AN: I wanted to get this up sooner but I didn't want to post it until I got it just right. I hope it's good. I worked really hard on it and personally, I really like it.

"I can't believe we really saw fairies!" Lucy said cheerfully as she and Susan walked up and out of the garden, heading home. "I've always known they were real. I mean, if dyads are real...so of course fairies would be too...."

Susan was quiet, content to let her little sister do all the talking. The fairies really had been something. Such beauty. Teeny bodies like dragon flies and translucent wings the color of the Narnian sky right before a rain storm. How she missed that sky.

Next to one of the trees on the outskirts of the garden, Lucy noticed a circle of brightly colored mushrooms.

"Oh, Susan!" Lucy gasped pointing to the circle, "It's a fairy ring. That's where they go to dance."

"They don't dance here anymore, Lucy." Susan said, her voice nearly a whisper.

"What do you mean?" Lucy wrinkled her forehead in confusion. "This is their ring, don't they have to use it?"

"They went away when we made him stop believing." Susan said, sounding like she was holding back tears.

"Who?" Lucy asked. "Made who stop believing?"

Susan shook her head and didn't answer. "Come on, we'd best be getting home now."

She would have pressed the issue but Susan reached out her hand to grab her's and said, "The sooner we get home, the sooner you can tell Edmund what we saw."

Lucy gave in and allowed her hand to be taken and led away.

"Edmund!" Lucy cried breathlessly, letting go of Susan's hand and running passed her to get to Edmund, who'd met them at the front door. "You won't believe what we saw down in the garden."

Lucy's face was beaming and her eyes shone brightly. Edmund hadn't seen her look this happy in a long time. Not since Peter went missing.

"What did you see?" He asked her.

"Fairies!" Lucy told him excitedly, waving her arms as she spoke. "And Susan saw them too!"

"What were they like, Su?" Edmund wanted to see excitement on his older Sister's face as well although he knew better than to expect it. Fairies or no fairies.

"Pretty." Susan said simply. "Why don't you have Lucy tell you all about them?"

"I want to hear it from you too." Edmund tried.

Susan shook her head. "I'm really tired, Ed." She went into the house. "Maybe later."

Over the next few days, Lucy and Susan returned to the bottom of the garden again and again. Each time visited by the fairies. After a while they came to be on reasonably personal terms with them.

They learned that the one in the long white gown made of spider's silk who wore a cap of silver upon her head of dark-as-night hair, was the Queen. The bulky bearded ones who seemed to be missing wings, weren't fairies at all but gnomes who were sort of servants to the fairies. The pale one in pink who cared a golden leaf around with her was much more shy than the others and was more prone to run away if one of the girls made a sudden movement.

Susan-because she was the quiet still one of the two-was able to coax the shy fairy to sit in the palm of her hand and eat some cake crumbs. (Fairies are known for loving cake) The others took a larger liking to Lucy because the pasty crumbs she had in her pockets were slightly bigger than the dainty carefully chosen ones Susan offered them.

If the fairies spoke, it wasn't in front of the Pevensie girls. They never said a word though their emotions were never hard to guess. Lucy and Susan took to naming each of them, hoping they were at least close to whatever their real names might be.

The shy one, Susan called Rosie. Lucy named three of the gnomes, Toad, Mick, and Jeo. The queen was the hardest to come up with a good name for because every name they could think of didn't suit her. This name wasn't pretty enough for her. That name was pretty enough but too simple for a fairy queen. Or else the name wasn't grand enough.

"Do you suppose it would be rude to just call her Queen?" Lucy asked one day, as she threw cake crumbs to a fairy child that was hovering close by her blanket-spot.

"Yes it would be." Susan said. "I know when we were queens, I wouldn't have liked to just be called 'Queen'."

Lucy smiled a little as this was one of Susan's rare mentions of Narnia and then added, "But what do we call her then?"

"For now, we could just call her, your majesty." Susan suggested logically.

Late that night, Lucy woke up with a very dry throat. She stepped out of bed, pulled her dressing gown around her, and walked to the kitchen. She got herself a glass of water and gulped it all in one sip. "Ah."

Nearby, someone was shuffling papers and breathing heavily as if they had been crying. Lucy wondered if it was one of her parents. She tip-toed over to the dinning room. Edmund was sitting at table with a dim lamp as his only light looking at an old photo album.

"Edmund?" Lucy said softly.

