Chapter Twenty-four: Up Mountains, Down Valleys

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~ Narnia ~

The next morning, as the rising sun's rays reflected off the water and lit the mountains, the crew and company on board the Dawn Treader rose as well. Since the water was deep enough, they could pull the Treader right up to shore, which was sorely needed since there was a great deal of repairs to be made. Two parties went out in rowboats with lines attached to the ship's prow so they could tow – and then secure – her to shore. After this was finished, and she was tied off to two large pines, everyone began the tedious task of repair. Repairing everything; from leaky casks to the holes in the great purple sail.

As everyone came ashore Reep remarked, "Perhaps I should supervise Eustace, to keep him from wandering, or getting lost."

"Oh please don't send me to the Rat!" Eustace said quickly, walking in front of Caspian, angry that everyone thought he had to be babysat while they went about their work.

"We'll see," Caspian answered, moving off to assist Arran and several other sailors in hoisting down the sail to the ground so they could mend it.

"I heard that you know," Reep commented, scurrying past the blonde boy.

"Big ears," Eustace muttered snarkily.

Reep stopped, ears flicking. "I heard that too!" he said, before scurrying off to find someone who could use his assistance. Behind Eustace, someone laughed at the Mouse's words. The boy turned quickly to see Susan standing there at the foot of the gangway, holding Gael's hand in hers and carrying Rilian. He frowned at her, but she only smiled.

Shaking his head, he turned and stalked off.

~|:Xo0oX:|~

Eustace watched everyone go about from his place in the shade of a tree he was sitting under. Only now, did he realize just how ragged everyone looked. They'd been through two storms without repairing their clothes or seeing to cutting their hair, and they looked it. Drinian's brown locks were ragged and starting to brush his shoulders. Edmund's were curling around his ears, making Eustace realize that it was not simply wavy, but curly. That little bit of knew-found knowledge made him smirk slightly, finding it amusing in a way. Not much seemed to have changed with Susan or Lucy, though their hair was markedly longer, and their clothes were just as frayed.

"They all look shipwrecked," Eustace scoffed inwardly. His own clothes were worn, but not torn or frayed like everyone else's because he had not helped much on shipboard.

The white shirts Caspian and Edmund wore were torn at the sleeves and the collars were starting to look threadbare. Drinian's had been patched in eighteen places and counting, Eustace noted. Several sailors were sitting around sewing new clothes; shirts, pants, vests and such. Some were even mending or making leather boots. The Stars were the only ones who looked orderly, which Eustace accounted as being because of their magic.

When Drinian left, going to wash probably, Eustace guessed, as everyone was taking turns doing that, Arran took over as supervisor, bossing everyone around, telling them what to do and what must be done. Eustace scowled, he hated the pirate, the Star acted so superior, as if he was better, Eustace thought. Really, the Narnian was helping just as much as he was giving orders. Just as Eustace was thinking he might get away with sitting under the tree until nightfall, Arran spotted him.

"Eustace, get over here and help with this canvas, or drag these barrels to Timothy!" the pirate ordered, before turning his back to deal with another task at hand.

Timothy, a sailor, soldier, and blacksmith-temporarily-turned-carpenter, looked up at Eustace, waiting. Eustace scowled, if he pretended not to have heard, then Timothy would most likely walk over to him and tell him to come help him. Slowly, as if it took some effort, Eustace stood and sauntered over toward a barrel. He sighed when the sun's rays beat down on him. This would be a long day.

~|:Xo0oX:|~

At about four in the afternoon, Eustace was given two buckets by Timothy to go and get water from the river that fed out into the cove not far away. He needed water to use in his makeshift forge, since he had to make nails and staves for the barrels and other things that were needed for the ship. He grumbled as he walked toward the river. Always he was the slave, running around doing whatever was not important enough for anyone else! It was maddening. He kicked a rock forcefully.

