more. A piece of sausage rolled about in his mouth as he thought about her situation. It seemed a strange thing to live two lives, especially when it seemed most people barely got through living just one. It left one lingering question in his mind.

"So why not go back?"

As if it was that simple.

"Magic doorways aren't so reliable," Susan said. "We couldn't go back."

She said it simply, and it felt strange that, for Susan... it was simple. It hurt, yes, especially knowing what had happened after they had left. There wasn't any point in mooning about over it, however. What happened happened, and there it was.

"I hope the same don't happen here. I ain't no king here, but I'd just as soon stay here than go back."

It didn't matter if he got to spend a hundred years here and then was offered a second life in Westeros. The fact remained that he much preferred his life in this place, even if it was a place of war. He'd been broken where he came from, but he'd been remade a man again here.

Susan had talked more than enough about herself, she thought. Her sandwich was waiting for her. But first, "I don't think you have to fear that unless you walk right through." She lifted up her sandwich again. "You like this place that much better, then?"

He tapped the edge of his plate. "This here? I never ate so good as this before."

It was a poor point in a world of better points. But it was a simple one and he had no great desire to talk about the sins he had seem committed and of the wrongs he himself took part in.

Muscles like Gendry's weren't built in a day, so he clearly wasn't starving before he'd come here. That didn't mean anything, not really, not in terms of kindness or liberty or... anything.

"I'm glad you're enjoying it," Susan said simply and changed the topic. "Thank you again for showing me where the dining hall is. How long have you been living at the castle?"

Edited 2014-09-01 02:51 (UTC)

"Near five months now." The last of his meal finished, he casually licked at his fingers. He drowned the rest of it down with what remained of his ale. "But it weren't no trouble. Better I find someone than be wasting time on patrol."

For all that Gendry was attempting to mind his manners, Susan noted that he didn't have many of them to mind. Oh well. She glanced back at her plate to spare herself the spectacle and also to collect some bits of food which had fallen to the side.

"I'd certainly say your time wasn't wasted today," she said. "What is it you do when you're not on patrol?"

"Work the forge. Usually there ain't no cause for me to patrol."

And so he admitted he was a knight in name, but little more than that. He was a craftsman at heart and little else was like to change that.

"Ah - you're a blacksmith!" That made so much sense. She glanced back down at her plate. How had it become empty so quickly? She was still hungry... better off having some more tea, waiting to see how the food with settle. "Do you enjoy it?"

"As much as anyone enjoys their work, I think." He took pride in his work and it gave him purpose, but it also made him angry as well. Where one day in the forge might leave him with an aching body but a high spirit, another might fire up his temper when something was dropped or if he managed to burn or cut himself during his work. It was what it was.

Susan took a sip of her tea and debated whether or not she would try to pull more conversation from Gendry. She was out of practice, really. The past year in England she had been put far more effort in keeping other people away than in drawing them in, and in Narnia, well... that was Narnia. That was different.

"You were a smith before you came here, then?"

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