He jumped before he realized it was only his little sister. "Oh, Hullo. What are you doing up?"

"Getting a drink of water." Lucy explained. She leaned over and looked at the photo the album was open to. (All the photos were of course black and white because of the time period). There were actually two photographs on the page. One of the whole family standing together and one with just Peter by himself. He stood next to the side of the house and had apparently been laughing at something right before the photo was taken because his cheeks looked flushed

"You miss him too." Lucy said, taking a chair and sitting beside her brother.

"Of course I do." Edmund said, closing the album. "I can't believe we'll never see him again."

"He's fine, Edmund." Lucy insisted. "And he's coming home."

"Then why isn't he here?" Edmund said hopelessly. "It's going on four months now, Lucy, and nothing...."

"Edmund, don't..." Lucy shook her head refusing to even consider that he wasn't alive somewhere.

"I know what missing means." Edmund mumbled, trying to hold back tears.

Lucy didn't understand. "What are you talking about?"

"I know what Mum and dad mean when they said he's missing." Edmund said in a shaky tone that clearly implied that he believed Peter was never coming back.

"It means they don't know where he is." Lucy said, reaching out for her brother's trembling hand. "That's all it means."

"Did you play with the fairies again today?" Edmund asked, changing the subject.

"Yes." Lucy told him. "They came right to us this time."

"I wonder if..." Edmund pondered.

"Wonder what?" Lucy wanted to know.

"I heard Mum and dad say that when he was little, Peter claimed to play with fairies in the garden too." Edmund told her. "They think it was a story he made up for fun. But I was thinking..."

"...if they were the same ones Susan and I know?" Lucy finished. Suddenly, she had an idea. "Good night." She said going back up stairs, but not to her own room.

A while later, Susan came downstairs looking for Lucy when she realized she wasn't in the room that they shared. (Only Edmund and Peter had their own rooms). "Oh, Edmund, have you seen Lucy?"

"She was here about half an hour ago." Edmund said.

"She didn't go outside did she?" Susan worried.

"No." Edmund said wearily. "She went back upstairs."

"Alright then." Susan noticed how tired her brother looked. "Go back to bed Edmund."

"Don't tell me what to do." Edmund grumped. "Go to bed yourself."

Susan sighed, she was used to Edmund's mood swings. The only one he never lashed out at no matter how badly he was feeling, was Lucy because she had been Peter's favorite. Edmund felt guilty thinking it was his fault that Peter was lost and tried to do things Peter would've wanted him to do. Including being kind to Lucy at all times.

Passing Peter's room, Susan saw a light on. The door was open a crack. She took a couple of steps into the room. "Lucy!" she hissed. "What are you doing in there?"

Lucy was sitting at Peter's desk looking at some papers she had pulled out of one of the draws. "Hush." Lucy whispered back, not unkindly.

Susan came into the room and closed the door behind her. "You shouldn't be in here, if Mum finds out..."

Mrs. Pevensie had wanted to keep Peter's room exactly the way it was when he had last left it. No one was allowed in there. But that wasn't going to stop Lucy from finding out what she needed to know.

"Susan..." Lucy whispered holding up one of the papers. "Look at this..."

It was a drawing of a fairy who looked just like the one Susan had befriended, the one with the golden leaf. It was very well drawn (Susan and Peter were the artists in the family, everything Edmund and Lucy drew looked like stick figures) there was no denying what it was supposed to be.

Susan's eyes widened and she took the drawing from Lucy to get a better look at it. "It's her."

"There's more of them." Lucy looked down at all the papers she'd spread out on the desk. "Some of them are our fairies...the others I don't know who they are." Lucy moved one out of the way, so she could get a better look at the one under it. "He believed didn't he?"

"Yes." Susan said. "Mum and dad told him he was getting too old to tell fairy stories though....and I..."

"I hope you told him he ought to believe in them all the same." Lucy said, her voice suddenly stern.

Susan shook her head. "I was horrible." she confessed. "I didn't believe him anymore than mum or dad did. When we were small and he talked freely about them, I teased him worse than Edmund used to tease you about the woods in the back of the wardrobe."

"Oh, Su, you didn't!" Lucy couldn't imagine her kind, gentle older sister behaving like that.

"I think that's why he never showed these to me." Susan said. "But I didn't always mock him, only sometimes when it seemed he'd never get over his pretend fairies."

"But they weren't pretend." Lucy said.

"I know that now." Susan sighed. "I wish I could tell him I'm sorry."

