england / september 17, 1949
prompt: "chilly"
word count: 2,601
xXx
Lucy's knee bounced restlessly on the edge of the platform bench as her shoulders tensed against the nip of an unusually chilly September breeze. "How much longer?"
The Professor pulled out his timepiece. "Six minutes and change, it would seem."
"Two minutes later than the last time you asked," said Eustace flatly, and earned himself an elbow to the ribs from Jill. "What?"
"You needn't snip."
"I wasn't snipping! It's two minutes later than the last time she asked!"
Lucy laughed. "It's alright, I am getting a little restless. I think I'll take a walk around, if it's all the same to everyone else."
Jill shrugged, tucking one stockinged leg over the other and crossing her arms under her knitted school jumper, short brown hair fluttering around her heart-shaped face. "I don't see why we should mind."
Lucy stood and glanced briefly to the others—Aunt Polly with her pale, silvery yellow hair tied up smartly with a black ribbon, leaning in to say something to the Professor with her hand on his tweed knee, Eustace resting comfortably with his arm over the back of the bench, collar untucked and tie missing altogether from the school uniform he'd only half assembled—none seeming to pay any mind to the chill in the air as she wandered aimlessly away along the edge of the platform.
The quaint little country station was the nearest to Aunt Polly's house, where they'd all spent the last week together in a state near bliss, and Lucy would have enjoyed the view over fluttering green-leafed trees and sprawling sunbathed fields, too, if only she weren't so shivery.
It wasn't even all that cold, but the first hint of a chill after blazing summer weather always did seem to trick her sensitive body. That or something else had sent every nerve jittering of its own accord.
A little gust ruffled her skirt and bit through her thin sleeves as she crossed her arms over her chest.
"You're not nervous, are you?"
She spun to find Eustace behind her, pale hair fluttering loose around his ears, almost long enough now to touch his jawline in a distinctly Narnian style that often garnered odd glances from strangers, though he never seemed to mind.
"Of course not," she nearly scoffed in surprise. "It's just a little cold, that's all."
Eustace raised an already arched eyebrow and glanced around the sunny countryside station, as if in search of some winter stormfront he'd somehow missed between the cheery boardwalk and the bright blue cloud-dotted sky. "Cold?"
Lucy rolled her eyes. "Alright, maybe not cold, but it's windier than I expected, and I didn't come packed for school like some people."
Eustace glanced down to his light school jacket before shooting her an incredulous look, and reaching out to snatch her hand out from under her arm, her fingers frigid to his strong, warm grasp.
"Lu!" he almost laughed, taking her other hand and shoving them both into his own jacket pockets.
She giggled. "Oh, you're warm."
"You're ridiculous."
"If I'm ridiculous, what do you call vanishing away with magical rings into another world after a ghost?"
Eustace glanced sharply around the quiet platform, though no one else seemed to have heard her, only a few scattered families occupying the brightly painted benches along the station walls. "Well, when you put it that way—"
"It's simply glorious," she sighed wistfully.
Already they'd had a rather grand adventure, what with the ghostly apparition of a young man in Narnian clothes materializing in the middle of dinner that second night, and then the long talks over what they ought to do, all feeling quite certain that Narnia itself had called to them, and at last Peter and Edmund leaving early for London to dig up the Rings with which Aunt Polly and the Professor had had their adventures all those years ago.
It was a great deal more magic than Lucy had ever expected to touch again, and even the mention of it made her tremble as if the breeze really did nip with frost.
"I do wish you were coming with us," said Eustace.
She couldn't help but smile at the sincerity in his tone. "Me too."
All at once, Lucy pulled her hands out of his pockets and turned to tuck the front of his jacket around her own shoulders to a yelp of protest and a laugh, Eustace's voice rumbling into her back.
"Hey! This is mine!"
"And you're my loving cousin who simply couldn't bear to let me go cold when you're already adventuring without me."
Eustace scoffed. "You know we'll be back in the blink of an eye for you. And then I'll still have to go to school." His tone fell flat, as if the mention of school itself were a curse. "If there was ever a downer of an ending."
"But you'll still have the adventure," said Lucy, and this time it was more for his sake than hers, looking up from where she sheltered under his much taller figure.
