A/N: Ooh, an update so quickly? This is because, while I have before said that I have no other demands on my time besides the wonderful world of fan fiction, this is practically no longer true, at least for the next couple of days. So I guess fairly frequent updates can be expected for a while, until I am forced to go back to doing other things. :P Other than that, please read and review.

Chapter Two

Blank haze floated around her, a strange, misty fog. It had no shape no form, no purpose. It was merely an all-enveloping mist.

She was floated around in it, her feet not on the ground, but this did not matter. Slowly, the fog began to clear, breaking off into wisps and twirling toward the sky. Vague shapes made themselves clear.

They were strange shapes, they did not look entirely human. This didn't bother her somehow. They weren't scary shapes, or startling ones. They looked perfectly natural.

She kept expecting the shapes to further reveal themselves, for the edges and lines to become more defined, but as time passed, she realized this was not going to happen. So she strained her eyes, and did her best to make them out.

The most she could tell was that there were several creatures, looking quite mythological. She thought she recognized centaurs from her mythology class. But one figure, though shadowy, was clearest to her somehow. Perhaps she saw it not with her eyes, but with her mind's eye. It was a lion.

It was the one thing in her dream she knew without a doubt. Everything else was uncertain, vague, and shadowy, but that was clear. It was a lion, a great, majestic lion, one whom she could not easily forget - or forsake.

The lion roared, and behind the roar was the faint music from before, swelling to a crescendo as the shapes finally began to clear...

Susan's eyes sprang open. She was frozen, her arms and legs completely still at her sides. Something inside her panicked - she couldn't forget her dream. She tried desperately to grasp at it, but it seemed to be flowing away, slipping through her grasp. All she remembered was a roar...the lion's roar. It echoed through her ears, and she caught a definitive image of herself with the lion, hands running through his mane (she knew it was a "he" somehow) and riding on its back. It was a great, terrible, wonderful lion, and she knew that.

Susan got up, too restless suddenly to get anymore sleep. The dream drove her out of her bed and up to pace the room. It had not been a nightmare, but rather a…well, she didn't know what it was.

She decided to get a glass of water. As she trooped down to the kitchen, reaching for a glass from where they were kept on the to shelf of the cupboard, she thought about it. About what she'd remembered.

Hard as she tried to convince herself that it was just a dream memory, the memory that comes when something hasn't really happened but seems to have happened, or has happened in a dream, she could not do it. Much as she repeated to herself that it must have been just that - a dream - it was to much. To Susan's sensible, logical mind, which had only grown more no-nonsense as the years went by, the facts must be laid in front of her. So she did so.

She'd found a necklace earlier that day, a beautiful necklace. She could not remember where she'd got it. Indeed, it almost did not seem human crafted. Then, she had gone to bed and had this dream, this dream that was almost not just a dream but a memory…

Uneasily, restlessly, she got up and wandered back to her room. The necklace was sitting on her bedside table, almost as if waiting patiently. She picked it up, feeling the cold metal between her fingertips, staring hard at it, willing herself to remember. It felt almost like it was not something she wanted to remember, but in spite of that she did not put the necklace down.

It's edges blurred, it's lines wavered, and suddenly she did remember.

Dryads.

Dryads had made that necklace for her, when she was…queen. When she was queen of Narnia.

Her heart and her stomach both gave a lurch as she recalled it all in a rush. Coronation, hunting parties, treaties with foreign countries, and diplomacy. Being called back to help yet again and being welcomed as King Arthur would be welcomed back to England, setting the proper King in place on the throne. Being the best archer in all of Narnia for a hundred - a thousand - years.

Queen Susan the Gentle.

She felt her heart beating in her throat as she remembered the occasion on which the dryads had given her the necklace. It had been soon after the coronation. The dryads and the nymphs had come in parties to greet and honor their new rulers. To Lucy they had given a little wooden flute, carved intricately, with the designs looking like they would spring straight off of the wood. To Edmund, a careful crown, silver and inset with jewels, a solemn but joyful crown, to fit his name - the Just. To Peter, a sword, though they were not a people of war, inlaid with a blood-red ruby on the hilt, that glistened in the sun like a star. And to her…this necklace.

But she had forsaken Narnia.

Susan shook those particular thoughts out of her head as she carefully regarded the necklace. She knew that it would be best to put it down. To put this out of her mind, to forget it. She had good prospects, a brilliant job offer, a happy future, here before her. Narnia was a children's toy that she had put away long ago. The necklace should be placed in a drawer - she knew she wouldn't be able to bring herself to throw it away - forgotten. It must be disregarded as a plaything that she had long ago outgrown. While she now knew that it was not, as she had thought, merely imaginary (she could not manage to persuade herself of that now) she could set it aside.

Susan's hands picked up the necklace and opened the drawer of her bedside table. They slowly let the chain dribble through her fingers, until the pendant halted its slow progress toward careful oblivion.

And then she stopped. Even though there was no light in the room, the pendant glinted at her, almost winking.

It couldn't hurt to put it on one last time.

Susan slipped the necklace around her neck, reaching behind herself and sweeping her hair out of the way so that she could fasten the catch. It fit seamlessly, never once faltering, though it must have been put away for years.

It felt so right, so perfect, there on her neck, but she only had an instant to reflect on it before she felt a brief jerk, and then a whirling sensation in her stomach.

Then, for one moment, everything was black…

When Susan reoriented herself again, she was clutching the necklace and standing with smooth stone under her feet, with a centaur to one side and a short, hunched man to the other, both of whom were looking at her with apprehension and amazement.

A/N: Just so you know, Susan will not be the only character in this story. The other Pevensies will be featured. Other than that, please review!

Oops, wait, don't go yet. :P

I've heard that individual reviewer thank you's aren't allowed in chapter anymore. True? Okay, now you can go. :P