The living room was the only room that didn't suffocate her, in there she could sit and read and pretend nothing had changed. If she tried hard enough she could pretend her mother was in the kitchen and Lucy was in the garden with the cat. The boys would be out and father would be at work. It was so easy to escape for a while.
Today was different. She'd felt uneasy from the second she'd awoken. Nothing could settle her. She closed her book and set it down on the table. She'd read the same passage ten times at least and finally admitted defeat. She stood slowly and stretched her weary limbs, her arms wrapped around her automatically trying to cling to some warmth, but failing. She noticed in passing how much further her hand seems to get around her shrinking body, but the thought was interrupted by a loud crash of thunder from outside. She shivered slightly as she looked around. The crash had come from overhead, she had felt it right down in her stomach. Thunder storms were not a strange occurrence in central London, the thing that startled her most was the fact that the sun was still streaming in the bay window from outside. She could not see a cloud in the sky.
Susan chased the memory away as she sat down in the living room in her favourite chair. She could hear Lucy making tea in the kitchen, she released the breath she was subconsciously holding. She had felt the chill in the air the second she had walked into the house, something had shifted. She hadn't felt like that since that day almost forty years ago. When she'd seen the young girl coming down from the attic the hair on her arms had stood straight.
"Gran, here you are." Lucy stood before her holding out a steaming cup.
"Thank you my dear. Just what I need."
They sat in silence drinking slowly. Susan could tell that Lucy was shooting her glances every few seconds, clearly there was questions on her mind. "Lucy dear, you'll get eye strain dong that."
"Sorry Gran. I just…"
"Yes?"
"I was just wondering. All those pictures and drawings on the wall. Who drew them." It wasn't the question Susan was expecting at all, but then again when did life ever deliver the expected.
"My sister. Lucy." She said simply.
"All of them?"
"Yes. When she was around your age, and younger."
"Before the accident." Susan raised her eyebrow slightly, knowing that was more of a statement than a question. "I mean of course before I just never… did you write your stories together then?"
"No my dear. We lived them. In our childhood." Susan had decided long ago that there was a difference between lying and bending the truth. She always tried to give an honest answer to all questions.
"All four of you?"
"Yes, of course Edmund was really the writer of the family, he wrote reams and reams of stories and verse about our times together. I could never compare to him." she smiled.
Lucy's brow was slightly furrowed as she mulled things over, this was a lot for her to grasp. Her grandmother's siblings were becoming more real and less fiction.
llolllolllolllolllolllollloll
Cassidy placed the book back on the shelf and stretched her legs out one by one. She'd gotten lost in thought reading the familiar passages once again. She had forgotten just how much she loved the tales, once Lucy had begun reading for herself she had really fallen out of the habit of enjoying them.
As she sat on the floor of her mother's office looking up at her life's work she recalled the countless hours she had spent over the years in Narnia herself. It was a fondness she had regrettably grown out of. One she now badly wanted to regain.
She was raising herself up from the floor when something caught her eye. A flash of pure white from the farthest corner of the top shelf. Quickly and carefully she pulled a chair over from the desk and climbed up onto it. Pushing aside dust covered boxes and long empty vases she reached back, raised on her tiptoes and reached around unable to see. After catching nothing but dust at first her fingers finally touched something cold and smooth. Grasping it she gently lifted it down into view.
She was more than startled to find a small ivory horn nestled in her hands, with a shining flower at one end and a roaring lion at the other. She turned it over again and again, trying to recall any memory of it. finding no such memory she raised it higher and for a spilt second thought about lifting it to her lips to hear its sound but decided against it at the last second. Clutching it closely she moved towards the living room.
llolllolllolllolllolllollloll
"What is that in the small attic room." Lucy finally said, easing the rising tension in the living room.
"A wardrobe." Susan replied.
"A wardrobe?" Susan nodded. "But it's… important."
"Very." A smirk grew across Susan's mouth, slowly but steadily. That sense she'd had all week seemed to be coming to a head. Lucy was poised to ask another question when Susan's head shot around towards the door.
A tiny shock ran through her body and every hair stood on end. Something else in the house had shifted.
She stood up and looked around the living room, Lucy's gaze followed her movement.
"Gran…" she started only to be interrupted by her mother.
"Mum what is this?" all eyes spun around to Cassidy who stood in the doorway.
Susan felt her stomach knot the second she spotted that glint of white. Her mouth dropped open but no words managed to form.
"Mum what… what is it?" Cassidy said again. "Why do I feel like I should know it."
Lucy frowned and stood up to join them.
"That's Queen Helen's horn." She said quietly. "The gift she was given. It must be a prop or…"
It was then that Susan realised the time had come.
"No. It's my horn. It's my horn from my time in Narnia."