He stopped abruptly, dodging behind a large pine trunk when he saw them not far away. Setting down the buckets quietly on the fallen pine needles under his feet, he peeked around the tree, careful to keep as unseen as possible. For all their powers, they hadn't noticed him at all. They were still engrossed in their interrogation. Eustace strained to hear what they were saying, but could only hear fragments.

"We're not stupid… There must be…" Gavan jerked Arran by his collar against the tree, his tone sounding threatening.

"I don't think you understand…!" The pirate said, the end of his sentence rising in angry exclamation.

"Just what…" Zephyr walked closer to his brother, voice indiscernible as it lowered. They talked in whispers for several minutes.

"You think you can protect… against me? Really Zephyr, that's just demented!" Arran laughed despite his situation, but the sound was cold and hard. He pushed Gavan away. "What I'm going to do doesn't concern the likes of you! You think you can predict what's coming? It is far worse than you could imagine, and you just let them keep blindly getting closer!" the Star shouted angrily, pointing in the direction of the shore, and the tree Eustace was hiding behind.

"If we hadn't done something they'd…" Zephyr argued. Eustace was unable to hear the rest of his sentence from the distance he was standing at.

"They'd be in my brig, returning to Narnia, where they belong!" Arran said sharply, turning to face his brother.

"What are you saying?" Gavan looked at the pirate captain, hand going to his hilt.

"Something is coming, and by Aslan, you can be sure it's worse than a damned dragon!" Arran shouted, striding back toward the camp. Then he stopped not far from Eustace's hiding spot. He turned slightly, blonde dreadlocks falling over his shoulder, partly hiding his face. "I've warned you – and them – but what you do with that information is up to you," he declared cryptically, before turning and walking out of sight.

The next time Eustace looked around the pine's trunk, Gavan and Zephyr had vanished. He released a heavy breath he hadn't known he'd been holding; quickly he reached for the buckets and retrieved the water from the river, but as he trudged back to camp, he mulled over what he had heard. What had they been talking about? What was Arran's plan? What were Gavan and Zephyr protecting them from – and why? The day dragged on with such thought, leaving Eustace mutely following orders, sometimes not finishing what he'd been told and everyone slightly angry with him.

He sighed as he eased himself down around the fires that had been lit that evening as the ship's cook prepared dinner, and the sailors started retiring for the night from their day's work. Eustace had never worked – done honest and good work – in his life, and he was reasonably achy and tired. He'd used some muscles that he hadn't, and actually used a good portion his strength. He was, albeit he only admitted it to himself, proud of what he had done, something the old Eustace wouldn't have even considered several months ago. He smiled tiredly as he watched the flames reach toward the darkened sky, and the logs and tinder crackle and pop, sending embers off into the night.

"Sometimes this place is truly beautiful. At least when something isn't trying to imprison or kill you," he thought to himself. He leaned back against a crate behind him, tilting his head slightly to gaze skyward. "The sky, I've never seen anything so brilliant!" he mentally exclaimed, staring in amazement at the brightly shining stars. He couldn't see it, but the full moon was rising on the other side of the island, marking a silver path along the top of the waves. The moment would have been wonderful, except for the sentences he heard Edmund, Drinian and Caspian exchange as they walked past behind him.

"I suppose tomorrow shall be another full day?" Caspian queried, although his tone implied that he knew the answer. The footsteps of the three men paused a few feet from the crate.

"I'm afraid so, although I would like to send out a search party and find out what else might be on this island with us, I'm inclined to attend to my vessel first. And by my account, we still have a great deal of work ahead," Drinian replied.

"That's it then, I suppose we'll have to wait before we ever discover if the Lords made it here," Edmund stated, his voice slightly regretful, slightly resigned.

"Small sacrifices, as my father used to say," Caspian remarked, his voice holding a hint of bitterness.

"Yes," Drinian and Edmund agreed, almost simultaneously. Their footsteps crunched on sand, salt grass and dirt as they walked off to another of the nearby campfires.

Eustace was dismayed however, as he had been hoping for a break the following day. "Is there never to be any respite? Are we always to work like dogs and follow orders like slaves?" he questioned silently, wondering how he could keep from working the following day, to get a decent rest. He fell asleep trying to come up with a plan.

