Hi, everyone! (Or whoever's left)

It's been a while. I'm sorry about that. Anyway, I know that I had already uploaded chapter 3 and half of this is in fact that, but I added quite a bit to it since it was very short. I hope you like it and feel free to review, it always makes me happy and more motivated. Point out errors or sing praises (unlikely) if you like but please review.

Thanks, and in case it wasn't obvious, I own nothing.

It turned out that lions were Mary's breaking point.

Mary thought that that was quite reasonable really. Seriously, who exactly expects to see a lion in the middle of a forest. Yes, a forest like little Red Riding Hood or Snow White. A nice forest, full of evergreens and deciduous trees, wolves and bears, anything but a god damn lion.

But of course, silly little Lucy seemed determined to remind each and every one of them every chance she got that she had apparently seen a lion.

Mary thought Lucy was sort of cute in the way of younger cousins and children that you had to take no responsibility for. When stuck with her in a forest, no proper adult in sight, that cuteness evaporated and left only exasperation and a deep set want to scream some sense into the child.

Or maybe this was just her breaking now. Lucy was truly sweet, almost sickly so.

It had started out okay. Peter had decided that they couldn't stand around and do nothing and that they really ought to try to find people. And when Peter said people, he meant anything that could talk to them, including bears, beavers, centaurs, fawns and unicorns (unicorns!).

They had quickly found a creature, well creatures, that matched Peter's criteria, though that didn't turn out so well. The creatures were two men, heavily tanned and armored, who were rowing a small boat with a stoic dwarf (dwarf?) between them.

It had turned into an incident when the two men had tried to drown the poor little dwarf (who did not appreciate that particular nickname).

Peter had made it worse and proven just how out of touch the siblings were with their precious Narnia. Mary had still considered it a success for nobody but the would-be murderers had been harmed and the dwarf was only a little wet (drenched and shivering were more accurate but less hopeful).

Now, they were crashing around a seemingly endless forest without, to Mary, any real destination in mind. Which was why, with an irritated dwarf, a very lost girl and four bickering siblings, Mary was trying to find something hopeful and absolutely failing. Then Lucy decided to start yelling about a lion.

They had reached a ravine that Peter (who apparently made all the decisions despite the fact that all of the Pevensies were crowned monarchs) was trying to argue was truly not a ravine at all and should really just be a stream with a deep bed which had Mary starting to question his eyesight. A second look at the "stream" made her question more than just that.

There was a large drop, enough to severely injure, if not kill, and the water at the bottom looked deep and fast. This was not a stream.

While everyone tried to talk some sense into Mr "It's just a minor stream", Lucy was apparently busy hallucinating lions.

"Oh look" the little girl had cried, "it's Aslan!", while jumping up and down by the edge of the ravine. It would have been such a shame, a truly tragic event, if the ground had caved beneath her darling, darling little feet.

And so everyone had stopped arguing about the definition of a creek vs a gorge and had now moved on to the much more legitimate debate of whether or not there had been a lion a few feet away from the group, a lion which only Lucy noticed.

"I swear I saw him! You have to believe me! Peter? Susan? Ed? Come on Ed! You know that he was there!" Lucy argued passionately, with such strong evidence supporting her claims, such as "you have to believe me" and "it was him".

"Lucy…" Susan, who was a least trying to be reasonable, attempted to convince her sister to drop it, "if, if it was Aslan, why didn't we see him?"

"Well, well...maybe because you weren't looking for him, Su!"

Mary sighed. The logic there was amazing. It happened all the time for her, objects simply not being there because she wasn't specifically looking for them. Edmund gave her a side look and snickered quietly. Maybe he agree.

Peter, valiant and wise Peter, was now fighting the good fight and trying to convince Lucy that "yes, yes of course, everybody believes that you saw something" while still getting across that "it wasn't Aslan, we would have noticed a gigantic lion" and "no, we can't go leaping over a ten foot wide canyon to make sure that it was him".

