AN: This isn't the epic I promised, but I wanted to get a couple one-shots out of the way before I took on such a big project. My version of the faun lifespan is 1 year for every human four years. . . if that makes sense. Sorry it's taken me so long, as well. I'm working on making up for it.
I used to consider myself the luckiest faun that ever lived. . .
Not because I am regarded as a favourite of the Queen. Nothing so shallow. I thought I was the luckiest faun that ever lived because I had a lively, bewitching, and compassionate goddess to spend the rest of my life with. Years after her coronation we were sitting side by side on the shore of the Eastern Sea. I would steal glances at her from the corner of my eye as she gazed out across the water.
I specifically remember thinking that she should have been High Queen and inherited all of Narnia. I have respect for all her siblings, but the Eastern Sea isn't enough for her. Her eyes do glisten like the Eastern Sea when the sun is rising over the waters in the morning, but the radiant Southern Sun belongs to Lucy, not Queen Susan! It's Lucy who's hair shines radiantly like dark copper in the sun. And the "Clear Northern Skies" seem to have been designed by Aslan in the image of Lucy's sunny, cheerful heart. When she smiles I think of the graceful, gay dancing of the nymphs. And the Western Wood. . . Nothing belongs to her more than my home. Everything I was raised to love about my home is the embodiment of Lucy. It was the first piece of Narnia she saw, and she instantly fell in sync with it there.
Even if she never regarded me as more than a friend, I would be content to spend the rest of my life in that role. Hosting our afternoon teas, telling her stories about her land, teaching her Narnian songs and dances, and (my favourite) listening to her speak about her life. She would tell me what she would do in her lessons, what she thought about the councils she attended, her joys, her fears, her wants, and her secrets. Every word and every look I will keep treasured in my memory until I die.
I should have known. I was such a fool. But I first realized how cursed I was about three years after she came here. She had grown so incredibly fast! At first I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me. My eyes showing me what I wanted to see. I wanted her to grow older. I wanted our age gap to close. Now I regret ever wishing for such a damned selfish thing. I observed her and her siblings. They'd grown too. Edmund's voice was deeper and Peter was growing hair on his face. Susan was loosing the roundness in her features. They were growing fast. Much faster than fauns.
Queen Lucy Pevensie is now nineteen years old. It's been only ten years since that adorable little human girl stood under the lamppost. Now she's a woman. I hadn't expected her to be this womanly for another few decades at the earliest! Here I am, a faun in his prime with a good 200 years ahead of me. . .
Here I am in Cair Paravel, where the siren herself lives and rules, watching her dance with her brother how her people do back in Spare Oom. He spins her and flips her in the air and they laugh as her hair flies wildly. And though everyone is smiling and celebrating life, I sit alone and away from the music and the laughter. I cannot laugh or dance anymore. I sit her and ask myself: How am I supposed to watch her grow older year after year after year? How can Aslan let her come into my life, and as quickly as a brilliant shooting star, let her pass through it?
. . . How am I meant to live without her?
