Interlude Two: Realisation.
The feeling of familiar feather pillows underneath her head was heavenly as Susan let out a sigh of relief. She had imagined it all. She must have had another fainting spell, or been delirious. The physician had warned her that pregnancy would do that to her. But it was over now, and she was safe in her own bed, happily ensconced within the mighty walls of Cair Paravel. It was all a dream. Smiling happily, and rubbing her slowly growing bump affectionately, Susan stretched languorously and slowly opened her eyes. A content smile played softy across her lips as she met the worried eyes of her husband, hovering nervously above her, the rest of his face was blurry due to his proximity, but she would recognise his eyes anywhere. He drew back a little as she struggled to sit up; her strength drained by her impromptu faint and his face came into view- young and innocent and so utterly alien to her that she nearly screamed, her nightmare was reality. They were back in the place that has haunted her dreams for years after their arrival in Narnia. That place filled with loud, destructive metal that screamed throughout the night and left houses in ruins and orphans wandering the streets. They had entered her nightmares. They had returned to England.
Her stomach tightened with dread at the realisation and the urge to vomit became unbearable. It couldn't be happening, it couldn't. She was Narnian, not English. England was a place of her nightmares- a horror-land dreamt up by her childhood imagination, nothing more. It couldn't be real, they couldn't be back.
The face of an elderly man suddenly appeared, peeking cautiously around the doorway of the strange bedroom as she struggled to sit up- her hand massaging her growing stomach in an effort to reassure herself that she wasn't going mad. The old man walked slowly into the room, eyeing both her and her child-husband with slight wariness in his eyes- making her wonder what Peter had done during her absence from consciousness. As he came closer to the bed, she closed her eyes tightly and took a deep breath; struggling to keep the hysteria she could feel bubbling inside her from erupting. The old man was walking. On two legs. Just like them. He was human. It had been so long since she met another human, all of her Narnian subjects were of a different species and race. The closest she had come to meeting another in all her years as Queen, was the Calormenes. She wasn't even sure they could be counted as human- so barbaric and cruel. Rumour claimed they had descended from the ruthless, power hungry god Tash himself. Seeing another true human, after all the years of being thought the only ones was too much to bear. With a weak cry and grasping tightly to Peter's hand- desperately seeking whatever comfort this boy-man her husband had been reduced to could offer, Susan buried her face into the pillows of the unfamiliar bed and wept.