Not long after he'd fallen asleep, his plate of dinner half eaten beside him, Susan came up. She'd seen him working that day, and knew he was not the same little boy she'd met back in England several years ago. She took the plate and set it atop the crate to dispose of later, and then she went and took two blankets for the sleeping boy. One she folded and put under his head, the other she covered him with. Standing, she watched him for a few moments, a thoughtful smile on her face. He was a good boy, despite everything that had happened. Taking the plate, she walked off, her thoughts moving on to the next morning, and all her other responsibilities and concerns.

~|:Xo0oX:|~

The next morning, the shouts of the crew and the noise of the mythical Narnians roused Eustace from his sleep. He pulled the blanket farther down from his face and glanced about, squinting slightly in the early morning light. The thought came to him fleetingly, and then was gone, that someone must have given him the blankets, as everything he'd overheard the night before came rushing back. He sighed dejectedly, standing slowly, grumbling all the way.

As he folded the blankets and put them on top of the crate, a thought struck him. Nobody was looking for him, or paying attention to him just yet – in fact, they were all gathered about the ship and talking amongst one another about it as if they actually liked the beastly thing. He thought about it, and decided, why not? He could take a stroll, find a place to relax, and take a well-deserved rest and then come back after they'd finished for the day. He felt it would do him good. As he eased toward the woods that skirted the open area, it struck him that it would be best to keep the bay and the ship in sight to be certain of his way back.

He quietly and carefully made his way to the wood's edge, taking extra precaution to move in an aimless manner, so that hopefully, if anyone did look his way, they would only think him walking about to stretch his legs. When he reached the cover of the woods, still being cautious, in case of some sort of guard, he was surprised to note how quickly the conversation faded in the thickness of the trees. Soon everything took on a warm, dark green look, and he felt that he could go forward without all the caution of before.

As he walked, his anger built up slightly, and, since he was alone, he was rather vocal of his opinions of everyone.

"Oh yes, we're just supposed to blindly follows some insane man and a bunch of deluded people who call themselves my cousins! 'Whatever you say, Caspian', 'you must be right, Caspian', 'respect your betters'. Now what nonsense is that? Calling himself my better was he? What a joke!" As he muttered, he left the forest and came to a slope which went up steadily. He found that the going was easier if he used his hands as well as his feet. The muttering helped some, in distraction. The climb – forget all the nonsensical blather – showed that he really was changing, in spite of it all. The old Eustace would never have continued the climb; in fact, he wouldn't even have tried after the first stumble.

"And I suppose I'll get to say 'I told you so' when we all end up getting eaten by some wild monster? No, probably not, not if cousin Edmund has anything to say about that, the show-off bragging nitwit! Thinks he's smarter than me. 'I don't know about everyone else, but I have to go on', what balderdash!" He grabbed a root sticking out from the surface of the mountainside – for that's what he was climbing – and paused in his monologue. Slowly, and with several rests, he gained the ridge. From it, he hoped to have a view of the interior of the island, but the clouds – as they are apt to do in mountainous regions – had slowly been coming down from the peaks and covered the land in a blanket of whitish-grey fog, which was rolling toward him.

"Now here we are, trying to follow this elusive Blue Star to the Island of Ramandoodoo. Lay those seven steak knives at the table of this talking lion. How I wish there was someone as smart as me on this tub to see the light! I'd like to meet this Aslan fellow, see if he's as bright as they all believe he is!" he muttered, sitting down under a small bush-like-tree that was growing on the ridge. From here, since he had climbed so high, he had an excellent view of the bay in which the Dawn Treader was anchored, and a good view of the ocean, which seemed to stretch without limit in all seeable directions.

As he mused over the wideness of the ocean, and the fact that it must be fathoms deep, the fog gently closed in around him in a thick, but not too cold, embrace. It made him slightly drowsy, so he relaxed, laid back and tried to enjoy his respite from the drudgery of work, which was surely what everyone else was doing down below him.

