The blood tasted hot and moist, like a lazy afternoon, and there he was, suddenly. The valley stretched out forever before him, verdant and pleasant in the fading twilight's last golden rays. The dark, dank deathbed was gone, and the breeze was cool and gentle against his clammy skin. Where was he? But he knew at once that this was a page turned; his old life was over, and he knew this for a certainty. Somehow, he had passed from one world to the next, and his failures as a man were forgotten, then, and his grown-up cares fell away like trivial, useless things, and were washed from his skin like a newborn's soul was cleansed by baptism.

"Cas---"

It came to him, on the wind. A voice. He didn't recognize it, but it seemed hauntingly familiar, and it was then that he saw the figure ahead of him, a small, dark blot on the horizon.

Susan? His first thought ran to the most obscure target, but the voice had seemed feminine or, perhaps, just young. It might well be his wife, welcoming him home - oh, he hoped that it was so...

He began to walk toward the figure, which was an easy task. His long, tiresome illness had vanished. A rush of exhilaration diffused through him, like colored ink through water; his body felt eager again, young and lithe. He could move his arms and legs perfectly, without every nerve ending in his body quivering with tremors of pain. His mind felt clear, for the first time in a long time, and he fingered the sword on his hip with fingers clad in tight, smooth skin. He wondered suddenly if his face was young, handsome again-it must be?-and the teasing words of his wife made him smile as he remembered them, you were always secretly vain.

"Hello?" He cupped his hands around his mouth and called out.

In response, the figure waved to him, but it was little more than a disjointed shadow and its identity was impossible to make out. Caspian began to run, and the wispy, knee-high blades of grass were trampled beneath his feet. In no time, he watched the figure become...a young girl with long, wavy hair the color of dull cherry wood. She had pale, delicate skin and, for a moment, he couldn't be sure who she was, really. Not his wife, obviously, and then...could it be?

"It's been a long time," she said. He moved close enough to her to see that her eyes were a fine, clear grey. She stared at him expectantly, and her rather large, soft-looking mouth curved into the barest hint of a smile. "Prince Caspian."

No one had called him Prince Caspian in years. He had been the High King of Narnia for all of his adult life, and it sounded rather absurd, this boyish title of Prince Caspian.

"Who... Susan? Are you...I mean, you are Susan? The Queen, Susan." He sounded ridiculous to his own ears, like a stuttering school boy. It was an odd dichotomy: in some ways, he still felt like the old man but, in others, he felt as green as the grass that surrounded them. "I've thought about you---"

"I thought about you too, sometimes." Her voice was amused, touched. The wind rustled her hair. God, she is young, he thought as the seconds ticked by with both of them staring at each other in silence. He didn't know what to say then, or if words were even the right currency for this exchange.

"Where are we?" He finally looked past her, to the endless expanse of flat grassland that stretched every way in each direction. "This can't be Narnia. I...just left there."

"This isn't Narnia," she said, and there was a quiet sadness to her voice. "It's somewhere else, beyond Narnia. But there are others here, as well."

She looked up at him, and she tentatively reached out to touch his arm. "I can't go back to Narnia, you remember? When it happened, when I died, I woke up here. As, I think, you did. Died, then woke up here, I mean."

"How did you die?" He said it without thinking, instead of what he had originally been planning to say, something of the more tactful yes-it's-been-the-same-for-us-both variety. He opened his mouth again, to say he was sorry, but she shook her head, slightly.

"It was a disease, a cancer," her reply was so quiet that he had to strain to catch her words. "You?"

"Old age," he shrugged, "more or less."

She laughed, then, and he noticed that it utterly transformed her face. The seriousness, the gravity that hung about her like a well-worn mantle dissolved into girlish gaiety, making her features seem almost beautiful in the fading light. Though, he was a little put out; he didn't quite perceive what was so funny about him dying miserably, in old age.

"I'm sorry, Caspian. Really. I just...," she smiled, and sobered a little. "I wish I could have seen you then. I can't ever imagine you growing old. You never aged at all when I thought of you. You were always the same as...when we knew each other. Always young, always so han--"

She stopped herself, face blushing apple-red from her cheeks to the roots of her hair, but he supplied the word that she had chosen to omit: always so handsome.

If there was ever a time to repeat their long-ago kiss, then this would be it, Caspian knew. She looked slim and lovely and all he wanted to do was touch her, to see if her skin felt as soft as it looked. He gave into impulse and faintly skimmed her jaw, her cheek, with trembling fingers. She felt warm and yielding under his touch; Susan was a hot-blooded girl, underneath her cool exterior, and he'd forgotten that. It was wonderful to discover these things again, like coming across one's favorite book years after it was lost and its story half-forgotten. All of his adolescent feelings came rushing back to life, and he felt suddenly clumsy with her, even though he was far more experienced than when they'd last seen each other.

"It has been a long time, Susan," he said, at last, "too long, I think." He was going to be courteous, then, and ask: could he could kiss her, would that be permissible to her?

But, she surprised him.

"Caspian," she said, but she didn't give him time to respond. She leaned over, in one quick, smooth movement and put her mouth over his; it was hesitant, though, a light brush that sent shivers of excitement down his spine. She nipped his lower lip with her teeth, lightly, and he pulled her closer, so that there was barely any space between them, and kissed her; really kissed her, and the kiss escalated from hesitant tenderness to frantic, violent and needy in a heartbeat. Tongues, lips and teeth: they gave, took, hurt and soothed in equal measure.

He couldn't describe how it felt; rather, he supposed, like a long, slow dive underneath the blue-green waters of Telmar Bay that he'd played in as a boy: weightless, breathless and painful, all at the same time. It was better than his faded memories, but these were adult passions now; maybe they were trapped in teenager's bodies, but their former, grown-up lives lingered inside of them, still. She was different, more aggressive than he remembered, and he hoped that he, at least, gave a better performance than the last time, when he'd been fumbling, frightened and unskilled.

"You've learned quite a bit since the last time," he murmured against her mouth, his voice husky with desire and amusement. "Someone taught you well."

He meant it to be a naughty bit of teasing, a compliment even, and he would've been pleased if she responded in kind, but her lips had gone cold and unresponsive with his words and he felt her stiffen in his arms.

They broke apart when Susan wrenched away from him, unexpectedly. She was still blushing, he noted, as furiously as ever, but there were shadows in her eyes that hadn't been there before. Her shoulders were hunched over, as if she were in pain, and she wouldn't meet his eyes.

"Come on," she made a jerky motion for him to follow her. "It's nearing dark, and we should get back. It can get a little dangerous out here at night. There's home, it's a castle like Cair Paravel almost. Not as lavish, of course. Do you know what I'm talking about, Cair Paravel? And they're all there, too..."

She talked solidly for the next several minutes, about some land called "England" and Aslan and train crashes, and most of what she said he could not understand. What was a train and why did it crash? So, her brothers and sister were dead too, but not here with her? And Cair Paravel had been her home once, right? Every time he tried to ask a question, she cut him off and he could see, practically, the nervousness and fear dancing across the surface of her skin.

"Susan - wait!" But, she didn't. She was taking this badly and he couldn't entirely understand why. "Susan!"

He struggled to keep up, but she kept a maddeningly quick pace. He stared at her back and knew he'd made a mistake, somehow: perhaps a small one, or maybe a large one - who knew?

With no clear idea of what to do next, he followed her over the field, into the darkness of the woods, calling her name over and over again...