narnia / year 2356

word count: 1,447

rilian and eustace requested by birdie

xXx

Firelight danced on rough cave walls and Eustace rolled over in a bed of heather, inadvertently pulling the shared furry mantle off of Jill as she mumbled some half-hearted complaint in her sleep.

He sighed.

Every bone in his body ached to sink beneath the blissful waves of unconsciousness, too, after such a day of harrowing adventure—from the cavernous abyss of Underland, to rescuing the Prince and killing the witch, to escaping the flood that had drowned it all—but something restless stirred in his mind, wide awake in spite of the mere hour's nap he'd caught while the dwarfs prepared their dinner.

The same creatures now bustled about in a hush to clear away the dishes and platters, muttering amongst themselves so that Eustace occasionally caught phrases like "never would've thought it," and "locked up in the hill all this time," and "spitting image of his father, I tell you, spitting image," as the fire crackled, and faint pipe music wafted in from outside.

Eustace sat up, garnering a few glances from the dwarfs and one mole as he tucked the fur back over Jill and nodded to them before crossing the smooth stone floor to the mouth of the cave.

Snowy moonlit forest sprawled out beyond the earthy cavern walls, a surreal world of pale blue against the fireglow, where a group of woodland creatures had struck up another round of their snow dance, fawns and dryads whirling in a wild circle to the airy warble of wood-flutes as animals sent snowballs flying cleanly through their chaos untouched.

For a moment all his weeks of trekking over bare stone felt merely like a strange dream, and something crept into his blood almost like those particularly clear nights on the Dawn Treader when Caspian would point up from the deck with shining eyes toward new, exotic constellations.

He did not see Rilian until a snowball landed thump against a nearby fallen log, and he glanced at last to the Prince's silhouette seated on top of it, so exactly like Caspian in figure that Eustace's heart skipped a beat.

He hesitated, but stepped out from the warmth of the cave and crossed his arms against the icy breeze.

"May I—?"

Prince Rilian glanced up and moved aside for him at once. "Of course." His voice came out raw with exhaustion, but still a hint of warmth lingered there as Eustace sat gingerly down beside the man on the makeshift bench, tucking his hands under his armpits.

Silence descended between them.

Several moments later, Rilian spoke softly. "It's so strange… this…"

Eustace glanced up and met blue eyes cast in moonlight, pale hair still dusty with traces of the black earthen world below. "This, Sire?"

The Prince's eyes flicked over his much smaller figure with a hesitance that almost seemed sheepish. "I grew up on stories of Eustace Scrubb, who sailed with my father to the end of the world."

Eustace swallowed so sharply he almost choked on his own spit. "He— he spoke about me?"

Rilian breathed out with a suppressed smile. "He spoke about you so often I think sometimes I grew sick of the tales. It is strange—though I suppose I should not at this age still question the Great Lion's methods—to find you my hero near fifty years hence."

A terrible ache shot through Eustace's core. "It has not yet been four months, in my place."

Rilian's eyes shone with a short flicker of surprise and wonder, but Eustace shook his head, all those confused and tangled up thoughts from his first day back in Narnia flooding into his mind afresh.

"I only left him in the summer… and now… to see him old and white… it's…"

"You saw him?" The Prince's tone turned soft and earnest.

"Only as he was leaving… I never got the chance to speak with him, and, honestly, I don't know what I would have said if I did…"

Rilian glanced down, a solemn air falling over him, plunging back into that absent state he'd been lost in when Eustace first approached. "They tell me he is alive… but… honestly, how did he look to you?"

Eustace breathed a deep sigh. "Weak," he admitted quietly.

Rilian nodded. As if he'd been expecting it. Perhaps he'd known from the way the creatures spoke, or perhaps he would have known anyway, but his calm and shadowed face flickered with such a deep and regretful and resigned sadness that Eustace felt suddenly foolish for intruding.

He'd been without his friend for only four months. Rilian had been without his father for ten years.

He'd almost made up his mind to go back to bed when the Prince spoke again. "Does your father live?"

Eustace froze and hesitated, stammering at the abrupt question. "Y-yes. But… we don't really get on." The moment the words left his lips he regretted them. Who was he to complain now?

But Rilian only asked "Why not?"

"He… well, I suppose he's never much cared before, about what I've done, but… my folks aren't the sort who would understand Narnia, you know, and Alber— uh, my mother has a particular dislike for… anything… uhm, chivalrous."

The Prince nodded. "You don't think much of men who are bossed about by their wives."

"I… how did you—?"

"Those were the words your friend spoke to me in the cave," admitted Rilian. "Or, I suppose, to the foolish shadow of myself. But they seemed wise, for someone so young, when I remembered them with my clear mind, and your young lordship's demeanor with them. I think that was when you began to dislike me, in my wretched enchanted form."

Eustace couldn't even begin to formulate a response, but the Prince smiled softly.

"Any father who would disapprove of a son so brave as the Eustace in my childhood tales should be ashamed to call himself a father at all."

Eustace blinked, stunned, and again his words fled him in the wake of the Prince's abrupt praise.

Rilian shook his head. "Ah, I'm sorry… I sound like him, don't I?"

At last, Eustace cracked a small smile. "Perhaps, a little."

A snowball landed thump between them and spattered over the log, spraying them both with a snowy dusting as they glanced up into the dance.

A good-natured shout went up as the circle broke apart and a young faun ducked under another snowball, chirping animal laughter signaling that someone had messed up the pattern as the dance devolved in a matter of seconds to a pure snowball melee.

Rilian chuckled, eyes shining with a glitter of starlight, soaking in the world he had missed so desperately for a full decade. "I haven't had a snowball fight in… I don't even know how long…" He glanced at Eustace. "You?"

Eustace shook his head. "I have to admit I wasn't very much fun to play with as a kid."

The Prince laughed, and Eustace wondered what exactly Caspian had said in those stories, suppressing a smile of his own as Rilian raised an eyebrow in silent invitation.

Before he could give an answer, another snowball smacked him straight in the chest and he spluttered in protest, glancing up as a badger scampered hurriedly back into the trees, and he shared a split-second look with Rilian before they both bolted off the log and grasped handfuls from the deep drifts between tree trunks.

A ball of tightly packed snow smacked Eustace in the face the second he turned around, and he barked a sharp laugh of surprise as Rilian's musical giggle rang through the wood, for an instant sounding exactly like Caspian, and nothing at all like the madman he'd been under the witch's spell.

Eustace lobbed his own snowball and it burst over the Prince's shoulder, both scrambling for another handful of ammunition as the smaller Narnians cheered for the newest members of their game amidst a flurry of snow from all directions.

For an instant it might have been a water fight on the beaches of Coriakin's Island; for an instant it might have been another young man whose hair whipped as he spun to dodge Eustace's excellent aim; for an instant it might have been another friend's unabashed laughter that taunted him merrily with a chase.

And for an instant, Eustace knew, even as he shook the snow from his hair and darted away from the Narnian Prince through a crowd of squeals and laughter underfoot, that no matter what came next, for himself or for Narnia, that it had all been worth it, no matter what pains it had cost.

The simple joys of these people would be worth it every time.