~|:Xo0oX:|~

But he could not find comfort in his self-made predicament. Instead, he found – for the first time in his life – to understand and feel the meaning of loneliness. But this did not come upon him immediately. He had been lying there for a while, when he thought he heard someone calling for him. Instantly he jerked up and looked around, something inside of him eager to be off and doing something with somebody – even if it was work. But when he realized it was just a raven crying, which flew into the mist toward some unforeseeable destination, he felt sad, and lonely.

It came to him then, that he enjoyed hearing everyone's voices, even if they were making fun of him, or asking him to do something. But no matter, right? He tried to convince himself that this was what he wanted, and that everyone really didn't care about him anyway, so why bother. But that didn't help, because then that made him think; well, did they really care? And if they didn't, if they only brought him along because it was the right thing to do, wouldn't they discover him gone and then leave without him?

Perhaps – the thought entered his mind like lightening – perhaps they had let him go, so that they could sneak away and leave him there, at the mercy of whatever, or whoever, resided on the island. There was no more resting for him after that wild thought, he jerked up to his feet, fearful that perhaps hours had passed up here in the fog and they had long since left him. For the first time in his life, Eustace Clarence Scrubb was afraid of being alone, of being without friends or companionship. And that was what drove him back down the mountain at a furious pace.

~|:Xo0oX:|~

Well, he tried to go at a furious pace anyway. But, as we all know, going down is rather a bit different than going up. No, let me rephrase that, it's vastly different than going up. He slipped and slid a few feet for the idea to sink in that he had to be cautious and proceed slowly. But, as slow as he tried, his foot came to some slick mountain grass and he slid to his left. That made him decided that he had to go more to his right. All the time he was thinking:

"I've got to hurry, I must be quick, I can't let them leave me here."

Every time he fell, or stumbled, the fears and the idea of being permanently on this island returned, and he plodded another few feet, before sliding down the mountain face once more. If he had understood Caspian, Drinian, the Stars, Susan and her siblings and Serene better, he would have known that they would not have left him on the island, no matter what their feelings toward him were. But, since he had arrived, he had done a smashing job of believing they were all fiends in human form.

"At last!" he muttered in relief as he slid the remaining few feet on a scree of loose stones to the level ground at the base of the mountain. "Now, where are those trees? There's something dark ahead, well, I do believe the fog is beginning to clear!" he mused aloud. He was right, of course, the fog was lifting. And when it did, he blinked several times in the bright daylight. He was in an unknown valley, the sea was nowhere in sight. He was all alone, and it was all his fault.

~|:Xo0oX:|~

Arran walked slowly to the rest of the group, who were resting under the shade of the trees to enjoy lunch. He paused in his advance to turn and look toward the mountains. He looked down after a few minutes, shaking his head in thought, before continuing to where the rest of the Narnian company was resting. As Edmund poured himself a second glass of water, he realized a familiar - slightly annoying - voice was missing from the conversation flowing around him.

He looked around, before standing and scrutinizing the surrounding area for a sign of his cousin. "Ed?" Susan looked up at her brother curiously from where she was sitting. Caspian too, waited for Edmund's response after Susan's query had drawn his attention to him.

"Where's Eustace?" Edmund asked, looking down at his sister in concern. Susan frowned, but tried not to let her worry get the better of her.

"Perhaps he's on the Dawn Treader," she suggested lightly enough, though she too, rose to her feet and gazed about.

"No, he wouldn't, he hates the ship, you know that," Edmund disagreed, dismissing the idea with a wave of his hand. Susan shared a concerned look with her brother and together they went and searched for their cousin. Caspian, noticing their frantic – yet appearing calm – search, disengaged himself from his conversation with one of the Narnian sailors, and walked toward them.

"Eustace is missing," Susan said when he came up to them.

"What?" Caspian tilted his head to one side slightly, disbelieving it, a half-smile coming to his face. "He hates it here; he has made his opinions clear on the matter, so why would he wander off?"

