Mascara and Magic
Mascara
It was hard to leave Narnia for the last time. The first time had been hard enough, but at least she'd had the hope of returning. Now, she didn't even have that.
She tried not to, but she was envious of Lucy and Edmund. And she hated herself for it. So she told herself that she was being silly, really. Narnia had been great when they were younger, but she was growing up. She was growing out of Narnia.
The pain in her heart was surely just her imagination.
In Narnia, she was Queen Susan the Gentle, most beautiful woman in the world. Men had courted her, and duelled one another, seeking her hand in marriage.
In England, she was Susan Pevensie, just another somewhat-pretty girl still growing into her looks.
It was a relief to go to America with Mother and Father. It reminded her less of Narnia.
There was another advantage, as she quickly discovered – boys. They began to take notice of her. It gave her a little thrill, a little reminder of the romance of Narnia.
Soon enough, she was introduced to the magic of mascara. Dressed the right way, made up the right way, she could make herself look stunning. The boys flocked to her. She was invited to every party, where she would laugh and dance and enjoy herself, in the least Narnian way she could think of.
It had just been a silly childhood game, after all. She couldn't understand why her siblings would cling to their fantasies so firmly.
Magic
The worst day of her life came just after her twenty-first birthday.
She was preparing for yet another party when the police knocked on the door, bringing news of the train crash.
Her mascara ran as she identified her family and their friends.
The endless parties didn't stop for her loss. Invitations came, alongside short notes offering condolences.
She burned the first invitation received after the crash.
Deep in her grief, she fell back on the only source of comfort she had left – Narnia.
At the funeral, people quietly marked her regal endurance, her noble suffering. Queen Susan began to show through, better able to cope than the frivolous girl she had become.
It had fallen to her to organise everything. Her parents gravestones were simple, elegant, traditional. Her siblings' gravestones were each unique.
Peter's bore the lion rampant, and read Peter Pevensie, The Magnificent.
A lion roared on Edmund's, which proclaimed him The Just.
Finally, Lucy The Valiant's stone had the lion at rest. The carver had outdone himself, for the lion seemed to stare out with a look of understanding.
At her aunt's hesitant query, Susan smiled sadly. "Once a friend of Narnia, always a friend of Narnia." And then she had walked away.
(But Alberta agreed to have a lion engraved on Eustace's marker, too, at Susan's insistence.)
It still hurt to think of Narnia... but it hurt less than knowing she would never see her family again.