Daughter of Eve, Niece of Thomas
By JalendaviLady
Timeline: A few days post-The Last Battle and beyond.
Disclaimer: The upcoming and already-released movies belongs to Walden Media and the books belong to the current holders of the C. S. Lewis's estate.
Happy New Year, everyone.
As I noted when I posted this chapter on Archive Of Our Own, I've decided to stop taking the flashback chapters in order of when they occurred. I've also decided to mostly go with the movie sequence of events for Prince Caspian.
Chapter 10: Chapel
It happened the month after they all returned to school.
Lucy had been determined enough to be sure, absolutely and completely, that Susan was okay with Aslan's announcement that she was too old to return - as well as the total and irrevocably complete destruction of just whatever had been going on between she and Caspian before they left - that Susan really had not had any time at all to think about anything but classes and reuniting with her group of friends.
By the time the month was drawing to a close, Lucy had finally settled into her own circle of yearmates and began leaving her older sister be.
Why should she have any problem adjusting, anyway? Susan had already planned on not returning to Narnia before they had been summoned at the train platform. She had accepted the idea. They had done what Aslan needed them to do and then blundered their way out of the wardrobe again. No matter what the Professor said, he hadn't made it back himself so who knew if he was right about their being other ways that would open for them, anyway? That was that.
(At least she had managed to have her first kiss as Queen Susan. She hadn't dared risk it her first trip, even if she had been older then.)
Once a queen of Narnia, always a queen of Narnia, but that didn't mean she had a ticket back.
And now she never would.
Somehow, the knowing was worse than the not-knowing of the past year had been.
Chapel, on Sunday.
The school rules required attendance, but Susan and all the other girls usually only half-listened. Apparently that had been a tradition since the founding of the school, and no one besides perhaps the local vicar cared much about changing it.
Which was why she was caught completely off-balance when one of the readings for the week sounded exactly like something Aslan would have said in that low explanatory happy nearly-purr of his that she had always loved so much.
In fact, she could almost hear the great lion's rumble as the man read the words.
This understandably raised the level of additional shock she received a moment later when the reading concluded with the phrase of thanks for a gospel reading instead of the one for any other Bible reading.
Meanwhile, five pews closer to the altar, Lucy was sitting there attentively as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened.
How could Lucy - Lucy, of all people - have missed that?
It was Lucy who had always had the strongest connection to the great lion. Lucy who was the one to see lone manifestations of him, and the first to see the times he came to everyone.
Surely if this had happened every week for years, long enough to become accustomed to it, Lucy would have said something to one of her siblings.
But no.
Clearly it had only been Susan this time.
Susan went to her favorite thinking spot that afternoon.
She'd done her schoolwork the day before, so her free time was, for once, just that.
The spot was just past the edge of the woods beyond the field tennis court, on the other side of a slight rise. It was hidden enough that she wouldn't be stumbled upon, but there was no way she would miss hearing someone calling out her name from the meadow.
There was a small stream nearby, close enough to watch and listen to.
The place reminded her of a quiet place she'd had near Cair Paravel, where the final tributary stream of the River Rush came down from the royal gardens. The last time she'd seen it, they had been washing their hands there before splitting a meager lunch and exploring the castle ruins.
It felt like forever ago.
It had been less than two months.
What could possibly have made her the favored one now and not Lucy? Why hadn't Lucy heard that rumble?
She's going back, Susan realized with a sinking feeling. I'm not. We're under different orders from Aslan now.
It was only after an hour of trying to find any other possibility that Susan Pevensie admitted to herself that, even without the rumbling, that passage had been a very Aslan-ish thing to say and that the lion's warning that she and Peter needed to get to know whoever he was on earth really didn't make a bit of sense unless...
Unless.