Thanks princess emma of narnia, DragonRider2000, and Ella Unlimited for your reviews!
Just so you know, I know basically nothing about Stanford University and have no real interest of going there, so, if I make some sort of technical mistake concerning it, please just consider it as part of the fiction. Thanks and enjoy!
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness
The teenage girl bent down, resting her hand on the soft cloth of her gray convertible, which came with a knee-length skirt, jacket, and white blouse, as she studied the mechanism on the table, enjoying the breeze coming through the open window on her exposed neck due to the bun of her medium brown, wavy hair. Aunt Polly stood at the window, admiring the surroundings of Stanford with contented coolness.
"Aunt Polly, you don't look a day older since I saw you when I was a student here!" a flat, Americanized baritone voice cried, meeting the elderly woman halfway across the room in a cheerful embrace.
Daisy had to forcefully snap her mouth shut. The stunning man hugging her grandmother was perhaps in his late twenties or early thirties, of average height (a few inches taller than the girl), and had a clear, tanned complexion and a somewhat muscled build. He had dancing, deep brown eyes, short and curly, dark brown hair, and high cheekbones, and was wearing plain black trousers with suspenders and a white button-up shirt with the top three buttons undone, leaving the navy blue tie loosely dangling about his neck.
"Geordie, haven't you grown? And a professor already!" the matron greeted him, putting her hands on his flushed cheeks.
"'Substitute' professor," he corrected.
"Oh, poppycock! From what I hear about the actual professor, you might as well be here full time. I was so sorry to hear about your father's accident. He was such a genius and my granddaughter wanted so much to meet him."
"Thank you for the sympathy. But concerning your granddaughter, I think I might be able to help." Just as the 'granddaughter' began getting annoyed at being referred to as nothing but the 'granddaughter', 'Geordie' turned those joyous eyes to her. "And this must be her."
Daisy's cheeks turned red as he gallantly took her gloved hand and kissed it before Polly took the introductions upon herself. So what if he was a good ten years older than her! It didn't mean she could blush and gawk a little.
"Yes, this is my granddaughter, Margaret Benten. Darling, this is George Garrison. His father, Frank, was the one we were originally going to meet."
"Lovely to meet you, Mr. Garrison," the teen offered, her hand still in his. "Most everyone calls me Daisy."
"Well, Daisy," he answered, "I must inform you now that everyone but my students call me Geordie, so I insist."
"Nonsense," Aunt Polly scolded stepping in between them and breaking the contact, acting as if she was merely studying the table. "Only your close family and friends call you Geordie…and the girls you are always chasing after. Just so you know, Daisy is spoken for."
"I am not!" the girl squeaked. "You know as well as I that I am and feel freer than ever before."
Geordie cleared his throat in surprise at the awkward moment, saying,
"Um…Daisy, I hear that you have some interesting little inventions to show me."
"Yes, Geordie," she answered, reaching into the satchel at her hip that she had used to store some of her creations in her recent journeys across the Atlantic and the USA. "I think you'll find this one quite interesting. It actually creates an electromagnetic field to…"
The Weasel slithered through the arm of an empty chair onto the floor, where he proceeded to hide behind the leg of the twenty-foot table, peering out under the draped white tablecloth at the small crowd of elegantly, if oddly, dressed people, most of whom were over the age of fifty.
His target of observance was near the oaken hallway at the other end of the room, wearing a white, floor-length, sleeveless dress with a neckline shaped like the bottom half of a heart, clinging to her shapeless figure about the chest, waist, and hips before flowing gracefully the rest of the way down; her hair was held back by a cream-colored ribbon. With a glass of bright red punch in her hand, the girl was animatedly describing some sort of contraption completely out of the creature's league of understanding to a potbellied man in his late sixties wearing a black and white curiosity that reminded the Weasel of a creature he had heard of that lived somewhere in the colder reaches of Narnia. He believed the pattern was called a…tuxedo.
