A/N: Just a quick oneshot featuring my favourite mystic and gentle queen Susan of the radiant southern sun
Aslan is another face of God, or possibly Jesus. Susan has gathered as much from piecing together the lion's cryptic words when he told her and Peter that they would not return to Narnia, that their life is in England, that they will see him in another shape, if they believe. So, Susan believes. She goes to church, she volunteers at the little local centre for homeless people just outside of the area her family lives in. Her parents approve.
Time passes, as it is made to do. Narnia becomes a faint memory, almost like a very vivid dream. Susan still believes, but she also anchors her belief in here and now, in England, in the world were animals do not talk and there is no real magic.
Her siblings think she has betrayed them all. Betrayed Narnia and Aslan. Susan tries to explain, to make them see. They do not. So, as they go off to talk about Narnia with Diggory Kirk and Polly Plummer, Susan goes on with helping out in here and now. She reasons that her siblings need to do what they think is right, just as she does, and she does not blame them. Gently, she accepts that life, and they, is forever more different.
If Aslan is God, or Jesus, and Narnia is another version of Heaven, Susan hopes her family is with him now, on the green grassy hill, or the beach near Cair Paravel, or some other place they are happy at. She wonders, briefly, why she isn't there. Is there a hidden purpose? Does he have some life fulfilling task to carry out? Susan has no answers. Belief is hard in the following days, but she holds on to it like it's a frail thread that may fly away if she lets go. It helps a little, but not as much as she wants it too. She is alone and cast out and why is the world so cruel?
She is older. The world has changed, and she with it. The war is since long over. She has moved around all over England in the aftermath, going where she has been needed, has lent gentle hands and ears and words to people. Life is, she supposes, as good as it can be for a lost former queen of a land with talking animals. Susan is less unhappy about being cast out these days. She is older and her mind has grown. She knows that not everyone is supposed to thread the same paths in life.
The recent years have been harder. Her body is frail now, old and thin. Her hair is grey. Her eyes, once alive and sparking as if the light from the radiant southern sun was ever present within, are dull most days, and it's only on very rare occasions that Susan can feel the sparks of her youth.
The faded memory of Narnia, of a roaring golden lion atop a hill by a broken stone table, myriads of fauns, centaurs, nature spirits and animals of all kinds, have been surprisingly strong today, and Susan knows. She leaves nothing behind as she goes to bed that night. Everything is taken cared of. She has always been good at planning ahead.
It feels like what Susan imagine butterflies experience when they shed their shell and take their first flight, easy, like she was always meant to do this, in due time.
The grass tickles her bare feet. Her head feels heavy under the sudden weight of long dark strands that falls almost down to her feet. She has a dress of silver fabric, light and airy.
"Susan?"
That voice. She knows it without having to turn around.
"Lucy," Susan says as she does make that turn to set eyes on her sister, who is a sight of vibrant happiness barely contained.
"You're here!"
Although Lucy has the appearance of a woman in her best and healthiest age, Susan feels the spirits of the younger child as the embrace.
"How? We thought you were shut out, not a friend," mumbles the younger queen.
"I was needed elsewhere, my belief was needed in another world for a while."
"Oh. I'm so sorry."
"Don't be, sister. We had different paths to walk under the same, although well-hidden, sky."