"That's what I was telling Edmund, but, whatever we think, it still remains that he's gone," Susan answered, glancing around as she talked, clearly agitated over the boy's absence.

"Who's gone?" Arran asked good-naturedly, walking up to them, his brothers and Lucy in tow.

"Eustace, we've searched. It seems he's run off," Edmund said with a sigh, running his fingers through his hair.

"I could think of a thousand ways to teach him a lesson," Arran muttered angrily, turning and sweeping the open space and surrounding trees with a careful glance.

Everyone returned to the rest of the group and the crew, and informed them of the situation. Before long, everyone was searching for the boy, shouting his name and going off in rotating search parties through the forest a ways. Three hours later, everyone gathered for a conference on the subject.

"We've winded horns, shouted till we've become hoarse, either he's truly lost or not answering," Caspian said, his tone laced with frustration.

"He's nowhere near, or he'd have heard your horn," Lucy said fearfully, concerned for her young cousin.

"Confound Eustace," Edmund muttered. "What on earth would he do this for? I know things have been difficult for him, but surely he wouldn't just run off into the unknown, it- it's not like him!" he wondered aloud, staring off at the mountains.

"We must do something," Susan amended, sounding like any mother would when faced with the possible loss of a child, hers or not. "What if he's injured? Fallen down a hole or been attacked by savages?"

"Or killed by wild beasts," Drinian added.

"Or drowned," Zephyr conceded.

"Possibly eaten," Gavan agreed.

"He could have slipped off a ridge and plummeted to his death. Not an admirable ending, but still, all that way," Rynelf declared, as if plummeting was something that fascinated him.

"And good riddance if he has, I say," Arran muttered.

"You know, this doesn't really help," Lucy broke in, looking around at the men disapprovingly. Reep jumped in as well to defend Eustace, of whom – despite the boy's rudeness – he had become rather fond.

"Captain Arran, I do believe you've never said less becoming words in your life! Even if he isn't any friend of mine, he is of the Queen's blood, and while he's one of our fellowship it concerns our honor to find him and to avenge him if he is dead," the Mouse declared nobly, paw coming to rest on his hilt, the other positioned slightly near his heart.

"Of course we've got to find him Reepicheep, if we can. That's the nuisance of this whole problem, it shall mean a search party, and endless trouble for us. We might be here for days, and we only have so much time to complete this journey. Your cousin has caused me more problems than there's time in a day," Caspian replied, slightly exasperated.

"Then let's begin," Drinian declared, quickly gaining a semblance of control and sensibility regarding the whole situation. It was vexing, but the only way to resolve it would be to begin as quickly as possible. He called the crew over and informed them of the situation. With precision, they began organizing search parties.

~|:Xo0oX:|~

Eustace stared down the unknown valley in consternation, now how was he supposed to get back? The walls rose steeply in jagged ridges and crumbling shale of varying shades of sandy-gold and grey. The grass spreading out under his feet, however, was thick, green, and lush, making him – in spite of the situation – want to take his shoes off and go about in it barefoot. As he walked through it, inspecting the place for a possible exit, since the way he'd entered would be impossible to climb, he noticed large places where the grass was flattened, and in others, burnt.

Once more, he paused and glanced back the way he'd come with a slight shudder, looking at the smooth, steep slope of grass, and then at the ragged rock and boulders on either side that would have injured him severely if he had fallen down the wrong way. "Lucky break there," he thought, a hint of relief and surprise in his eyes. As he delved deeper into the wide, naturally walled-off space, he came to a wide, deep, cool blue pool of water. Not a lake, but not exactly a pond either. As he looked down into the depths, he was suddenly struck by the queerness of this place.

It was beautiful, but it was absolutely empty. There were no birds, no animals, no bugs, nothing. It was a deafening silence, more fearsome than the silence on the ridge. Eustace glanced around with even more caution than before. As he glanced about, Arran's words that he'd overheard came to him, unsettling him even more. The sun beat down and grim peaks and horns of mountains peered over the valley's edge.

