Disclaimer: The Chronicles of Narnia is the intellectual property of C. S. Lewis and his estate. No money is being made from this story, and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Author's Note: This story was written in response to the livejournal nffr_party prompt #4: natural disasters.

Summary: Susan's journey to accepting Narnia as her new home is not easy, either within or without.

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Dedication
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A century of ice and snow thaw into nothing and yet to Susan's astonishment Narnia does not flood. What comes after is harder. The ground has been frozen hard as iron for generations, unable to absorb more than the barest sips of water, and summer sprawls long, lazy, and dry across the land, the sun's heat baking the nonexistent moisture from the soil. The rivers still wend their way to the sea, fed by the slow trickle of snowmelt in the Western Wild and the northern moors, but they are shallow beyond what any of the oldest petrified Narnians can remember from days before the Witch's rule.

Drought stalks the land. Crops fail, trees wither, dumb beasts grow lean and dazed and their children die young, easy prey for equally starving hunters. Susan mourns the lives she takes with her bow, but does her best to think of the lives her arrows save for another day, or week, or month. The survivors of the long winter are few and far between - the scattered remnants of a thriving nation - and that is all that saves them from starvation. There are simply too few souls to tread heavily on the groaning earth.

Susan thinks of England, of rationing, bombs, and the grey horror of war, and wonders when she chose to trade that world for this and whether she would choose differently if she could tell her story over again. But though she cannot quite bring herself to name Narnia her home, England is already dim and fading like a child's half-remembered fairy tale and she puts those thoughts aside in favor of more practical things. If they can survive to autumn, they should be able to harvest enough to see this country safe and sound through the winter. Her brothers sing as they work the fields beside their new subjects, and Lucy's laughter rings bright as ever despite their endless toil.

But just as the carefully irrigated fields are growing heavy with grain, the autumn rains blow down from the Western Wild toward the sea, pounding into the powdered earth like a hammer into brittle pottery. Outside their chosen fields, the soil is baked dry as brick and cannot drink the rain. Vast sheets of earth wash away like a cloth whisked off a table, uprooting trees and undercutting hills as they go. The rivers spill across their banks and turn the valleys into lakes of churning liquid mud, ruining half the harvest before any chance to gather the scanty fruits and grains. Cair Paravel becomes almost an island, trapped between the river and the sea, and the fetid cargo of drowned bodies and broken trees piles high against the foundations where no one can withstand the rushing currents to remove the wrack.

Archenland sends aid and Susan buys what stores she can from Calormen and the ocean islands in return for Jadis's stolen treasures and the regalia of the former kings, but winter is coming back again, breathing the learned despair of a hundred years, and no courage, no care, no wisdom, no faith, can change the brutal calculation of mute numbers and promise that this strange land given into their care will survive to see the anniversary of its deliverance.

Darkness and ice close in like the shadow of remembered spells and Susan spends her days in the great hall with her siblings and subjects, closing off vast wings of the castle to hoard fuel and light. Even Father Christmas cannot lift the mood for long - the feast he brings is welcome but quickly gone and more quickly forgotten in the pinch of cold and the brutal gnawing of hunger. The seeds he leaves in a giant sack are the subject of calculating stares and furtive attempts at theft, but they are the one sign that this winter, unlike the last, will not bring utter destruction. That is is not an eternal siege nor caused by any active malice. That it is natural, part of the round of seasons and story of life. That it will end.

Achingly, imperceptibly, the days begin to lengthen, though at first the cold increases its grip as if in revenge for the loss of darkness, its partner. And then Susan wakes one morning to the sound of melting water, dripping from icicles and trickling through the gutters and out the mouths of the carved spouts that ring the castle walls. The sun shines white and clear in a crystal sky, and Lucy and Edmund force open the main gate to receive a small party of three dwarfs, a faun, a Wolf, and a Doe who have crossed the frozen river to bring tidings of a trade ship docked at the mouth of the Glasswater, carrying fruit and grain from the south in return for the iron and gems the dwarfs have spent the winter digging from their recovered mines. They offer a small sack of dried apples as proof.

Peter sets out with the Wolf and two of the dwarfs to inspect the ship and approve the trade. Edmund sits with the Doe and the faun by the fire and quizzes them on how the country is surviving the season. Lucy takes the third dwarf on a tour of the castle, which was built by the land's own magic rather than any hands or tools, and is filled with secrets as yet undiscovered.

Susan turns a desiccated apple over and over in her hands, stroking the creased and leathery skin. It hardly seems fit to eat, but she knows that a cup of melted snow will revive it - not the same as when it hung fresh on its tree, but still sweet and tart and all the more precious here in the midst of lack than plucked easily from a branch in the heart of plenty. She raises the wrinkled fruit to her nose and breathes the ghost of spring.

In the coming years, Susan thinks, once the earth around Cair Paravel has been cleansed of salt and filth, she will plant an orchard. It will grow and prosper. Her children will play under apple blossom. Her grandchildren will play hide and seek among the roots and branches. And Narnia's people - her people - will never go hungry again.

Sunlight lies gold on her head and shoulders as she carries the apple to the kitchen and prepares to keep her home alive 'til spring.

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AN: Thanks for reading, and please review! I appreciate all comments, but I'm particularly interested in knowing what parts of the story worked for you, what parts didn't, and why.