the sea is a good place to think about the future / and all you can hear is the sound of your own heart
Written for the Awesome Ladies Ficathon, prompt by stepliana.
Lucy leans over the rail on the port side of the Dawn Treader. It's been several days since they'd left Ramandu's Island, several days of not sleeping and barely talking and only consuming the drinkable light, yet Lucy never grows tired of the wonders of this last sea. She can't bear not to look, in any case, as she knows this is one of the last looks she'll get at this world.
She's known since Dufflepud Island, since she was tempted to read the spell of beauty from the magician's book, that this was her last time. She remembers Aslan's face in the book, growling at her, and she remembers that he had told Peter and Susan they were told old, and she knows. Wanting to say that spell was the beginning of the end: she's too old for Narnia now.
Although Lucy doesn't quite understand, and while she doesn't like to question Aslan; at least, not question him very much, she doesn't understand how they were all allowed to grow old here before, older than any of them are now, and how that wasn't too old. Lucy sometimes wonders what would have happened if they hadn't chased the White Stag, and followed the lamppost's light back into the wardrobe that day; now, staring down into the depths of the last sea, with her eyes sharpened and acutely focused, with that brilliant silence all around her, she thinks she sees visions of what that other life would have been like: a long and fruitful reign, a Golden Age that stretched on and on, marriages and children and a growing and prosperous Narnia, some wars but long stretches of peace, adventures and tragedies - oh, it's almost like that story she barely remembers from the magician's book.
Lucy sees other things looking down into the water - she sees Susan unhappy and turning away from her, she sees Edmund grown older and studying hard, she sees an older Peter in uniform, leaving on a train, she sees Caspian on his throne, with his Queen by his side, and she sees Eustace in what must be Narnia, with a girl she doesn't know. She sees glimpses of many possible futures, but before too long, she must look away, because she knows there are things she doesn't want to see, not yet, not now.
She turns and looks around her, sees Reepicheep up in the prow, with Eustace alongside him, sees Edmund and Caspian leaning over the starboard rail, and she wonders what they see when they look down. She realizes that she knows things she didn't before. She knows Edmund is aware too that this is their last time, but he doesn't understand it will be ending soon. Edmund thinks they'll be traveling back to Narnia with Caspian, thinks that Aslan will allow him one more glimpse of the land he loves. She knows he'd stay here if he could have that choice, because here he's already seen and done the worst, but England could have more temptations in store for him. She knows Eustace worries sometimes that being undragoned didn't change him at heart, that he wonders if something like that could happen to him again, and this time the change would be permanent. She knows that Caspian will never admit that he came on this voyage not just to find the missing lords, but with the hope that somehow, somewhere in the unknown seas, he might find a way into their world, and she knows that even though he was delighted with her and Ed's presence on this journey, the one Pevensie he wished most to find was not one who tumbled into the sea.
Lucy wonders what they all know about her, if it's a secret she'd like to hide, or something she's not ready to even reveal to herself, or if they've glimpsed her future, just as she's seen theirs. But then she sees Caspian and Drinian talking and gesturing ahead, and she looks into the distance and sees white all along the water, as far as the eye can see, all along the edge of the world, and she stops wondering about the future, because suddenly, her future is here.