"I've simply come down the wrong way in the fog, now, if only I could find a way out of here," he said aloud to himself, trying to seem reassured even though he was scared out of his mind. "Well, before I do anything, I think I'd rather like a drink of that water, I'm beginning to feel parched," he remarked, heading straight toward the water.

Eustace cupped a third handful of water and started drinking it, when he heard a small sound behind him. He stopped drinking, listening like a deer to see if it would come again, glancing alertly about the valley. The noise, however small, was unusually loud here because of the utter silence and stillness. He finally gained his courage, counted to ten, and turned around to face whatever 'it' was that was making all the racket, prepared to run.

He gazed about furtively, and finally saw it, a smallish cave opening low to the ground in the rock wall. Around the mouth the rock had been scrapped white, and in some places looked as if it had been burnt. From this opening, two think columns of smoke were rising, and the stones and shale around the floor of the opening were shifting, hence the noise he had heard. Something was moving out toward him. He backed up nervously, but fell over a small stone. There he stayed; watching to see what would emerge with horrified fascination.

Everyone he'd journeyed with would have told him at once what sort of beast it was that crawled out into the sunlight onto the grass of the valley. But Eustace had never read the right books, nor had he even listened much to any of the descriptions Arran had ever readily rattled off. He did not think the word 'Dragon' and perhaps its better he didn't, else he might have thought him in a worse situation than he was. As it were, he knew next to nothing about the beast slithering and clacking about the valley floor, if he had, he might have noticed that it was dying. That it was old. And that he had nothing to fear from the dragon itself, but from what it owned.

The black dragon moved slowly toward the pool of water that Eustace had momentarily been drinking from, and lowered its head in a graceful, serpentine manner to drink slowly and methodically from the pool. It raised its head, and glanced about in Eustace's direction. The boy thought it hadn't noticed him, but more than likely, it was too tired to care about fighting anyone any more. With a sigh, the beast spread his large, membrane riddled wings and flapped them once weakly, flattening the grass around its body. Folding them, the monster gave a groan, and collapsed, the smoke coming from his mouth and nostrils very faint now. His scale-armored chest heaved as he struggled to catch a simple breath.

Slowly, Eustace stood, understanding somehow that he didn't have to fear this Thing. The dragon's head rolled to one side, so in his last moments of life, he could regard this strange little being that had entered his domain mysteriously. A large, liquid eye regarded Eustace thoughtfully. A grunt that sounded strangely like indifference to Eustace came from the beast's throat, before it blinked once. A shudder ran through the dragon's body suddenly, from the tip of its tail to its snout, and then it stared unseeingly at Eustace with its large ember-colored iris. A cloud of black smoke came from its slightly open mouth, but no more followed. Instead a thin trickle of dark blood dripped into the dirt under its head.

"Should I run? But what if it's only shamming and it catches me as soon as I move?" Eustace speculated with himself. He stood there for a long time, the sun beating down, making him thirsty once more. He resolved that the only way to get out of this valley and back to the Dawn Treader would be to move, and he was terribly thirsty. So, slowly, he took one small pace forward, then, when nothing happened, he took two. At last, he reached the head of the monster. He noticed, as he stared down curiously into the red iris of its eye, was that all the fire had gone from it. Hesitantly, he reached out and laid a hand on the dragon's scaly shoulder.

With a start, he jumped back, just in case the beast was still alive, but nothing happened. The dragon was surely dead. More confident, he rested his hand on the cool black scales, which felt like some sort of masterfully crafted, fine metal. He stuck the tip of his finger under a scale, and realized that it was thicker than he'd thought, about two inches. Slowly, he began to almost feel as if he had killed this monster, and hadn't simply watched it die. Reassured that it was dead, he hopped over its neck near the base of its head, and moved to get another handful of water.