He wrapped his arms around her shoulders from behind, squeezing a little tighter than he ought to have, a playful mix between a threat and an embrace for warmth, and whatever it looked like to the people around them, it was an image no one three years ago could possibly have expected from Eustace Clarence Scrubb.
How could they?
No one else knew what kind of casual familiarity a year spent together on a very tiny ship could afford even the most modern person. No one else knew what an effect the Narnian air could have, bleeding into the very core of your being, into your bones.
Lucy's hair fluttered into her face, the breeze rippling through the trees just opposite the wide swath of gravel and train tracks running alongside the platform. "I have such a strange feeling," she breathed at last.
"I thought you said you weren't nervous?" Eustace's voice came from close beside her ear, his breath brushing her temple.
"No, not nerves. It's… it's like anything could happen. It's like the sort of autumn morning Peter talks about sometimes, like you could find the door to adventure just around any corner. It all feels so close I could almost touch it."
"Touch what?"
"Oh… Anything. Everything. I don't know. It's almost like the feeling you get when you bury your hands in Aslan's mane, like suddenly all the world is clear and you could run up a mountain or swim a thousand miles or simply stand there forever and be perfectly and completely happy. Maybe it sounds silly to say that here, but I can't help it."
"It's not silly. I feel the same."
"You do?" She turned sharply, pulling herself out of his arms and turning to face him as the cool air plunged in around her, this time unheeded.
"Well, why shouldn't I?" He grabbed her hands again, almost involuntarily, an impulse so rare for the younger boy that she couldn't help but believe there was something different in the air. "I've felt odd this whole time, ever since our ghost vanished away without a word. Like I was meant to do something, or something was meant to happen."
"Perhaps that's what comes of seeing a bit of Narnia in our world," said Lucy thoughtfully, cocking her head. "You know, instead of the other way around."
"Mm… I suppose it's a little like when Caspian came through the wall to Experiment House."
Lucy smiled at the thought, the intensity of the knowledge that Caspian had been here, however briefly, under her own English sky, after Eustace and Jill's adventure with Prince Rilian almost three years ago. It was enough to make her lungs ache, the idea that they had occupied the same world again for but an instant. "Yes, I suppose it is like that. It makes you feel awfully different, doesn't it?"
Eustace looked past her for a moment, his voice falling off quietly as if thinking aloud when he did speak again. "Like watching ants in a glass case."
Lucy blinked. "What?"
"Everyone else." He glanced over his shoulder toward the scattered occupants of the platform. "It feels like they're somewhere else, doesn't it?"
Lucy's heart leapt violently with a pang of understanding, finally putting a name to the feeling that had been swirling inside her all the while. As if she were watching the rest of the world through a window, as if every other person in that station besides their little group were moving around in a bubble of their own, just beyond her fingertips.
Ants in a glass case.
She had known it on many other occasions, when she'd so desperately wanted to tell her parents or her school friends about Narnia, but knew they'd never understand. When, for brief moments, she had felt more like Queen Lucy than little Lucy Pevensie, thrust into a world that could never know her completely. Watching the ants in their tunnels, going happily about their lives while she saw so much more beyond.
Her expression must have shown she understood, because Eustace smiled a little, light flickering deep in grey eyes, a thoughtful, wild, almost bittersweet knowledge, and Lucy's skin buzzed with the odd and exhilarating sensation.
The possibility of everything, the magic so few others could see.
It might almost have been frightening, if she hadn't loved the unknown so dearly as she did. If she hadn't long ago embraced the longing and the loneliness that came with such brilliant and otherworldly adventures as she'd had.
"I wonder if that's what scared Susan away," she murmured suddenly.
Eustace watched her, the thought echoing into his own eyes and turning his expression quiet and thoughtful.
"She couldn't deny it, now," said Lucy, the faintest hint of indignance creeping into her voice. "If she'd only been there. If she'd only seen that. As if anyone could have looked into our ghost's face and seen anything but a Narnian."
"That's only if she didn't faint from shock first," said Eustace. "Then she'd claim she was just having a spell or something."
Lucy groaned. He was right. And she hated that he was right.
"Nevermind about Susan," said Eustace quickly. "She didn't see it, but we did, and I'm jolly glad we did. I was beginning to worry I'd never go back."
