Prompt: Write about a time when Lucy missed when she threw her dagger. What or whom did she hit instead?


Lucy walked towards the orchards. Prince Corin! What in Narnia were they to do with him!

The Four sovereigns of Narnia had brought the young prince back with them to Cair Paravel after attending Anvard for the Queen's funeral. King Lune was of course devastated by the death of his wife but had to continue ruling Archenland. The Four had decided the least they could do was look after little Prince Corin while Archenland grieved its queen.

How long they could continue to watch the prince was another question. The young prince was simply incorrigible! As the elder siblings, Peter and Susan had more patience, saying that Edmund and Lucy had had their moments as well in the Other Place when they were Corin's age.

Maybe that was true. But had even Edmund interrupted dagger-throwing practice, causing someone to lose - no, misplace, Lucy was not about to admit her dagger from Father Christmas was gone -

Corin had to learn that his childish pranks had no place where weapons were concerned!

Lucy stumbled over something. When she righted herself and then bent down to inspect the offending object - what was an apple doing on the ground at this time of year? Apples wouldn't be ready to pick for several weeks at the least -

Then she saw the apple's stem. It was cleanly severed as if someone had passed a knife through the apple stem.

Lucy held the apple in her hand and took a few steps into the orchard. How had the apple fallen so soon -

For the second time that day, she tripped. Queen Lucy the Valiant was not known for her clumsiness, what was -

There, it was, her dagger! She almost dropped the apple in her haste to recover her gift from Father Christmas.

It needed to be cleaned, of course, lying in the dirt. But that wasn't the only thing. The blade had something else on it, something sticky -

Then Lucy looked at the clean-cut stem of the apple and laughed.

Not a bad throw after all, she thought, as she sat down under one of the apple trees. The apple had "fallen" because her dagger had passed through the stem. Now she had her dagger back and the apple -

The apple was sweet, far sweeter than she would have expected at this time of year. Perhaps apple-picking was not as far off as she had expected.