"You can tell him that when he comes home." Lucy shrugged.

"What if he doesn't?" Susan asked, feeling horrible putting doubts in her little sister's head, but not being able to stop herself.

"He will." Lucy said. "He has to." She picked up one drawing that was clearly of the fairy queen. "Peter really captured what she looked like here."

"Yes, he did." Susan admitted thinking it was almost a perfect likeness to the real fairy.

"I wish they could see them." Lucy whispered.

"Who?" Susan asked.

"Mum and dad." Lucy told her. "I think they need fairies more than we do."

"Grown-ups don't need fairies." Susan explained in a very matter-a-fact tone of voice. "They have other forms of comfort, I'm sure."

"Maybe they don't." Lucy said. "I've seen Mum cry much harder than we ever do."

"Hmm..." A plan ran though Susan's head.

"What are you thinking about?" Lucy asked.

"Oh, nothing." Susan answered, holding back a smile. She'd put the finishing touches on her plans as she dozed off to sleep and tell them to Lucy in the morning.

The next day, Susan asked Lucy to get their father's camera and meet her in the garden.

Lucy meant to ask for help with it first but their father left and went to his job before she had a chance to do so.

"Oh well." She sighed. "I suppose Susan will know how to work it well enough anyway." She grabbed the camera and skipped out of the house, down the road and into the garden.

Susan was waiting at the start of the garden. "Come on." She said shortly, not because she was cross but because she was excited and eager.

"What are we doing anyway?" Lucy asked curiously, tightening her grip on the camera.

"We're going to show them the fairies, of course." Susan said happily.

"Oh, Susan, no!" Lucy cried out in a horrified voice. "We can't betray the fairies like that. They trust us!"

"It's not betrayal, Lucy, it's for Mum and dad." She explained as they got nearer to where they often met up with the fairies.

"But what if they put a curse on us?" Lucy asked her, looking very nervous.

Susan snorted and rolled her eyes. Clearly she didn't believe in curses.

"Susan...we can't do this." Lucy insisted. "We just can't."

"But don't you want our parents to see them?" Susan asked.

"Well, yes." Lucy admitted. "but not like this!"

"What other way is there?" Susan crossed her arms. "And think of it this way, it'll clear Peter's name. Mum and Dad will know he wasn't telling lies."

That worked. Lucy couldn't say no to that. "Alright fine, but the only people we show them too is Mum, dad, and Marjorie."

"How did Marjorie get in there?" Susan wanted to know.

"She's my friend and I know she'd love to see the fairies too." Lucy explained. "In fact, if she isn't allowed to see them, I wont go along with this."

Susan shrugged. "Alright then, it's settled. The only people to see these fairies will be, Marjorie, Mum, and dad." She stretched out her hand.

Lucy hesitated a moment before shaking it.

Susan gave her sister a hug. "Thank you! You wont regret it."

"Can I get that in writing?" Lucy laughed as she handed the camera to her sister.

"Call them." Susan ordered.

"Fairies..." Lucy called. "Here...fairies..."

"You sound like you're calling a dog." Susan rolled her eyes.

"Oh hush up." Lucy laughed before she began calling them again.

Finally, one leaped up from the bush so close to Lucy's face that she thought it might touch her. She was so startled that she flinched a little. Susan took a photo.

Later more fairies and their gnomes arrived and the girls took turns taking the photographs.

There was one with Lucy and her leaping fairy, one with Susan bending down to speak with a gnome, one with Lucy resting her head on the palms of her hands with a dreamy expression surrounded by a bunch of fairies, and one with Susan giving a crumb of cake to Rosie.

"That should be enough." Susan decided, packing up the camera. "More than four photos might get out too easily."

Later, in a dark room with her father, Susan watched the photos come into focus. Would the fairies be there or not? Could one actually capture them on film?

"Susan, what's all this mess around Lucy?" Mr. Pevensie noticed bizarre images forming around the image of his youngest child.

"Lucy!" Susan cried out to her sister who was waiting on the other side of the dark room door. "They're in the photographs! I can see them!" A grin of pure joy formed on her face. "We did it!"

"Yes!" Lucy cried jumping up and down. They'd done it. They'd gotten real fairy photographs. Their parents would have to believe in fairies now.

AN: Please, Please, Please review! I worked really hard on this chapter and if you've read it and enjoyed it the least you could do would be to let me know. And if you didn't like it, I would like to know why. So please review.