This story is my take at the Autumn Challenge on NFFR. Well technically I'm too late but no matter. The theme was the Lamppost and that what my little mind came with. Enjoy!
A Light In The Dark
By the time Caspian the first led the Telmarines to the conquest of Narnia, the Four Kings and Queens of Old had already become a legend. Like every legend, it had its heroes, its villains and its symbols. There were of course the legendary Gifts from Father Christmas: the mighty sword of the no less mighty High King, the Gentle Queen's bow whose arrows never missed, her horn, the bringer of hope and rescue, her Valiant sister's dagger and the sunflower elixir, who could bring wounded back even from death's door. There were the Four Thrones in Cair Paravel, the Four Crowns and of course the Lamppost.
The famous Lamppost where Queen Lucy met Master Faun Tumnus for the first time and where, fifteen years later, she and her siblings would disappear from their beloved Narnia, never to be seen again by their friends and subjects.
As such, the Lamppost was as much revered as it was abhorred by the Narnian during the following centuries.
What people seemed to have forgotten was that for a few months the Lamppost was also the only light in Narnian nights.
In the first times of their existence, Narnian stars were indeed not very well organized. They would bicker for the same spot in the sky, some wanting to be seen by everyone and to shine brightly on the newborn world, while others, shyer, would fight for less visible places, low on the horizon. Some of the stars wanted to stay in the sky all year long while others wanted nothing more than an ephemeral apparition. Yet even those lazier ones caused problems as they discuss rather vigorously for the season of their passage. Some shined too harshly, eclipsing their rightly angered neighbours. Some tried to introduce their own little variations in the celestial music and dance, unsettling the others and upsetting the nightly ballet. All in all, the stars were not really reliable during the first months of Narnia, not till the Moon, their mother, managed to calm her bickering children and put some order in her sky.
The newly born Dryads were quite willing to give some of their wood to light fires. But there is only so much wood a Dryad can give before growing weak. And the nascent forests of Narnia were still growing, still too young and too small to allow heavy exploitation. So what little wood the Narnian had was reserved for construction and for lighting the small fires necessary for cooking.
This in effect meant that by nightfall, most activities had to stop. It also meant that the Narnian, who by then were still children if not in body then in mind, were a bit unnerved by the dark. That was especially true for the 'weaker' races whose dwellings, their safe havens against predators (instinct is after all such a marvellous and resilient thing even in Talking Animals), were not yet built.
But the most unsettled by the darkness were probably the new sovereigns. As they explained to their curious subjects, in their land of birth, the nightly darkness was kept at bay with candles and fires and lamp-posts and all that kind of luminous contraptions. So, thrown into a new and marvellous but still unknown and wild land, the Son of Adam and the Daughter of Eve gripped to a piece of comforting familiarity and gathered close to the Lamppost when darkness covered their new country.
As said earlier, the Narnian at that time could for the most part be likened to children. And like all children, they learned by looking at their parents' actions and then by imitating them. So after a few days, a good part of the Talking Animals and other Narnian beings took the habit of joining their sovereigns around the Lamppost as night settled over Narnia.
Now the King and Queen were very practical people and they fully acknowledged the need, for people and beings alike, to sleep a good amount of time if one intended to work hard the following day. Nonetheless they were also people who had yearned for a child for many long years. And in their little house in London, they had often imagined what it would have been like if their home had been graced with a little one. One of their favourite evening fantasies had been bedtime stories.
As such, with most if not all their diurnal subjects around them, they became used to telling them stories before everybody went to sleep. At first it was fairytales and legends they remembered from their own childhoods. Then memories from their previous lives in the dreary Victorian London. But as the times before their arrival in Narnia slowly faded from their mind and memory, they also began to lack new stories for their eager auditory.
In the meantime, the mindset of their subjects had quickly evolved from those of precocious but still naïve children to those of adults. Encouraged by their sovereigns and by their daily interactions with others, they had learned how to think, how to dispute and argument and how to tell a story. Seeing that, one night, after having sung an old lullaby of her youth, Queen Helen asked if anyone around had a story to tell.
At first, the Good Beasts were a bit shy and no one dared to speak. Then a gutsy little Bat, for most of the nocturne Narnian had taken to come to the storytelling too, raised her shrill voice and told about the joy of flying in the night. Thus encouraged, other flying Beasts took their turn (for the Queen had taught them manners and such speaking brawls as on the first day of Narnia existence were mostly avoided) and also spoke of flying, of the joy of being held and supported by the winds, of the rush of diving headfirst, of the thrill of barely avoiding obstacles and of the serenity and utter freedom of just gliding in the unending sky. Little by little, night by night, each and every inhabitant of Narnia, even the shyest, shared a story with his or her brethren. And little by little, night by night, the Beasts began to lost part of their instincts. Rabbits got used to seat near Foxes, Dryads stopped to bristle when Squirrels ran into their foliage (though they weren't always happy with it as a Squirrel is by nature a very chatty creature and the noise oftentimes gave them headaches) and the predatory reaction of Cats regarding Birds slowly disappeared (they were still wholly unremorseful when chasing after dumb birds though).
In Narnian lore, these nighttimes recountings became known as the Bonding of Narnia, the time in which the country graced by Aslan first truly united under the banner of the Children of Adam and Eve.
And till the tragic birth of the White Witch's tyranny, no time was as deeply loved and respected by Narnian as this one. Not the Great Revelries after the construction of Cair Paravel in Frank the Second's reign, when the festivities lasted for days with bountiful feasts and bonfires on the beach and dances and songs till morning light. Not the crowning of Prince Gale, the Hero of Narnia for having slayed the mighty and beastly Dragon of Galma. Not even the Great Harvest, which had not been all that great in truth but has seemed so to the poor Narnians after five years of drought and pitiful crops, barely sufficient to feed the country, causing the death of many loyal followers of Aslan.
The winners of the first Battle of Beruna would have argued that the crowning of the Four in Cair Paravel could have easily rivalled with it. Sadly by the end of the Winter, harsh years spent on survival and the systematic elimination of Narnian lore by Jadis had led the First Light of Narnia and the Bonding it had allowed to be forgotten by too many. For the newly freed Narnian, the Lamppost was a symbol of the resistance against the daughter of Charn as even she hadn't managed to extinguish its light. For a repentant Faun and a barely crowned but nonetheless very enthusiastic Queen it meant the beginning of a strong and lasting friendship. For her siblings it was the embodiment of fifteen years of hardships and joys and after that, long and seemingly unending years of yearning, till their entry in Aslan's country.
And heedless of all, the Lamppost imperturbably lighted the Western Woods till the world changed and Narnia sank among the stars.
Let me know what you thought about it.