Lucy smiled, pulling her hands free only to wrap them around his middle, sneaking under his jacket once more and garnering only a sigh of protest as she grinned. "Well, I'm awfully glad you are. You have to tell me everything the second you get back."
"What else do you expect me to do?" he laughed, voice rumbling under her ear.
She smiled to herself as he readjusted his arms around her shoulders, turning to look out over the countryside beyond the stretch of train tracks.
The hum of Jill's conversation with the Professor and Aunt Polly drifted faintly to them from the bench, the younger girl giggling at something they'd said, and it fluttered in Lucy's chest just as if it were her own laughter.
There never did seem to be enough time to talk, just as they never seemed to run out of things to talk about, but as foreign as the rest of the world sometimes felt, it only ever seemed to deepen the camaraderie they'd found with each other.
Lucy had never known how desperately she'd wanted younger siblings until taking Eustace under her wing, and then Jill, though both stood taller than her now. She'd never known how much she could love a family when only half of them shared her blood. She'd never known how beautiful isolation could feel until she shared it with them, and she wouldn't trade it for anything else in the world.
Even if Susan didn't understand.
"What are you thinking about?" asked Eustace.
"How do you know I'm thinking?"
"Because when you're not thinking, you're talking. I don't believe your brain ever shuts up."
Lucy scoffed, but grinned nonetheless, laying her cheek comfortably against her cousin's shoulder. "I'm thinking… I'll be glad to see Peter and Edmund again. It's a shame they had to miss the last few days of our visit. I know you didn't see them nearly as long as you would've liked before term starts."
He only shrugged. "If it's for Narnia, I don't mind. I've gone without a lot more than pleasant company for the sake of these adventures, you know. I could've been eaten by giants, last time, or that snake. Or enchanted. And that's not even to mention the seventeen times we nearly froze to death."
Lucy giggled. "So that's why you're so good in the cold!"
"Well, shouldn't you be, too? You were there under the White Witch's winter!"
She smirked shyly, though he couldn't see it. "That was really only a couple of days. We arrived right on the eve of spring. And we had such fluffy coats with us from the Professor's wardrobe."
"Yeah, I bet that was the last time you remembered a coat in your life."
She gave an indignant scoff. "Well, I don't know why I should have to remember when you're so prepared all the time."
Eustace let go and pulled away, snatching his jacket back from around her.
"Hey!"
He grinned and ducked out of reach just before she could grab him, darting from one side of the platform to the other as Lucy bit back a little squeal of laughter and chased after him.
If anyone else at the quiet station shot them strange glances, she didn't notice.
No one else knew the thrill rushing through her veins, as if another world could lay steps away in any direction. No one else knew the desperate kind of abandon one felt around their friends when they understood what kind of magic was really possible.
Eustace slipped just past her reach and darted back across the length of the platform, throwing himself onto the bench where the others sat and leaning back with one leg propped up on the opposite knee just as if he'd been sitting there all along.
Lucy caught up and crossed her arms as he smiled innocently up at her, taking her seat beside him with a 'humph' as the others chuckled at their antics.
The shrill blast of a train's whistle announced its approach just before it came into sight, a shiny black engine puffing a trail of pale smoke as it rounded a bend beyond the veil of trees, its low, rumbling clickety-clack following a few moments later.
"Well, if that isn't timing," said Jill, gathering her suitcase and double-checking her other belongings.
Aunt Polly chuckled, tucking a notepad into her bag as Eustace leaned forward again to watch the engine approach, and Lucy's chest expanded with the lingering thrill and fresh excitement for the last leg of their journey to meet her brothers.
The Professor stood to stretch his legs, and Aunt Polly followed.
But Eustace simply sat motionless and watched the trail of engine smoke creep closer as the train slowed, the ground rumbling with it, his grey eyes gazing as if entranced by the creeping thing.
"Say," said Lucy, "you're not nervous, are you?"
"Me?" He turned back to face her. "I should think not!"
"Even if there are giants or snakes or enchantments?" she teased, and he shot her a dry smile, though it twisted rather more into a real one before he could help himself, the thrill in the air like another world singing between them.
"For Narnia? Anything."