DISCLAIMER: Don't own Narnia, Lucy, Tumnus, Edmund, Peter, or Susan. Nada. Zero. Zip.

This is a bit of a long chapter; certainly longer than I've written in a long time. Perhaps it's to make up for all the time I was gone. (Sorry, but who knew summer vacation was so busy? A weeklong vacation and starring in Alice in Wonderland. Plus waiting for writer's block to wear off. Yeah. Really busy. Sorry, my readers!) But I hope this chapter makes for a good apology. It's kind of meaningless and slow-moving in the beginning, but it all ties together and is highly important at the end.

You know how, at the end of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, they stop at the lamp-post on the hunt for the White Stag, but no one can remember what it is? Well... this is highly relevant and pretty important, as plots go. Here goes...

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Something Wrong

Lucy was crying.

She didn't do such things often, but it was so unfair, the world now. Why did it have to be so?

All of the Lucy and her siblings had gone on a picnic in the woods earlier that day, for the sole purpose of enjoying themselves. Being the rulers of Narnia, they'd nearly forgotten their ties as family and had a need to be together on a friendly basis with no politics involved. They found a spot and lay there atop the picnic blanket, lush grass pushing up between the threads and tickling their legs in a comforting, if slightly irritating way. Edmund and Peter had stepped over to the lake not too far off to dip in their toes. Susan stayed at the picnic spot to embroider a sample, glancing every now and then disaprovingly at Lucy, who was reading a book.

Oh, Susan liked books well enough. Useful things, they were, but Lucy spent so much time immersed in them that she often failed to remember that she was in the real world.

Yet Lucy kept reading those books. In truth, Susan had hit the nail on the head as to why she read books. But there was something else that Susan didn't know about. Something that Lucy would revel in for ages, knowing Susan couldn't do anything about it.

Lucy wrote.

Ah, yes, she wrote, and that alone is a purpose beyond anything else she could imagine. They were novels and short pieces and little paragraphs about her thoughts, but she wrote. Sometimes she would meet with Tumnus and they would just sit about, writing. The thing was, above writing, Lucy thought. She thought things that no one ever thought about. Like how everyone thinks they're special, and likes to think of themselves that way. How, in some little way, they all thought they were better and more special than someone else just a bit. But no one wanted to hear about someone else they knew was special, or hear someone else brag about themselves, because the thought enters their mind that they're not special, just a nobody with a dream.

That was why Lucy felt so awful when Edmund came back from the lake, shouting, 'You'll never guess what happened to me!' with Peter standing behind him, grinning.

'Edmund, whatever are you shouting about?' inquired Susan, setting down her sampler.

'Peter and I were walking back from the lake, when we saw a deer on the road. It was incredible. It wasn't a Talking Beast, but a dumb one, and I got close enough that it sniffed my hand! Just stuck out its nose and sniffed it!'

'It did, I saw it,' testified Peter, and grinned. 'Ah, the doe liked him enough, but that stag... Better stay away from it mate. Remember that noise it made at you?'

'You were sniffed by a doe? Why, Edmund, that's delightful!' cried Susan, leaping up.

Behind her book, Lucy scowled fretfully. She was easily jealous and knew it well, but hearing Edmund talk like that... It seemed as though an event that special would be relished in a private joy, not blurted out for the world to hear. Lucy felt angry at the thought, but didn't know why. It happened the same way with many things; some things are better when enjoyed quietly. One cannot witness a life-altering moment and brag about it, as though it were an oversized pig at an auction.

The thought made Lucy squirm inside. She felt so shameful, so unimportant and small when things like that happened. Like when Susan read a book Lucy dearly loved and shouted its wonderment to the world. That book was a private hideout for Lucy, a pleasant solace that seemed to be made just for her. And there was Susan, shouting clumsily how it amazed her.

At the thought, Lucy curled herself slightly together as to make herself take up as little space as possible. Invaded, she thought. I've been invaded. It was the same feeling she got when someone read what she wrote. It's so cold.

So cold.

They're all so big, and I... I'm just too small. Small and cold. I feel... I feel like there was a flood or a fire that ruined the castle, and everyone fled. But I'm trapped inside... And no one came to find me. Just me and death alone together. But I don't want to be alone. Not now.

She always wanted to be alone, to think.

I feel – I am...

That's just it. I am.

❦

After eating the picnic lunch, they all strayed to their individual activities. Susan back to her sampler, Peter napping nonchalantly in the sun, Edmund sitting about and watching the movement of a toad – almost like a child again.

A child again.

Lucy walked away from them, towards the direction of the lake with a cold sandwich in her hand, and she began to think again. What made a child? Was it size or age or voice or maturity? For the soul is the same, no matter the age. But what is age? Numbers labeled on a person to give definition to who they are and how wise. That was silly. For she'd met or heard of plenty of humans who were her elder, but few the wiser. Why, then, did age matter?

It is who they are that defines them, not the number.

Those silly numbers – they mattered so much in court affairs when the conversation spoke of her. She was too young for this, too old for that, just the right age for such-and-such... should it really matter what number was branded invisibly on her? Why, Tumnus was over a hundred years her senior, but that held no impact on their friendship...

Tumnus.

She'd had so many strange thoughts about him lately, few of them making any sense at all. What had happened? They were silly, they were outlandish, and she hadn't the slightest idea of what had gone wrong that made him so unusual in her memory now. She began feeling things that were alien to her when his name was mentioned.

All caught up in her thoughts, Lucy finally brought her eyes to where she stood and stopped in her tracks. There, in front of her no more than four metres away, was a deer. In all probability, it was the same deer that Edmund had foregathered.

