Waiting by Shadow-of the-Night35

Chapter Two: The Just

The fire was warm, but it barely reached Edmund where he sat reading. He shivered slightly, pulling a blanket closer around his shoulders. He shuddered further when he remembered a deeper, far more penetrating cold. He remembered the freezing depths of a palace made of ice, where he had been locked away. He wrapped himself into another blanket and moved closer to the fire, trying to forget the frigid cell he had been confined in.

He closed his book, unable to concentrate on the far away world while his mind was focused on a different one. He closed his eyes as well—eyes that were so full of wisdom and sorrow and longing—trying to forget. Adults said his eyes looked like those of a man who had seen much of the world, fixed in the face of an innocent child. Those grown-up eyes were all that remained of the man he had been. He used those eyes to see Narnia in everything. But England was not Narnia. Windsor Castle was not Cair Paravel. Finchly was not the Western Woods; everything was different. He choked on the dirty, polluted air that was nothing like the pure air of Narnia. In England he stayed inside when it rained instead of dancing in the puddles.

He missed the Fauns and Centaurs and Unicorns and all his other friends so much that sometimes he thought he caught a glimpse of them out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned his head, it was only shadows playing in the light. His eyes filled with tears every time he stepped outside and saw an iron lamppost, and he had a fleeting glance of the wild, snowy woods. He missed Narnia, but he had a lasting fear of winter. He missed the weight of his crown on his forehead.

There was an emptiness in him where Narnia had been, and he longed for the day Aslan called him home.