Snorting softly in bewilderment when another man began a speech of some sort, he slipped back under the table, across the floor, through the next hall, out the open window, across the lawn, and into the copse near the mansion to where the three burly men and their leader, a sensuous beauty with a frightful temper, stood. It wasn't as if he really wanted to do this…but he didn't have any other choice.
"Well?" the woman queried coldly, causing the Animal to squeak in surprise at her noticing him as she stared down her dainty nose with those frightful, black eyes. "What did you hear, Weasel?"
"She…it was hard to hear and they talked a lot of money and technical nonsense, but…she's leaving in two days for the place called 'New York' and then taking a boat back to England."
A cruel smile appeared on her face.
"New York it is, then."
"Tessarina, will you meet us back in Carlormen after your part of the mission with the High King is done?" the biggest man asked.
"By the time I am finished in this world," she replied condescendingly, "you will likely be dead and dust. I wish you luck in your task. The Warder Margaret will make the perfect sacrifice to appease Tash for the Tarkaan's pardon. For justice and glory in the eyes of the great Lord Tash, I bid you farewell. Kill the Weasel when you get to New York."
"Aunt Polly, look at this coat! I'm certain that Susan would just love it! Should I buy it or the white one there? It's so wonderful to not have to worry about being stingy with the price! Are you sure that Su will be on the same ship? I have so much to tell her!" Daisy rattled on as she stepped into yet another shop, since the duo had another hour before their ship was leaving…something about a minor explosion in the boiler room. Nothing very major. "Geordie said he would write and visit as soon as one of my inventions goes into production. Just imagine how much I'll get then after what they gave me for just the blueprints! I can't believe we've been gone a whole four months!"
Tightly smiling, Aunt Polly suddenly said,
"Child, don't you suppose you are being a little over-enthusiastic over this whole situation? It's like you don't even remember beautiful simplicity of Narnia any more."
"Narni-what?"
Daisy watched in utter confusion as her grandmother's face dropped.
"Uh…darling, why don't you keep looking for a present for Susan and meet me back at the ship. It's only a few blocks away. I…I'm suddenly not feeling well."
"Okay."
Though a flash of concern crossed Margaret's mind, the incident quickly dissipated from her memory as she continued thumbing through the gorgeous gowns, wondrous coats, and adorable hats.
Suddenly, another shopper caught her attention in the ladies' gloves section, the reason for her attention being that the shopper was in fact a he: a he that tickled her memory to an infuriating extant. He was in his early twenties and tall, with shaggy golden hair, green eyes, and an acceptably bold nose, wearing brown pants and a tan trench coat.
Settling for a modest set of dangling gold earrings, making her purchase, and putting it in her leather purse, the young woman straightened the jacket of her deep blue convertible suit and walked back out onto the sidewalk, finding it very disconcerting that the man from the shop soon began following her.
With a dozen horrid scenarios of thieves and murderers going through her head, she purposefully missed the street that led to the piers and kept walking through the bustling crowd, fancying with a façade of calmness that she could simply lose her follower in the chaos and proceed to the ship.
After walking through a mall that took up practically an entire block, she stepped through the revolving doors back onto the walk and risked looking back…just as the man started coming out the door. Daisy panicked when she heard the faint blast of her transport's departure warning and dove through the mass of people, desperate to lose the creepy stalker.
With panting breath and disheveled hair, but overall no worse for wear, the inventor finally stumbled into an unoccupied alley just as the sun began sinking beyond the towering buildings; developing paranoia, however, urged her to seek sanctuary further into the lane and around the corner behind an abandoned apartment structure, where she finally allowed herself the luxury of leaning against the wall in exhausted misery and loneliness. Having caught her breath finally, Daisy sat down on a questionably clean carton and risked removing her inch-high heels to massage incredibly sore feet.
With a groan, Margaret opened her eyes and stood after replacing her shoes; she hadn't noticed that she had fallen asleep. A strange laugh sent her jumping practically two feet into the air from shock and provoked her looking warily around the alleyway at the lengthening shadows.