'Wow! Lucy, see if it'll sniff you!'

Lucy jumped and turned slowly to the source of the voice. 'Edmund,' she sighed.

'And me,' said Peter, emerging beside.

'Try this,' said Edmund, and tore a bit of bread crust from his hands, tossing it at the doe. The deer stepped backwards a few paces.

Lucy, for an unusual reason, again grew angry. Peter and Edmund had their encounter with the deer; let her have a turn now!

'Ah!' whispered Edmund, 'it's going away!' He tossed another piece and made a clicking sound with his mouth. 'Here, boy. Heeeere, boy!'

'It's a girl,' whispered Lucy out of the corner of her mouth. Edmund ignored her and made more clicking noises, throwing one bread piece after another so that it looked like snow on the grass. After a few more moments, he gave up and walked away with Peter.

Lucy was alone with the deer.

Slowly, ever so slowly, she intently watched as the deer came up and ate the bread pieces timidly. Lucy smiled. The doe was smart. It took only tiny steps forward, but reached for the bread with its neck so as to get more food. By that, the doe ate steadily, but got no closer to the human than it had to.

Quietly, Lucy lifted her skirts and got closer. The deer tensed, stopping Lucy. She instead lowered herself to the ground and sat there, feet outward. She began to toss pieces of her sandwich softly toward the deer, who ate them patiently, but stepped back once she'd devoured the meal. Still, it got a little closer each time.

With a certain slowness, Lucy stood again and held out what was left of her sandwich. The deer sniffed at it for a bit before reaching its pink tongue from its mouth and consuming the food. Lucy brought out her other hand and petted the doe softly on the bridge of its nose before the deer swiftly stepped back and skittered off.

Lucy sat again in the dirt, and the doe turned back to her. In a soft voice like smoke, Lucy asked, 'Where is the stag?'

The doe was silent.

Lucy held out the palms of her hands. 'I have no more food, but I offer myself as a friend.' At this point, she lay down on her stomach. 'I am no more or less than you. When our bodies wear down, we are equal in soul. Look.'

The deer stared into her eyes deeply. A breeze ruffled the folds of Lucy's skirt, and the deer jerked its head upward as if to wonder what wind is.

'The wind blows for us both. Don't you see? We are the self-same beings in creation, but apart in flesh.' Lucy frowned at herself as she spoke. Where did they come from, these foreign and untouchable words?

But the deer bent its head down and gathered a mouthful of grass.

Lucy looked down at the earth. Why should the deer eat directly from the earth and not she? It was the difference in flesh, not it soul, but why be so separate? So Lucy plucked a handful of spindly grass and ate.

Soon she discovered that not all grass is alike. The spindly, cylindric grass had a sweet taste to it, while the flat, wide grass had an unusual and bitter taste. Roots were best in grass; they had more taste and more cool freshness beneath the green. Three-leafed clovers were, by far, her favourite. They had a sharp, lemony flavour to them beneath the feel of earth.

In time, she forgot the difference between herself and the deer. They were all the same, once flesh was stripped away with bare likeness between them. She watched the doe in friendliness as the doe paid no notice of her. It was like they were friends in an unspoken agreement. They trusted one another on the same land with the same food.

The doe at once withdrew its neck from the earth and trotted away from Lucy. A feeling of desertion wreathed around her, but then she saw what the doe was trotting to.

Seven deer were all gathered together at that end, with some moving being between them. Not a deer, not a goat, not a man...

A faun.

Lucy stared in amazement at Tumnus, being nuzzled like a child and friend by the deer. He did not notice her, but lay on his back in the grass and relished in the feeling of being.

At once, a strange feeling filled her inside. Why, he was no more faun to her, and she no human. There was not difference between them, when the flesh had rotted. They were the same. None of it mattered, no more than age.

In that moment, Lucy felt more human than she ever did. Her race bound her; but she felt not so ashamed to be human anymore. In fact, it was almost as though this was how Man should be. If only they could all experience this... this belonging.

'I know you're terribly fond of grass, Lucy,' said a voice behind her. Lucy turned to see Peter, grinning cheekily. 'But how about some real food?'

And she was angry again. Once more invaded. Why should she not eat grass? It was the same grass that any deer or hare or creature would eat; why not she? He mocked her in all of this oneness. He had no right to do that.

But she did follow him back to the picnic. But the food tasted strange and heavy in her mouth, not like grass at all. It was far more pleasant with more flavour, but it was so decidedly different.

And thus she could not decide who she was, but was rather cold toward Peter. For family is forced to love, a promise made not by choice but by blood, and it is not so real as other sorts. But perhaps it was for the better. All the same, Lucy wanted to love unconditionally and be loved such in return. Was it so wrong, wanting to be loved by for who she was and not her blood? For her heritage...

Lucy frowned and shook her head. She tried to remember her heritage. She tried to remember her mother or her father, like all beings have. She attempted to remember being a child before this Narnia, her home before it, Peter's or Susan's face before they were fourteen years of age. Lucy thought of Tumnus, and then of...

Of the handkerchief. Where had it come from? There was no such handkerchief made in Narnia; the material was wrong, the threads were wrong, and then there was the P.

LP.

The L was for Lucy, she was certain, but the P... what did it mean? She tried to remember, but couldn't. What was it? There was something there, in her mind. Something had come before Narnia, before she had first met Tumnus. Try as she might, it was gone

She could recall nothing.

Lucy loved Narnia and all the joy it brought her. Narnia fulfilled her every whim for adventure and excitement. She was who she wanted to be here... but who was she before she was who she wanted to be? A little girl that she couldn't remember, and neither could anyone else.

She loved Narnia.

But something was very wrong.