5. Taste is often neglected in stories. Write a story about taste.
The second Christmas in Narnia, after the hundred year winter, many Narnians sat around fires and told stories of seeing Father Christmas, the shock they felt that so quickly turned into joy. And of course everyone wanted to know what the Four had been given. The tale travelled from Mr. Beaver to Mr. Tumnus to Robin, and on from there. Soon all the woods and fields of Narnia rang with the story of the gifts—which included Queen Lucy's cordial.
Years went by, and those who were sorely wounded, who endured the tear of bone and muscle too deep for a drop to heal, or knew the fears of fever dreams, tasted the cordial. They had no words to describe the flavour of the liquid that slipped over their tongue and down their throats. "It's more than taste," one old Centaur insisted. "It has the smell of a flower-scented whirlwind, and the warmth of a pure sunbeam in summer in the stomach, once it goes down."
"It's more real than any food I've ever had," a Dwarf grunted, rubbing his side where a Werewolf's claws had pierced. "And it's not even solid!"
The Four left, and later the Telmarines came. The cordial stayed locked up in the treasure hall of Cair Paravel, waiting.
Waiting for the Four to return. Waiting for Queen Lucy's hands to open it again, and put it to work.
Many on the battlefield knew the scent of it, but not the taste. They saw drops of it fall on the wounds of their fellow warriors, and smelled the heady scent of life and wholeness—but few tasted it.
Lucy herself did not know what it tasted like. She smelled the scent more than any other, till she left once more—but she did not taste it.
She smelled the scent once more in the hold of The Dawn Treader—only Eustace said it tasted horrid. She trusted him on that as much as she trusted him on his opinion of Narnia. Still, she screwed the cap on and let it hang around her neck.
It hung, unused, for months. Indeed, it became such a habit that Lucy forgot about it—till they reached the last island and heard the song of the sun-birds.
There was something in their song that felt incredibly familiar to Lucy, like a vividly remembered taste or smell.
The water of the Eastern Sea brought it back again, and the liquid form made her realise that she was tasting, perhaps for the first time, the flame of the sunlight held in water. Stronger and stronger the taste grew—and she knew why others had not been able to describe it. It was real; it was the essence of food, of the energy that sustains, and of the light that makes most food grow, whether plant or animal.
It was a smell and taste she never forgot; though she never got to taste it again—not till she sat at Aslan's table, in His own country, and found all the real things as they were meant to be.