"At least it's a canyon now," Mary couldn't help muttering to herself. The dwarf on her left let out a hearty laugh but the siblings ignored her.

"Maybe we should just check it out?" Edmund offered half heartedly, "just look around the area where Lucy had been standing?"

"Ed, stop encouraging her!" Peter scolded.

"No! You always act like you're in charge, Peter, but you're not! You're not! I'm a queen as much as you're a king." And wasn't that such queenly behaviour, yelling and stomping feet. "Mary! You saw him, didn't you?! You must have seen him! Tell them you saw him!"

Mary was not up to this. Lucy was staring at her with wide eyes, trying to look cute, Edmund looked undecided and Peter and Susan were more than a little exasperated. "Well...I mean, the sun was shining in my eyes?" Mary offered. Lucy looked at her, motioning her to continue. "It...there might have been something, or...I don't know. Why don't we just do what Edmund wanted?" Mary questioned, anything to save her from giving a true answer.

All heads whipped around in Edmund's direction and by the look he gave Mary, he wanted about as much to do with this conversation as Mary but nevertheless explained, "Just look at the ground where you were standing. If it was Aslan, he was probably trying to tell us something and since we obviously can't follow him, maybe that's what he wants. Let's not argue though, since that's never what Aslan wants."

That left Mary slightly surprised. The younger brother had been the far quieter of the two and Mary hadn't expected such an eloquent, at least in comparison to her word vomit, explanation. The others must have been slightly impressed as well, for everyone was doing what he suggested. Lucy was combing through the grass, Susan was weakly pushing branches around and Peter was staring stubbornly at the other side of the ravine, standing in the exact spot that Lucy had seen the lion. Edmund seem slightly surprised by his siblings obedience but didn't question it and went off wandering the general area.

Well, when it Rome seemed like the best philosophy at the moment, so Mary wandering past Peter and closer to the edge of the gorge. Stopping a safe distance from the rather deadly looking fall, she bent down and started patting the earth, never having felt more silly. She inched closer to the side unconsciously and very soon regretted it.

She lent to one side a bit, patted the ground perhaps a bit too harshly, and suddenly felt everything give way under her. With a scream, she fell.

Mary wasn't really one for expletives but she felt like this situation merited it.

She didn't have far to fall but her landing was hardly ideal. Her ankle ended up twisted beneath her body and as her full weight came crushing down upon it, she heard a sharp snap and felt blinding pain. Another scream was torn from her while she felt her elbows dig painfully into hard ground, taking the worse of the remaining impact.

Peter, the closest to where she had fallen, appeared above her, leaning over the side of what had proved to be a rather unstable cliff. He let a happy cheer and jumped down beside Mary. Barely pausing to make sure she hadn't broken her neck, he continued along what Mary had only now taken the time to notice was a rather convenient 's joyous cry of "It goes a the way down!" came from around a bend and slightly down. 'Yuppy' was all Mary could think, the pain in her ankle coming through with a vengeance.

The rest of the group quickly joined the two. "Mary!" Lucy exclaimed upon seeing the older girl in her awkward position on the ground, "are you alright? Did you hurt something?"

"Here, let me help you up," Susan said while taking ahold of Mary's arm and pulling her up so she was at least sitting. "Peter, wait a moment, Mary hurt her...Mary hurt something."

"My ankle. It was my ankle that I hurt," Mary choked out, fully feeling the pain now.

Edmund came up beside Susan, squeezing his sister to fit on the narrow ledge. "Do you think you can stand?" his hands reaching out to help Susan heft her up the rest of the way.

"Um...I can try. It hurts though" Mary complained, feeling sorry for judging Lucy so harshly for her childish behaviour when Mary felt like stomping her foot right now as well. "Just...um, if you take my hand and... like that maybe" she mumbled, letting the siblings do most of the work. As they leveraged her up, more weight was put on the injured ankle and when they nearly had her vertical, she cried out as her leg buckled.

