Where Her Thoughts Hide

During the long, tedious days, she often forgets who she is.

So many people expect things from her; she is formal, she is stuffy, and she is laced far too tightly into the bodice of her court dress. Her feet hurt in shoes too tight; her scalp is sore from high-piled hair.

She shifts in her chair and spends far more time looking out the window than listening in court, and it annoys Peter to no end but he knows better than to say anything about it.

At sunset, she flings herself out of her throne, pulls off her shoes, and is running down the hallway of Cair Paravel and down to the beach where she left him in the morning. She pulls her hair down and it flies out behind her, a golden flame, and she is barefoot and puffing against her corset, red-faced and disheveled, by the time she reaches his cottage.

She never has to pound on his door for entrance, because he leaves it open no matter the weather. She is inside immediately but today she does not see him. Usually he is knitting, or preparing them dinner, or reading from one of his endless thick books. But today he is not in the sitting room and he is not in the kitchen.

She finds him asleep in the bedroom and he looks older than usual. She stands over him, feeling monstrous in her bloated red dress with its full skirts; her heaving breasts threaten to spill out of her bodice and she must look a fright, but she doesn't care. Her hair is a halo, tangled and wild, and he wakes up as if he feels her eyes on him.

He grins up at her and holds up his arms, and she crawls gratefully into them.

"Lucy," he murmurs, holding her against him, and she suddenly remembers who she is after all.