"I can't sleep."
Such innocuous, sweet words. So simple.
"Let me guess. Bad dreams." A glance confirms my assumption. Shaken still by my own terrifying nightmare, I flop back in my hammock, trying to comfort through words of reason.
Lucy looks, if not happy, at least less disturbed by the terrors the mist sent in her sleep. Simple fears magnified by the dark magic stirring in Narnia.
But oh, what I would have given for them to be night terrors sent away by a tender kiss and a warm hug. Lucy never before came to me in the night, frightened.
For a long time, before Narnia, I saw myself as much a part of a family as a brick is part of a wall – unfortunately stuck there but easily removed and placed in another. I was never Peter's brother-in-arms, his confidant, his moral compass, or even his friend. I was never Susan's younger brother whose antics could cheer her when under stress, her touchstone when she lost focus, or her shoulder to cry on late at night when she wanted a sympathetic ear and someone to with whom to discuss her mistakes impartially. They were only my elder siblings who smothered me, and that was all I let them be.
And Lucy. Oh, of all the family I've wronged, I did the worst by her. She was only my annoying little sister. I had never thought of myself as her older brother.
She never came to me to chase away a nightmare. She went to Peter, or sometimes Susan, maybe even Mother once. I couldn't blame her. The old Edmund would have taunted her, mocked her fright and her tears. Narnia changed us all. After the crowning, nightmares were often the least of our concerns. In the many years since then, even once we returned to England, we had learned to deal with even the most disturbing of normal dreams.
"I can't sleep." Despite the foreboding circumstances, I treasure this moment, and as I slip my hand into my sister's and squeeze reassuringly, I felt her relax slightly.