Note: This series is all the couldn't-have-beens that never happened in Narnia. If you disapprove of fictional incest, I would avoid this chapter.
Disclaimer: I really doubt C.S. Lewis expected fanfiction like this. I'm sorry, C.S. Lewis, and I promise I'm not some sick incest-loving freak in real life. Rest in peace.
--viennacantabile
what no one knows
one : for the moon and the sun
"Sun and Moon"
A strong man, a fair woman,
Bound fast in love,
Parted by ordered heaven,
Punishment prove.+
He suffers gnawing fires:
She in her frost
Beams in his sight, but dies
When he seems lost.
Not till the poles are joined
Shall the retreat
Of fierce brother from lost sister
End, and they meet.
--Jay Macpherson
She is the grace of the night.
He is the strength of the day.
And this is what no one knows.
She is their Queen, born of night and a strange world beyond the Lantern Waste. In the years since she was brought by the Lion and set to rule the Southern regions of Narnia, she has grown into a gentle, virtuous Lady.
And she is so very beautiful. Her pale skin and blue eyes have enchanted the lands surrounding their country. Her radiance is the silver light that cools the anger of the rash, the healing balm that soothes her people's hurts, the muted, shimmering glow that brushes her brothers and sister.
The Just King advises her. The Valiant Queen embraces her, faults and all. But He—He only loves her, with every bone in His body. And no one knows that behind the veil of her raven hair she is drowning in the fire of His eyes.
He is the High King, Knight of the Lion and that strange wilderness that some whisper the Four ascended from. It was he who led the army against the Witch and he who tracked and destroyed the dying remnants of her evil followers.
He is truly golden—the champion of his loved ones, the strength of his country, the king of his people. In each year has he grown in power and strength and always love—endless love. And so he governs, and depends on his brother and sisters—the Valiant for courage and hope, the Just for counsel and wisdom. But She is the only one he craves beauty from. It lingers in the fall of her hair, the curve of her body, the sigh of her voice. And no one knows how he longs to press his lips to hers, to quench the raging thirst inside of him.
When they are with each other, he is not the High King, the Magnificent, or even the wide-eyed boy from beyond the Western Wood. He is simply the Knight and he is Hers alone. And when she trails soft kisses down his jaw-line, hers is not the face which launched the Calormene fleet, nor is she the demure, regal Queen. She is only the Lady—His Lady of the Night. And so it happens that they become each other's light. He is her Sun. She is his Moon. They are halves of a single soul.
But no one must know, because the sun and the moon may never shine as one, may never rise together. They may glimpse each other in the distance, in the rise and fall at the edges of consciousness, but it is only in the early, waking, gray hours of between-time—when space and time are imprecise and unwritten laws are fuzzy and drowsy with sleep—that they meet. And even then, it is a tentative, halting romance, conducted in the shadow of looming walls and towers, atop the cool stone parapets overlooking the Sea. The Lady's hair pools in ebony rivulets around them, hiding their tangle of legs and arms and lips, shielding them from the onslaught of the day. The Knight's fierce eyes light their shelter, caressing and protecting her at this time as he cannot at any other. And they soak in the weak, dazed half-light that discerns not what it sees—because this is something that no one knows.
The morning, with all its harsh brightness, will come all too soon. And they will rise, each to face the day with their own private selves hidden deep inside of them. She will be the Queen. And he will be the King. When she wakes at night and tears slip down her matchless face, he will know. When he dreams at dawn and agony haunts his steps, she will know. And they will wait for the end of the World when the Knight will reach for the Lady and they will be consumed in each other's embrace and so make their end together. Whether it leads to the Lion's country, or the fiery stench of Tash, they do not know. But wherever they go, whatever happens—they will be together.
And that is all they have ever wanted.
-
.end.
it is what it is. have a cookie.
--viennacantabile