Disclaimer: *Looks down* I'm not dead, I'm not a man, so I guess I'm not C.S. Lewis.
Note: This is the 3rd installment in my Narnia One-Shot series. The first two are called The Nightingale and The Wolf. Co-written with StarPrincessTally. Sorry this took so long.
The Sparrow
It may not surprise some people to know that the Valiant Queen was never one to like the rain. It wasn't hard to figure out, she was flighty as a bird and always wanted to be under the open sky, but no one in Narnia expected her to completely hole herself up in her room after three days of non-stop rain. Many expected her to go riding in the rain or walking in the mud.
When the rain stopped, the young queen still did not emerge. The kitchen staff had taken to leaving her food outside the door and coming back in an hour to retrieve the empty tray. Suffice it to say, they were all quite worried about Queen Lucy.
Behind the door, however, no one would have guessed the true reason that the sprite-like child had holed herself up. After all, who would have suspected her of tending to a nest of starling sparrows on her windowsill? Actually, it wouldn't have surprised anyone, but this was one project that she wanted to work on alone.
Day and night she fed and watched over the baby birds, even losing precious sleep. But it didn't matter to her, so long as the birds were healthy. Soon, she discovered that the sparrows were Talking Beasts. She grinned from ear to ear the moment she heard the one she'd named Lyra say, "More." From that moment on she not only taught them how to speak, she also taught them manners.
Soon, the birds were flying around her room and out her window, though they always returned. Lucy felt secure enough to start leaving them alone for short periods of time. Enough time for her to regain the golden glow that her skin had lost while she nursed the starlings and to bring the shine back to her hair. Her siblings joked that she'd looked like a ghost queen, instead of a living one. Though, she never once let them know about the Sparrows in her room.
One day, however, she was walking in the courtyard alone when they spun down from the heavens. "Mother Lucy, Mother Lucy," they called. "You'll never guess what happened."
"What?" she asked, smiling.
"Lern caught a worm and Lyra found a raspberry bush in the forest today."
"Really? How wonderful. Soon you'll be able to take care of yourselves," she said excitedly, though the thought did provide her with some reservations. She didn't want them to leave.
"No!" the four of them chorused. "We don't ever want to leave Mother Lucy."
She sat down on a stone bench and they landed on the ground at her feet. "Oh? But you must. I won't be able to take care of you forever. One day you'll want to start your own families and visit different places a lot farther away than the forest." The Sparrows looked up at the young queen, saddened by the knowledge that they would leave someday. "But that doesn't mean you won't be able to visit often," she said, perking her charges right up again.
A month later her nest was empty.
They came back every month or so to visit their mother and her siblings, who didn't learn about the Sparrows till they had Starlings of their own, but they understood. They all had secrets that they'd kept from the others.
Often, Lucy dreamed that she was flying above the trees, the four Sparrows flanking her. "See," Lyra said once, "You're a free Sparrow too." Lucy laughed and hoped that she would not waken for a long time, or at least have this dream every few nights or so.
Believe it or not, this took a couple of tries to finish because I kept forgetting it, and all I had left was one more paragraph! :P Ahhh well. One more sibling left. Anyone care to guess what his animal is?
Review!
-LeAcH