I am fighting a battle to finish this story. My inspiration is running out! Thanks to all those who keep reading despite it all!
-A Winters Chill.

Susan fought the pain that laid inside of her. The funeral had been horrible and she swore to herself that she would never attend another one no matter how important they were. Why did so many people have to die? She thought about the events of the past year and what it had done to her. She had hardened herself against everything, death, pain, and love.

She sat on a window seat in the large house looking out to the grounds. There was a large forest right in her back yard that she longed to venture into once again but the rain forced her to stay indoors. She knew that she looked like a mess, her hair hung around her like it's own forest as she cried with the sky. This new loss reminded her so much of her siblings and what they had shared in the past. Was it true? Were they all waiting for her in Narnia? She had spent years building up walls against that accursed place yet it seemed to always come back to haunt her. It took everything away from her, all that she had ever held dear! How could anything associated with it be good? Why did she have to be the one to publish Peter's books about it when she didn't want anything to do with it?

"It's not real," she tried to tell herself again. She heard footsteps walk through the door of her room and saw Alex standing there.

"Everyone was worried about you after the funeral," he said, "you looked so sullen."

"I hate loss," Susan stated bitterly, "Everything goes away so quickly and in the end most people have nothing to show for how they have lived thier lives. So many die without making their mark on the world."

"The important thing is some never give up," Alex replied, "Peter believed in life and even in his passing he has reached out to so many."

"You say passing," Susan muttered, "as if he just went somewhere. A journey. No Alex, Peter is dead! He's gone, gone away forever and he will never return. We will never see him again nor Edmund nor Lucy. There is no life after all this, it's vainty."

"That was always your problem wasn't it," Alex said with a hint of anger in his voice, "you were always too much of a coward to believe in life after death. What is it Susan? Are you worried that you'll have nothing to show for you life when you die? Are you worried that you'll never have an impact on anyone?"

"Vainty" Susan repeated, "all of it. I can't take it anymore."

"When did you loose your will to believe?" Alex asked tired of watching it Susan tear her life apart.

"I never believed in anything," Susan said looking at him with a scowl.

"I said I'd always be here for you," Alex replied, "but how can I help you when you won't even let me?"

"They all want me to believe in something that isn't real," Susan responded standing up, "and I can not bring myself to participate in these lies! Narnia is afiction, fantasy, non-real fairytale! There is simply no other way to say it! Everything in my life has been torn apart by something that's not even real! That is what I am going through and I continue to loose things to that fantasy every day!" Susan had had enough of Alex's prying into her life she walked toward the door.

"No one ever abandoned you Susan," he said, "you abandoned them." She stopped for a second before continuing to leave the room. She couldn't bear the country any longer. She would head to London immediately, it was so much easier to keep her walls there.

It had been three months since her argument with herself and Alex and book two had been published. The public did not race to buy it as people had predicted. Everything was falling even more apart. Susan had just gotten her life back and now it was all shattering back down again! Would this cycle ever end? Was her lot in life destruction.

"Miss Pevensie," Mr. Clawson said, "I think you need to go home." She looked up from her desk at him with her clouded eyes wondering what he meant.

"I still have three articles to write," she said with a hint of annoyance in her voice, everyone at the company had been looking at her with sympathy since she had returned from the countryside. It was getting on her nerves! She wondered if she was just becoming parinod.

"Susan," he said putting a comforting hand on her shoulder, "I've been trying to ignore it but your writing has become more and more dull as time has gone on. You've lost the life you once had"

"I'm just not in my element right now," Susan protested.

"That's what I have been trying to argue to some of my peers," he sighed and fidgeted with the newspaper in his hand, "but it's been like this for three months. Peter's second book has flopped and we are loosing subscriptions like crazy. I have been putting it off but it seems the future of Clawson publishers and news is on the line! We have to let you go."

"But Mr. Clawson..." she didn't know what to say. She knew that most of the articles she had put out recently were complete trash but she knew that she had more in her than that.

"Susan," he said, "I know you're well set up now with your inheritance and I am confidant that you'll go far in life but not at this time. That is why I am letting you go."

"I understand," she said slowly. She couldn't take it any longer, she stood up quickly grabbed her stuff and stormed out of the office. She had to go somwhere. She knew he was in town.

"You were right," Susan said slamming the six manuscripts on the table in front of Professor Lewis, "the public hated it! They wouldn't buy it!"

"It wasn't your fault Susan," he said standing up from his desk and putting a hand on her shoulder, "Peter told me that it wouldn't make it in that state." Susan felt a cold wind blow on her at the mention of her brother. She had failed him and that was all there was too it. How could she continue with the task she had given to her when she had flubbed it up so much.

"I can't take this anymore," Susan said letting a few tears escape, "I promised him that his stories would make it to the world and I can't even get past the second book! I give up, I don't know what to do. I can't edit the stories and now that his name has been tarnished the public won't buy anything from him. Clawson publishers has recalled the stories!"

"Clawson publishers would never have taken them worldwide anyway," Lewis said picking up the first manuscript, "his stories needed something with a much wider range to take them to the world."

"Do you know how we could accomplish that?" Susan asked.

"You say his name has been tarnished?" Lewis asked her back.

"The publishing company has declared him as an unsellable author," Susan replied, "and all other publishing company's in the city have acknowledged this."

"Then it seems someone with prestige and a company to back them will have to publish these stories," Lewis said flipping through the manuscript, "and they will need to undergo editing to allow them to have the mass appeal of the first one."

"I'm giving them to you," Susan stated simply, "do whatever you will with them!"

"What?" He looked puzzled by her statement

"I'm leaving London," Susan said, "I lost my job and there is nothing else for me here! I'm not going to shop the books around to companies for the rest of my life! I know I promised but I don't know what else to do!"

"Then I promise you Susan that these stories will reach the world," he said.

I think I lost my element with the last conversation of the story. I am so close to finishing now that I can feel the end coming and it's got me a little excited! Please review! REVIEW! REVIEW! Reviews are inspiration in themselves!

-Winterschill