A Watched Pot

Much credit goes to Hannahmarie123, who gave me the prompt; much more credit goes to C.S. Lewis, whose characters kept me company all the way through my childhood. I'm only playing with them and I promise to put them back unharmed (albeit possibly a little befuddled) when I'm done.

In which Jill is cold, Eustace is irritated, and the stew takes simply forever to cook. TLB.

The dew had already vanished by the time Jill stumbled out into the pale morning sunshine, still feeling the places where her unforgiving bunk had bruised and battered her hips over the night. There was a stiff breeze, as well, and she wished she had a hairbrush with her-her curls were escaping their knot and falling into her eyes. She made do by sneaking off upstream and bathing as best she could-something which made her feel a great deal more human, but which left her with a perpetual shiver. After drying herself with her school woollen and struggling back into her pinafore, she made her way back to camp, where Eustace was very disgruntled after her second disappearance in as many days. Once Poggin had left them to their herb-gathering, he threw down his armful of Wild Fresney and took her to task.

"Blasted irresponsible, that's what I call it," he hissed at her. "What if the camp had been set upon? What would we have done without an archer? We would have wasted so much time looking for you, quite apart from anything else! And goodness knows we need all the manpower we can get!"

"I'm not a man," Jill replied icily. Her dress itched and her woollen was still damp and she really didn't have the wherewithal for this.

"You knew jolly well what I meant!"

She didn't respond to this. Instead, she moved a few feet away from him and squared her shoulders in a particularly huffy way, bending to recommence her task. Eustace rolled his eyes as she purposefully turned her back on him, and resolved to think about something else.

By the time the stew had been cooking for about an hour, everyone had given up pretending to do anything else other than wait for the food. Jill was sat by the pot, stirring it hopefully every now and then. Eustace (once he'd cleaned his sword after Tirian's scolding) plonked himself next to her, though he left a rather pointed distance and still chose not to break the silence. Tirian joined them shortly, and eventually even Poggin gave up the attempt at industry and sat down to tend the pot.

Jill wriggled in her spot. She was beginning to feel cramps in her lower back. Just hunger and nothing more sinister, she hoped; somehow, she didn't feel that the middle of a Narnian battlefield would be the best place to be reminded that she wasn't quite manpower. She shifted again, unable to find a comfortable position.

The sun was high, but the damp from Jill's woollen had seeped into her skin, and the breeze was blowing straight through her. It was compounded by the hollowness inside her stomach. With a Herculean effort, she suppressed a shiver and shifted closer to the pot. The amount of warmth from their small cooking fire, though, was fairly meagre. Goosebumps ran along her skin, so pronounced that they were actually painful.

Eustace watched as goosebumps began to rise on Jill's arms and legs, a rather uncomfortable feeling inside him. She was so dratted small, that was the trouble. Even though she was sixteen, there was still hardly a scrap of fat to keep her tiny frame warm, and he half-expected her to blow away on the breeze. She rolled her shoulders and crossed and uncrossed her legs hundreds of times, and he guessed that she was fighting away a shiver; typical Pole. Suddenly, he felt Jewel's eyes on him, watching him watch Jill, and he identified the uncomfortable feeling as guilt. His own woollen was perfectly dry and serviceable.

"If you're going to make all that confounded racket, Pole, you might as well have this," he snapped, unceremoniously tugging it off and dropping it between them. The wind bit through his shirt almost instantly.

She scarcely glanced at it. "It smells nasty," she complained.

Eustace flushed, suddenly aware that he hadn't bathed properly in a couple of days, and was covered in old sweat from yesterday's battle. Quickly clamping his arms to his sides, he glared at her. "You're hardly a bed of roses yourself, Pole!" The insult fell between them, somewhere near the woollen. They laid there, abandoned, for what felt like hours. Eustace drew his legs up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them to keep warm, but he didn't pick the woollen up. He could see Jill looking at it out of the corner of her eye.

For her part, Jill had felt instantly sorry for her childishness. She observed Eustace, curled up into himself against the wind, leaving his woollen on the ground for her. A couple of times, she even started to reach out for it, but caught herself in time: the last thing she wanted to do was concede. She leant over and stirred the pot instead.

Eustace had been rather splendid yesterday, she reasoned, and he was probably entitled to a day of moodiness. A half-smile broke over her face as she remembered him praising her, defending her to Tirian. Come to think of it, he'd even defended her against herself, hadn't he? Telling Tirian that her archery was decent, as good as Eustace's own, in fact. And then there had been that horrible fight, and he had been so brave, and she was just knew that he was upset about killing the Calormene-

With a creeping reluctance, and a blush starting in the tips of her ears, she inched her fingers forwards until they met the fabric of Eustace's woollen. With half an eye, she glanced at his face. He visibly brightened as she caught the garment up, and the chill began to dissipate from her insides out, even before she pulled the woollen on.

Rather sheepishly, he caught her gaze. "Sorry it smells, Pole."

Over her head went the woollen. "It smells of home," she replied rather quickly (and without entirely meaning to) as she emerged. It did-despite the lingering scent of battle, it still reminded her of cheap Experiment House soap, and the ink from Latin primers, and of him.

Her blush spread rapidly as she realised what she'd said, but she met his eyes as if there was nothing wrong. He quirked a corner of his mouth up, nearly grinning, and she found herself doing the same thing, and it was suddenly all alright again. The woollen was enormous on her: Eustace had height from Alberta and breadth from years of rugby, and was twice her size at a conservative estimate; she pulled down over her knees, and laughed as she stirred the pot, and the stew was finally done.