Disclaimer: I own not the rights to Narnia, England, Lucy, her siblings, or even light itself. But George MacDonald once wrote that "Love makes the only myness," the only ownership, and so in many ways these things are mine; mine to give away, so others may love them and own them as well.

OOOOO

"In him was life, and the life was the light of men." John 1:4

Lucy first noticed how light changed a room during the war, before Narnia; she was young. She walked into the parlor, her favorite room in which to play. But blackout curtains hung over the windows, and Lucy didn't think the room was beautiful anymore. Her young mind wondered what had changed it, what made all the beauty go away. Then her mother came behind her, and while Lucy was staring and turning in a slow circle, her mother pushed the curtains aside and light flooded the room. And Lucy ran to the window beside her mother, and her mother laughed as Lucy danced in the sudden influx of light. The parlor and the girl came alive in the light.

In their home, light brushed over furniture and made its color alive; light danced across the clean carpet and filled the floor with roses; light shone through the glass ornaments and cast their rainbows across the walls. Light made everything beautiful.

Even in other homes, ones her mother took her to when her mother went to help, ones with mud on the counters and dishes on the floors, light made the beauty as evident as the dirt. Even dishes on the floor cast rainbows.

But she was too small to pull back the curtains, and her mother didn't always remember, not with four kids to care for and a host of other families to help. So there were mornings Lucy would wait in the darkness of the parlor, sitting quietly, waiting for the light.

Peter, who noticed the quiet of the parlor as he passed by, paused and came in. He caught her sad glances at the windows, and guessing why, he pulled them aside for her. And at her sudden, radiant smile, he could not help but smile back, as glad for her happiness as she was for the light. It became their ritual every morning, the first thing they did, rushing down the stairs to the parlor, Lucy running as fast as she could to see light flood the room; and Peter running so he could see the moment light flood her face. The moment light brought them both happiness.

It never changed for the two of them. Even as the war went on, and food grew more tasteless, and Edmund scowled at her from the doorway, and happiness shut itself out of her mother's face like the blackout curtains shut out light, she and Peter still had a moment of happiness every morning, happiness not even a war could take away.

Then they went to Narnia, and Lucy learned of people who shed silvery light in a dance in the heavens, and she loved learning the light's design. She thrilled to find the way light rippled through Narnia's waters and made the world below it beautiful, from the sandy floor to the flashes on a mermaid's graceful tail. And best of all, she found the source of light, Aslan Himself, who created all the light in Narnia and had His own golden light that calmed and gave the deepest joy she'd ever known, light that lit the very hearts of His own.

When they first came back to England she didn't miss the light so much; she found it shining through the leaves of England's trees, falling gently on the floor through the windows, and if the trees did not have dryads, the trees still grew from the light. And she found it again in the stars and moonlight, and she would watch them from the windows, curled up on a ledge in a little girl's body. Sometimes Susan would join her, the two of them quiet, and sometimes Edmund would pass by (no longer scowling, but giving her the smile he had just for her, no matter how late he stayed up working), but best of all was when Peter would find her sleeping there, and carry her to bed, leaving the drapes drawn in her window so the light would fall on her face.

Peter. Of all his titles, she loved Lord Protector best. Peter, her older brother.

But then they went back to London.

The light in London could be ugly, Lucy reflected. Walking through its grey streets the first time, she hadn't noticed, too absorbed with the way her mother's face lit up, the way it smiled, the way happiness poured from her smile as if Aslan Himself had placed it there.

But later, as she went on errands for her mother to baker, store, or other families, Lucy found herself looking for the light that was green, gold, glowing red, or even clear in the blueness of the sky. But all too often all she found was grey. And it wore on her, the absence of the light she had known, the absence of beauty and color and wonder. And she became quieter, pausing at the top of stairs, waiting a moment in doorways, looking for something she wasn't even aware she missed. She never found it, and she'd enter the room and forget she was looking for it as she attempted to bring light anyway, with words and love, into her loved ones' faces. And she so often succeeded, and so lit her own.

But her siblings noticed, and met, and discussed this change in their youngest ruler, and gravely decided to change it.

So one morning Lucy woke to the sound of Peter's voice outside her door, asking her with all the grave courtesy he had learned, to grace him with her presence so they could run down to the parlor. And Lucy laughed, with the joy of youth and the gratefulness of wisdom, for the memory of her brother at what had once given her happiness, and she threw off her covers and joined him. And the grave smile on his face brightened to that of a boy, when she pulled his hand and the two of them ran, ran, ran down the hall, down the stairs, and to the parlor door.

And at the open door she checked herself, because hung once more on the windows were the blackout curtains her mother had taken down at the war's ending, and the room was dark. Peter's reassuring hands landed on her shoulders, and she felt him nod into her hair, and her other siblings' hands drew the curtains back. Light flooded the room.

Flooded the crimson carpet Susan had laid on the floor, haloed the burnished wooden lion Edmund had placed on the glass table with a golden light, and cast rainbows all over the walls from the glass prisms Peter had hung. The room was alive with color and light, and the overwhelming joy in Lucy's smile made all three of her siblings laugh. "For you, Lu," Peter said.

And she ran to the other two, catching their hands, pulling them around the table, her dancing eyes calling Peter to join. And in the light of the morning the four of them twirled, in a room filled with color and light, and they laughed as they danced, and sung a Narnian song, and gave thanks to the Lion for life.

And they left the parlor that way (their mother didn't mind), and Lucy found it to be her haven, her place to seek the Lion, her place to draw when it rained, and it was made more beautiful yet by the memory of her sibling's love. Because Lucy knew that love was its own kind of light; a light that reflected the giver of light and of life.