Easter Morning

Disclaimer: Narnia and the Pevensies are the creation of C. S. Lewis. I own only the plot.

Chapter 1: In Lucy's Room

Easter had always been Lucy Pevensie's favourite time of year, even more than Christmas. The festival's themes of renewal and rebirth appealed deeply to her, and of course always reminded her of the Deeper Magic in Narnia and Aslan's triumphant return from death. But this particular Easter morning had not started that well. Her sister Susan was already up when Lucy woke and sitting in front of the dressing table, doing her make up. When Lucy had washed and dressed and was ready to begin her own quite modest beauty routine she was still there and seemed unlikely to be finished in the near future.

"She's been preening herself in front of that mirror for nearly half an hour!" Lucy thought incredulously. "Lion alive, it only takes me five minutes to get ready in the morning!"

Although she was a little ashamed of feeling that way, Lucy had been relieved when Susan had moved out of the family home just after Christmas. Their relationship had deteriorated significantly over the past few years, mainly due to quarrels over Susan's denial of Narnia. But Lucy was relieved Susan had left home for another reason; one that was rather more trivial. Now that Lucy was seventeen she wanted to take a bit more care of her appearance and getting any time at the dressing table was a huge struggle with her sister around. Unfortunately Lucy had yet to get any real benefit from having a room to herself. This Easter holiday was the first time she had been back from boarding school since Susan had moved out, and of course her sister had been invited to stay over the holiday weekend meaning they were once again sharing a room.

Losing patience, Lucy decided to take a walk in the garden. Hopefully her sister would be finished by the time she returned.

"I'm going out for a walk," Lucy announced, rising from where she had been sitting on her bed. She was heading for the door when Susan's voice stopped her in her tracks.

"Lucy, you can't!" Susan had twisted round on the dressing table stool and was staring at her in horror. "You can't go out looking like that. Your hair's a mess and you're not even wearing any makeup."

"And whose fault is that?" Lucy thought irritably but she did not say it out loud.

"Su, the world won't come to an end because I'm not wearing any lipstick!"

"You need to start taking your appearance more seriously, Lucy. You're not a little girl anymore." Susan's voice had that bossy 'I'm your big sister and I know what's best for you' tone that always made Lucy grind her teeth in annoyance. "You're seventeen now. You can't go around showing a bare face to the world, it's just not decent!"

Lucy blinked, feeling rather bemused by her sister's bizarre notion of propriety.

"Susan, I'm just going into the garden. No one except family can possibly see me there," Lucy explained and then decided to try and humour her sister. "Don't worry, I'll tidy my hair and put some makeup on before church."

"Church!" Susan repeated the word in disgust. From her expression it looked as though she had just been threatened with torture.

"It's what people usually do on Easter morning," Lucy said gently. "But no one's making you go if you don't want to."

"Oh no, of course not!" Susan muttered sarcastically. "Except if I don't go Mum and Dad will spend the rest of the day hinting I'm half-way along the road to hell!"

Lucy privately thought their parents would not be that far off the mark, but she knew better than to say so.

"Well it's a simple choice, Su. Either put up with a church service for an hour or with our parents grumbling about not going for the rest of the day. But please, do just decide one way or the other and stop complaining about it!"

Susan stared open mouthed at her sister, at a loss for words. Seeing her chance to get away without any further argument, Lucy darted towards the door and swiftly made her escape.