By the Lion
Disclaimer- When he finished 'The Last Battle', C.S. Lewis told the children who wrote in to make up their own stories about Narnia, so that's what I'm doing. I doubt Doug Gresham will mind, and Susan is the only one who isn't an OC. I own everything except her, including the lion, because I'm not sure if the London Zoo even has a lion. They used to have a bear that A.A. Milne liked to visit though. J
Disclaimer Two- Edit; I wrote and posted this three years ago and had pushed it out of my brain when Level Head sent me a review with things that really needed fixing. So they are fixed, and hopefully this reads a little easier now. Thank you!
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A lone woman sat on a bench in front of the lion cage at the London Zoo.
The lion, blinking sleepily, didn't impress the woman observing him. Although it had been many years since she'd seen a true King of Beasts, the memory was still vivid.
She sighed, the lion was small, hardly had any mane, and had no dignity about himself.
Not like HIM.
She shook the thought out of her head. It was an animal! What would you expect from it? It was dumb and witless; it didn't need to have a bearing.
And yet…she expected it to.
Susan shook her head again, it had been ten years! Surely she could move on after ten years!
She had moved on, she was married and had a daughter.
She had moved on.
If only Lucy hadn't found those books. Susan didn't know how the author had known about…the game. The game they used to play, when they were children.
Perhaps Lucy had told him. Not Lucy her daughter, but Lucy her sister, the one that her daughter was named for.
The one who had died.
When she had seen the title of the book, she had almost dropped the packages she was holding. Lucy had noticed.
--
"What is it, Mum?"
Susan shook herself.
"Nothing, it's nothing."
But Lucy had followed her line of vision.
"Oh, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? Is that what you were looking at?"
"No." This was said too quickly.
"I got that from the library and it's fantastic! You know, the girls in it have our names! Yours and mine! And the boys have the names of my uncles, the ones who died in that train crash."
"Do they?" she said, trying to sound indifferent. "Well, I might want to have a look at it. It's time to go home now, Lucy."
-
She had looked at it, alright. It was all there, memories she had tried to forget, tried to hold back. They all had come back to her.
There were other books in that dratted series, and Lucy would have to read them all. She was always exclaiming over the names, how they all were her mother's brothers' and sister's names, and did Mum know the author?
Susan just told her that Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy, were very common names, and so was 'Pevensie'.
Lucy was still suspicious.
"Can I sit here, please?"
She was startled out of her thoughts.
"Pardon?"
"Can I sit here, please?"
The speaker was a tow-headed boy, about eleven or thereabouts.
"Oh, yes, of course."
He sat on the edge of the bench, and looked at the lion she was looking at.
"Not much to look at, is he?" he asked, nodding at it. "Not like Aslan, that's for sure."
Susan jumped at the name.
"Who?" She knew very well who.
"Aslan. He's the Lion in 'The Chronicles of Narnia'."
"Oh…yes. my daughter reads those."
"They're terrific, I just finished 'The Last Battle'," his face fell. "The author says he's not going to write any more. I guess he had to stop, since he made Narnia get destroyed, there's really no point anymore."
"Narnia is destroyed?"
"Yeah, but it's alright," he added hastily, as a very odd look came over her face. "It turns out that the Narnia Lewis was writing about wasn't the real Narnia at all, it was just a copy, or a shadow of the real Narnia in Aslan's country, and all the Friends of Narnia, well, all the ones who died in the train crash, and the Pevensie's parents all go to the real Narnia. It's supposed to be Heaven, I think."
Susan was staring at the lion again. "And that's it?"
"Yeah, well, except for Susan Pevensie. She stopped being a Friend of Narnia, so she didn't go, but she didn't die ether, so maybe she still will go. Lewis never said."
"Maybe," whispered Susan.
For a moment, the lion looked directly back at her, and she had the feeling…the one she had when she first heard HIS name.
Aslan.
"There's my mum, gotta go. Nice talking to you,"
As the boy got up, she glanced at him and whispered, "Thank you."
He looked confused, but nodded and walked away.
She looked at Him again. Was it her imagination or did he look like…?
No, it was her imagination.
Time to go home, Lucy would be getting back from school. Just before she left she looked back.
His mane definitely looked better than it had.
More…Magnificent.
I give you: Queen Susan, the Gentle.