Chapter Three
The Fox

Sunlight danced across her eyelids, and she rolled over. "Ugh," she mumbled, her hand searching for her covers, but she found none. Instead her hand found string going straight up. 'No, not string,' she thought, and slowly she opened her eyes. She found tall grass shooting up past her toward a very clear, blue sky. Sarah gasped and jumped up, and regretted it as her head began to spin.

Where was she? She looked around and found herself in middle of a small meadow. The edges were boarded with thick trees. How did she get here? The last thing she remembered was being in a car, going the wrong way on the street and that Mark…Mark!

She looked around expecting him to be standing nearby. "Mark!" she called out to him. "Mark, where are you?" No one answered. Something clinched in her chest. Sarah sat back down, the grass coming just up to her nose. What was it they taught you when you were lost? Stay where you were, not to move. Someone would come looking for you. Wrapping her arms around her legs, she snorted. 'If any one knew were I was, that is.' Sarah didn't know where she was. She knew she wasn't near where the accident happened. She lived in a suburban town, there were no open fields, and everything was taken up with houses. She groaned, "Where am I?"

She sat there for a little longer, still hoping that maybe someone would show up. That maybe she was dreaming and she would go back to reality and find herself still at the dance, or in a hospital room, with Mark lovingly holding her hand as she came to, if the accident had indeed been real.

Looking straight ahead she imagined what would happen when she woke up in a hospital room. Mark would be in a chair next to her, Lydia near the foot of her bed. They would greet her, Lydia hugging her and Mark showering her with kisses. She didn't picture her mother and step-father there. Her mother would say she was worried, but would be at home, spoiling her little half-brother and her step-father would be at work. No, those that truly cared for her were Lydia and Mark and that's whom she pictured her happy reunion with.

This was the reason she didn't notice the rustling behind her. The reason she screamed and jumped up and started to run when something ran into her back.

"Wait!" someone called to her.

She turned, looking around for the voice but saw no one. Sarah, curious now, started to head back toward where she heard the voice. That's when she came upon a small fox. It was not nearly yet fully grown, but clearly not a young kit. "Hey, little guy." She said, and started to hold out her had, when the thing made a noise she didn't quite comprehend.

"Excuse me! I am not little. I am in fact the largest of my age group, thank you very much!"

Sarah just blinked at him for a few moments, and then started to laugh. "Oh, you can talk!"

The Fox held up his head and huffed. "Of course I can. I am an Animal." He was utterly serious and that made Sarah snort out some of her giggles.

"I am terribly sorry, Mr. Fox, you see, I have never met a talking Fox before. Birds, yes, but Foxes, no." She figured while she was in the dream of hers that she would at least play along to what it brought her. "Forgive me."

The Fox studied her for a moment, to determine if she was serious. "All right, but for your small slight, you must accompany me to the market. I have business there."

"Certainly," she said sweetly, still wanting to laugh. Talking Foxes! What would she think of next? Though she did remember a time when she was younger that she wished her cat could talk. So what if now a Fox was talking to her in a dream?

"Comes then, this way," he said and she followed.

The Fox found a path through the trees, and Sarah looked in wondering at all the natural beauty around her. She had never seen so much undisturbed nature. She looked at the Fox she was following and realized his red was the same exact shade as her friend Lydia's hair. Yes, she was in a dream.

She coughed and the Fox looked back at her. "You know I didn't catch your name," she said. "I'm Sarah."

He seemed to smile. "Sarah, daughter of Eve, I am Zoran." He inclined his head to her, "Nice to make your acquaintance."

"I'm sorry. What did you call me?"

"Is your name not Sarah? I thought that's what you said."

"Yes, but that daughter stuff. What was that?"

"Ah, are you not a human, descended from Adam and Eve?" Zoran questioned her.

"Yes, but-"

Zoran smiled again. "Then it's only right that I reference to your heritage, if that is all right with you, Miss Sarah." She nodded. "Now, where are you from? Those are the most unusual clothes that I have ever seen, if I may say."

Sarah looked at her clothes. Surprisingly (or perhaps not so much) they were dirty from her laying in the meadow. "You converse with humans often, Zoran?" she asked, looking at her jeans, buttoned up plaid pattern shirt, the sleeves rolled up just past her elbows, and her black and white Chuck Taylor's. It was something she picked out specifically for the Homecoming Dance. She found nothing wrong with it.

It was his turn to laugh at her question. "Why, yes I do, actually, but I have never met any with such an unusual sense of fashion."

Smiling she replied, "Well, where I come from, women wear things like this all the time. Men wear something similar, I suppose, but looser fitting." Pondering what Zoran had said she then asked, "What do women that you've met wear?"

"Dresses, mostly, and depending on their status depends on their material it's made of. I've met a queen once; wearing the most splendid shade of blue you'd ever seen. I have also met a farmer's wife wearing simple cotton. So dresses for the women, men wearing tunics and breeches."

The two went back and forth, asking each other about their customs and cultures. Sarah found that Zoran's world sounded very medieval, and she laughed to herself that she could dream of some of the details, as she wasn't very good in her history class. She supposed, though, that she could all be making it up. Zoran found her words about where she came from very fantastical and said right out that he didn't believe half of it.

They made it to the market place, which reminded Sarah of the street fairs she seen in the down town area of the town she lived in. There were clearly aisles one was to travel down and on each side were stands. Some of the vendors were human, some weren't, and others Sarah wasn't sure if they were human or not. They were selling any thing from fruits and vegetables to armor and instruments.

"We only have a market here this size once a month," Zoran explained, "But every week there is a smaller one. Some of the trader's here are starting to come from outside the realm. Just last month we had traders from Calormen. They were strange, but did open our eyes to humans look like, besides our Kings and Queens." Sarah giggled. "What?"

"You sound so old, but I know you can't be," elucidated Sarah. "No offense, but I am not sure how Foxes gage age, but you seem like you can't be no older than I am and know that I am not fully grown either, it just seems you are talking older than what you actually are."

This seemed to boost the Fox's ego. "I do get that quite a bit. To answer your question; no I am not at what my people consider adult age, but I am nearly there."

"Cool," she said simply. They stopped at a stall and Zoran spoke with the vendor, who was a centaur, and bought some supplies from him. The centaur wrapped it up neatly in some brown paper and string. Sarah took it for her friend and they continued. "So, tell me about this King and Queen of yours."

"Kings and Queens," he corrected her. "We have two Kings and Queens."

"At the same time?" she asked, disbelieved. "Are they all married to each other?"

Sputtering he said, "Good heavens no! By the Lion's Mane, that would be wrong. No, they are brothers and sisters. There is High King Peter, second only to Aslan, King Edmund, Queen Susan and Queen Lucy."

Not understanding, she shook her head. "Okay, first of all who is Aslan, and secondly why do you need four monarchs?" She thought for a moment then added, "Now that I come to think of it, what am I supposed to help you with?" She was still convinced this was a dream, but had to ask to slate her curiosity of this vivid dream.

Zoran sputtered various things before he composed himself to answer. "What? You do not know where you are? Why you're in Narnia! The land and the Creatures that dwell in it were created by Aslan himself, True King of these lands, and son of the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea. Th-Th-The Great Lion!" The look on his face was priceless: full of shock and horror that she did not, truly, know of anything of her surroundings.

Shrugging she said, "I must admit that I don't know of this Aslan or Narnia. I apologize, but I have only just arrived here."

He gave her a toothy grin and began to regale her on the history of Narnia.