(Prompt 18 was a drabble on the forum. I've decided that ficlets must be over 100 words to get their own chapter.)
Thanks to all readviewers!
Prompt: Tapestry
She was by now great with child, and as it had been somewhat of a difficult carriage, confined primarily to her bed. But Netta was able to sew. Stitch by careful stitch, she worked away at a child's blanket.
"He will not be small forever," she said to any who asked why it was not an infant's. "Better to spend the fine work on something that will still serve him as he grows."
("Oh, call it a mother's intuition," she would say with a smile to any who questioned her surety of the child being a son.)
She hummed happily as she stitched—a strong Telmarine design of crows in a tree, but set in a lavish framework of red and green and gold, with a tiny silver apple in each corner. For the ninth queen of Telmar's Narnia, wooed by the king from among the common folk, was one of those who secretly wished for the old days. The nurse she had chosen for her son thought the same, as did one of the castle instructors.
Netta would not live to see her son's third birthday, but her gift to him remained, richly embroidered with all a mother's love. It comforted Caspian throughout his childhood, even as it grew worn in places.
Many years later, he would lay the blanket gently over his own newborn son, and thank the Lion who had given and taken away and given once again.