"Who…who's there?" she shakily asked, clinging to her bag.
She was answered by the appearance of three hulking figures at the end of the passage. With flickering hope, she inched backwards towards the exit, but the imposing presence of the intruding men soon halted her movement with fear.
"Warder Margaret," the center and biggest of the triplet began with a grumbling, strangely accented voice, dark eyes flashing and greasy black hair framing his square jaw, "please come peacefully. I'm sure that the sacrifice is far less painful when undergone by a willing participant. We're not looking for trouble…just doing our duty."
"I don't know who this Warder girl is, but you've got the wrong person," she stuttered, turning to leave, only to find her way blocked by her previous stalker and ending up trapped in between two nightmares. "Please…don't hurt me," she whispered to them.
The Benten girl tried to scream when one of the giant males grabbed her from behind, covering her mouth to prevent the alert from reaching anyone. An instant later, she was dropped against the wall with the breath knocked out of her when the golden-haired stalker attacked the others, punching one and kicking two enough to stun them...but not for long. They soon came back, teaming up on the surprisingly-light-on-his-feet defender with their brute strength, quickly knocking him to the ground and kicking him viciously.
Poor Daisy, without a defense of any kind, watched helplessly until a sweet female voice yelled ferociously from somewhere on the roof. Before she knew it, the thugs were being whipped and lassoed by a silver rope of some sort wielded by a skinny teenage girl in a baggy dark green tunic and sagging black pants with straight auburn hair and striking eyes.
"Margaret, get your lazy rear end over here and help me!" the newcomer growled, tossing a dagger each to Daisy and the 'stalker'.
Surprising herself to an unspeakable extent, the victim of this insanity instantly hurled the dagger at her attackers, gaping when it imbedded itself in the shoulder of the leader exactly where she had intended.
Between the silver whip and the precision of the knife, the three men halted their assault, the leader grabbed a small item from his coat, and they ran through an invisible doorway, leaving the others in the dark and quiet. The other girl instantly ran over to the kneeling 'stalker', quietly saying,
"Cadal, are you all right? They could have killed you."
"Odds to which I am perfectly accustomed," he nonchalantly replied, then putting his hand under her chin. "Why change your appearance so much?"
"Alanna?" Margaret suddenly exclaimed, standing finally. "What are you doing in America?"
"Saving the two of you," she replied smartly, getting up and managing to look intimidating and regal, despite the floppy attire, and sharply slapping her fellow female. "Have you lost your mind, Daisy? You could have gotten us all killed!"
"What are you talking about? Who is this guy? He's been following me around everywhere!"
"You're welcome," the gentleman grumbled.
"I'm here to take you to Narnia," Alanna stated, shoving Daisy backwards.
She screamed when, instead of dirt, she was met by air. The white, cloud-covered sky she faced had no bounds when she frantically looked around for any signs of land or anything else other than the vast expanse as the wind whipped at her clothes and hair. When she twisted around to face below her, discovering what appeared to water (and a lot of it), two huge birds, an eagle and a falcon, swept by, their cackling screeches giving her the impression of a laugh.
Seconds later, the girl dove into the ocean and resurfaced, spluttering and coughing as she bobbed in the water. Strong arms soon grabbed her, but she pushed them away as her own swimming power alone could make her feel comfortable enough in the unknown sea. When she looked, expecting to find Cadal, she was instead faced by a dark-haired, tan fellow in his twenties; some ways behind him was a huge ship that looked very much like something out of a Viking legend.
"Margaret!" the man gasped, calmly nudging her towards the ship, having quickly learned not to try helping her swim, however she floundered.
Daisy ignored him until she was on the deck surrounded by men, soaking wet, without her shoes.
"Prince Caspian!" she cried, realization at last hitting her.
"'King' now, if you do recall," he corrected. "Well, this is a pleasant surprise. Welcome to the Dawn Treader, Warder Margaret."
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