narnia / year 2534

word count: 937

minor characters mentioned are from my tirian series "bloodred"

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dedicated to my mother, to whom i owe everything, including but not limited to the total inspiration for my portrayal of erlian

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King Erlian clutched his son's small hand as he strode crunch, crunch, crunch over deep snow drifts through Cair Paravel's wide, bustling streets, and Tirian bounded along at his side, the energetic four-year-old's golden flyaways bouncing with every hop.

Erlian smiled faintly, but his eyes drifted up to the palace rising ahead beyond the tallest houses; the palace where Lord Bran waited to give news of the Calormene forces, where an assembly of nobles would determine Narnia's next move in the slow yet agonizing war effort against their southern neighbors.

There had not been an incursion in several months, but the King's nerves pricked with restlessness all the same, knowing the moment he let his guard down would be the moment he regretted.

Too fresh, still, lingered the pyres of the dead in his mind. Too fresh lingered the scent of blood mixed with rotting leaves in the desecrated beds of their holy forests.

The warmth of small fingers left his hand with a tiny "oof" in the snow behind him.

He glanced back, snapping out of his thoughts to find his son planted flat on his back in the middle of the snowy lane, giggling and waving his arms and legs up and down in the tundra that nearly buried him, knocking bits of snow onto his face, though he didn't seem to mind.

Erlian barked a short, involuntarily laugh at the ridiculous sight. "What are you doing, lad?"

"It's snow angels," chirped Tirian. "Hosha showed me."

A faun woman smiled down at the Prince as she passed, carrying a stack of Christmas parcels up the street, and Erlian caught her eye with a grin before crouching beside his son.

"Did he now?"

"Yeah. It makes it look like wings."

Erlian chuckled and Tirian looked up from flailing his arms as a centaur's shadow passed overhead and the clop of hooves carried on down the busy lane.

"And what has prompted you into thinking this is the opportune moment to make one?"

Tirian cocked his head and furrowed his pale brows as if genuinely trying to work out the answer, but he quickly gave up and shrugged gleefully, slapping the snow with chubby fingers. "You should make one, too!"

"Ahhh, okay," said Erlian very wisely, sitting down beside Tirian and flopping onto his back in the snow, his own long golden hair splayed out in the street as passing creatures gave them a wide berth, all smiles and giggles as they clopped or scampered or strode by.

He sighed as the tension released from his shoulders with a dull ache, the first time he'd been off his feet all day.

"Give yourself a moment to breathe, my Lord," Lady Shadoht had said only minutes earlier when he'd come to collect Tirian from her house. "You will be grey in a year if you continue like this."

"I'm thirty-six," he'd laughed, "I do not think I'm in danger of decaying quite yet."

"Is that a challenge?" Lord Gareth had asked from across the room, his own son hanging precariously off his arm in a fruitless attempt to beg for more playtime. "I don't think it's your age that's the problem, friend, not with sons like ours."

Erlian turned to gaze at the golden-headed boy now struggling to extract himself from the snow without trampling his creation, round cheeks rosy, blue eyes sparkling in concentration.

He only just remembered he was meant to be making a snow angel when Tirian hopped across the white drift between them and landed on his chest.

Erlian gave an over-exaggerated cough at the impact.

"Hurry up!"

The King laughed, plowing mounds of snow out from under heavy limbs with a single motion before grabbing his son and sitting up, hauling the weighty bundle of little boy into his arms as he stood, muscles protesting at the effort.

Tirian wrapped his freezing hands around his neck and glanced down at their work, kicking his legs and grinning as Erlian followed his gaze to the tiny snow angel nestled up against his own huge imprint.

He breathed out and smiled faintly to himself.

Sometimes he forgot just how small the boy really was, how much life and how many adventures still lay ahead of him, innocent and oblivious to the darkness that Erlian so often felt encroaching on all the world.

Sometimes he forgot the simplest things lived on, in spite of blood-soaked battlefields and smoky meeting halls filled with the drone of grave voices.

"Father?" asked Tirian, snowy blond hair fluttering into his pink face, delicate brows drawing together again in earnest thought. "What's a angel?"

Erlian laughed. "You know, I don't actually know." He bounced Tirian into a more comfortable position on his hip and turned back up the street, striding again on his original course toward the palace. "They're a creature from our ancestors' world."

Tirian glanced over his shoulder, quiet for a moment as he watched their snow angels shrinking away behind them into the bustle of cheery traffic. "I bet they have wings."

Erlian smiled involuntarily at his son's astute observation. "Yes, I bet they have wings."

And he thought as he walked, with Tirian's golden head resting on his cloaked shoulder, that for all Gareth's wisdom, he could still be wrong, sometimes.

Yes, perhaps it was difficult to raise a child alone in the middle of a war. Perhaps shielding him from the cruelty of the world took more strength than he had, most days.

But it was the life they protected that made the struggle worth it.

It was sons like theirs who would save them all.