"Oh!" Edmund cried out as she tipped forward almost entirely onto him. Susan, though she had tried to help, couldn't take half of Mary's weight without any warning, leaving most of it for Edmund. They tittered close to the edge, Susan and Edmund knocking into Lucy, who had be hovering behind them. More than one person squeaked before they finally had stabilized themselves.

"Never a dull moment," Edmund quipped. Mary let out a breathless laugh and felt the hysteria return.

"Never a dull moment," she repeated humorlessly, completely lacking emotion. Oh, how she missed dull moments now. She closed her eyes, stopped her tears, sighed and opened her eyes. "Um…-"

"You," the dwarf, who had been silent till now interrupt with a grunt, "Boy, take her arm and let's move. Your brother is probably half way down by now and I for one don't trust that boy to lead himself home."

Lucy opened her mouth to defend her brother but Susan's sigh cut her off. "Leave it Lucy, we really should be going. Edmund, help her," she ordered and moved ahead. Mary could deal with that. It seemed fair enough. She raised her arm up and Edmund moved underneath it and took most of her weight and then they were off.

Well, 'were off' implied some sort of speed and really, snails could have beaten the pair. Mary had taken to doing a funny little hop-skip to avoid stressing her ankle and Edmund seemed unable to quite get into the rhythm of Mary's quirky jumps and either moved too quickly or too slowly. Overall, they were an apologetic mess, neither meaning to cause problems but both making it more difficult. The added factor that they were on a slim ledge with a potentially fatal fall as a consequence of really messing up didn't help much.

Eventually, they made it down and then up again and found the rest of the group waiting for them. "That most have been what Aslan wanted us to find!" Lucy declared smugly, "It must have really been him."

Well, the girl had lead them to a way across, Mary couldn't help but give her that. Maybe not the most convenient for her at least but a way. She had probably earned the right to a bit of gloating and a well placed 'I told you so'.

"I'm sorry we didn't believe you Lucy but...it's just been so long and, well, none of this is makes any sense. Next time, we'll believe you," Susan promised, looking torn between true regret for not trusting her sister and confusion over the situation in general. At least Mary wasn't the only one who found the whole thing strange.

The rest of the party mumbled apologies and promises of next time as well, Peter being particularly sincere. Edmund stayed out of it entire, having never really disbelieved his sister to start with. Mary and the dwarf (she really ought to have remember his name by now) were far more halfheart but nevertheless went through the motions. Lucy seemed placated and returned to her sunny disposition.

Susan took a crack at trying to secure Mary's ankle before deciding that other than binding it, there was little they could do. The pain had abated somewhat but the whole area was starting to swell and bruise. Mary sighed. And then sighed again. She had been doing too much sighing lately.

Once they had decided on a direction to head, Peter helped her to her feet and took his turn attempting not to kill them both while actually moving at a decent pace. Lucy had taken to singing songs about 'Old Narnia' that were pleasant, if a bit strange. Most of them were about spring, full of flowers and animals, both familiar and strange. They were certainly melodic but they sounded older, like from a forgotten dream or an age gone by. They sounds strange in this wood.

Susan eventually grow tired of Lucy's songs and sung some of her own, more modern, ones Mary recognised. Time passed pleasantly in the pleasant forest, with a pleasant temperature and a pleasant mood. Not even the dwarf (Trumpy was it?) could really find much to complain about.

This peace obvious couldn't last. After some time, they came upon a dry riverbed and walked along it in what was apparently the right direction. Eventually, it widden and a true river formed, a pretty dark blue and they marched along beside that.

It was at this point that Mary had her first encounter with the local wildlife. She had never had any problems with animals before, quite liking them in fact, but then again, she had ground up in London. The wildlife there consisted of stray dogs and a bird outside her window that always started chirping just that bit too early. This, this was rather different.

Peter had just handed her off the Edmund, having had enough of her sighing, which was even getting to her, when a bear appeared. If the lion hadn't been bad enough, now there was a bear. A really, goddamn bear was all Mary could think. The hysteria was definitely back. Why had she ever thought that a bear was better then the lion?

Mary sighed, again.