He looked up at the sky as a heavy peal of thunder echoed across the mountain ridges solemnly. As he took one last drink, the sun disappeared and large, heavy raindrops began falling steadily. Knowing he needed to find shelter, he decided to go into the cave, feeling really adventurous for the first time since he'd arrived in Narnia. He lay down – dripping wet – inside and tried to catch his breath from the mad dash across the open ground to the cave mouth.

As he lay there, however, he started to feel extremely uncomfortable on what he was lying, it didn't feel like rock or dirt, and when he put his hand on it, something made a metal clinking sound farther into the cave, as if it was sliding slightly under him. He looked down slowly, and by the dim light coming from the opening, he was able to discern what exactly, he had been sitting on. And, as everyone knows what dragons' keep (we've all been reading our literature I'm sure) he found himself looking upon all sorts of gold items; coins, crowns, cups, dishes, there were jewels; emerald encrusted scepters, large, loose, uncut gems rattling about under his feet, and so-forth.

Eustace had never thought much of treasure in his life, but, suddenly faced with this vast amount of wealth, ideas began coming to him, and he started getting… well, greedy. He realized that this would be his ticket to a better life in this country he'd fallen into from the picture in Lucy's room. With this vast store of wealth he believed he could live most comfortably, perhaps in Calormen, as that sounded the most normal of all these fairytale locations.

"Finally, a most favorable turn of events," he muttered, shoving some coins into his pockets and pushing a gold arm-band up his arm. He looked through not even half of the treasure in the cave, before feeling very tired, as usual when you've tumbled halfway down a mountain into a dragon's valley, with little to no hope of ever finding your way back to anything. He lay down in a more comfortable part of the cave and soon drifted off, even though he thought to just wait until the rain cleared. With a contented sigh, his eyes closed, just missing the green mist rising up from the gold and other trinkets.

A/N:

Well? I'm rather impressed with this. I don't have much to say about it either, I think it's pretty self-explanatory. Arran's knowledge will come out eventually, and then he shall get to tell his brothers 'I told you so'. (sorry Eustace) lol.

I really enjoyed writing the scene where everyone is speculating on what happened to him. They're all just offering ideas on how he died, as if it's so certain that Eustace can't handle himself in Narnia. (what they've seen of him surely can't).

Eustace is sort of the Bilbo Baggins of Narnia I've come to realize. He starts off all "This is rot and trickery, I don't want an adventure" but eventually, he ends with a sword in his hand and bravely fighting for Narnia's freedom. I just realized that while I was writing this chapter.

He's all "And I missed them, with all my heart".

Just like Bilbo at the end of The Hobbit is all "Thorin was my friend".

Both miss their friends, and the adventures they went on. They always were ready for the next one after the first, however, which is just adorable in my opinion! Okay, okay, moving on, lol.

ILoveFanfiction:

I've got a very good guess you're the 'guest' reviewer for chapter 23, so, all those questions asked will be answered here. (by the way, I had a wonderful independence day! Thank you for the goodwill)

About the naming of chapter 23: Yes, it is supposed to be "'Ware Dragons In The Storm". "'Ware" being short for "beware". It's basically Arran's words turned more memorable, more unique for the titling of chapter 23. I also titled it that because of this and coming chapters. And the fact that everyone must deal with their personal dragons.

Caspian and Susan are not mad at each other anymore, but things between them certainly aren't solved. I just felt that neither of them would actually apologize for what they said (Susan has some pride and so does Caspian), but they wouldn't continuously go about ignoring one another. That would be romance out the window, don't you agree?

I promise chapter after next will have mostly Lucy/Gavan (I feel I've not touched that romance enough, especially considering how important it is for following - W.H don't give it away! - er, sorry there :). Yeah, I'll be getting back to them - for sure!

About Eustace's dragon change... You shall see my friend, you shall see... But let me just say this... I'm pretty sure you'll love it!

Again, if there is anything I missed, {explanations, punctuations, grammar, misspellings, plot-that-doesn't-make-sense, something that I failed to clarify on, etc...}. Please tell me so I can fix/tell you about it in a PM/Author's Note.

Happy reading,

W.H. 1492