A/N: I do not own the Chronicles of Narnia.
I had to post this because I know I owe it to the Narnia Fan Universe to add something to all the great stories there. Narnia is my original fandom, after all…
Summer, 1927
Polly sat up with a start. She was sweating, sweating hard.
She took in her surroundings with slightly frantic green eyes. The dark room, the simple furnishings, the shadows from the one window, the furled-up sheets pulling at her legs.
Her room. She was in her room, a perfectly hot, slightly sticky room in the middle of the night in Kylemore Abbey.
But despite the dark, her eyes were forced to adjust, as if she had just wakened from a much brighter, much whiter reality. And in spite of the summer's heat, she found that the sweat on her brow was cold. Her hands curled around the sheet. What had she been dreaming? All she could remember was something very white, like snow. And there had been some sort of foreboding sense…It hung over her still.
She swallowed and glanced fearfully around the air above her. The dark feeling hung over her like an incubus. Surely there wasn't an incubus in her room, was there? She'd never been afraid of monsters as a child…not until she was eleven, and it had impressed her just how startlingly real the monsters could be, creaking through the attic rooms…
She shook herself and with difficulty yanked the sheets away from her legs and rose in her nightgown. Pushing the chair against the wall, she stood and looked out over the lake near the Abbey.
It wasn't midnight. It was nearly dawn, she realized, but the breath of air and the sight of nearing day did not allay the nightmare swirling around her. The air was so thick! She swatted at it as if it could be swatted away, and wiped at the sweat on her face.
Such a cold dream…such a horrible dream. She couldn't remember it, could only remember the cold and the dread, and how it had gone on, on for so long! It seemed to go on for a hundred years. There had been people doing things. They might have even been very strange people doing strange things, but that wouldn't have made much difference. She often dreamt of strange people and strange lands, almost as if she were in them herself.
She stared at the slowly lightening strip of sky past the trees and was not comforted. The sun, the rising sun could look down on horrible things, too. Daytime did not mean safety.
She hid her face in her hands. Why was she thinking this way? What was it that was haunting her? She hadn't had a dream like this in years, one that refused to abate and fly away with the dawn, one that refused to leave her alone, but instead grew on her like a sickly fungus.
A faint creaking sounded behind her and she turned, expecting to see one of the sisters poking her head in, but there was no one there. Her gaze fell on the wardrobe, and she climbed down from the chair, knees creaking, to shut it.
She pushed it closed and then stopped to stare at her own reflection in the mirror. Her hair was lit up like a halo from the pale morning glow.
And then, suddenly, light from the open window reached past her, almost as if it were not light, but a living thing. It glanced off of the glass and beams of gold shone all around the room, dancing on her skin and her face, and the nightmare abruptly subsided with the dawn.
The whole room brightened and nearly glittered, and a sweet smell filled Polly's nostrils as she felt suddenly entirely awake, entirely alive with a vibrancy that hadn't been there a moment before.
There was something, something in this room that had wakened her, wakened a sleeping part of her and suddenly she felt more alive than she had in some time. Gold, gold light and gold scent filled the air and she breathed it in deeply, wanting it to fill her, wanting to feel the intimacy of touching Him that she had not felt in a long time.
Is this death? She wondered. Am I going to be with Him? Oh, this isn't so bad…
The bright green eyes closed as she let the gold dance and swirl around her in celebration, and could feel deep within her the steady, solid rhythm of a heart much greater than her own.
And hidden, almost too quiet to detect, such a whisper that she had to strain to hear it, was the pitiful wail of a newborn child.
It is hope, she realized. Hope is here. Dawn is here. The end to the nightmare, because dawn is here and hope is born.
And there is no more winter, a voice seemed to respond as the last of the cold evaporated from her bones and she was wrapped completely in a tight embrace from the One she loved most.
The sky was stretched across with pink. Brilliant shades of orange and red purple and gold crisscrossed the blue sky like firecrackers on the night of a great celebration. The sun reached out long golden fingers of light to touch her, and she could almost feel their caress on her face.
She could nearly hear the words, lost in golden light.
And when she fell to sleeping again, she slept no longer of cold and of fear. There was a new dawn, and a new day. A king had come to save his people. A rock had been laid, upon which the fate of a nation would rest itself.
And many miles away in London, a newborn boy wailed, unaware of his name or his future, unaware of the part he had yet to play.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
And all at once… such a sweetness and power rolled about them and over them and entered them that they felt they had never really been happy or wise or good, or even awake, before. And the memory of that moment stayed with them always, so that as long as they both lived, if ever they were sad or afraid or angry, the thought of all that golden goodness, and the feeling that it was still there, quite close, just round some corner or just behind some door, would come back and make them sure, deep down inside, that all was well. –The Magician's Nephew, Chapter 15
EDIT: I was going to add more chapters, but upon further reflection, decided this one works better as a oneshot. Thanks for all the reviews, guys!