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Prompt: "Forgiveness is a form of voluntary suffering. In forgiving, rather than retaliating, you make a choice to bear the cost." -Tim Keller


Yes, this is far enough. Thank you, worthy naiad. You may withdraw. What? No, nothing of the kind, I assure you! I merely wish to be alone here for a time. Certainly you may stay a little ways off; I ask only that you remain submerged until I summon you for the return journey. Yes.

...there.

I do not know how to do this. Everything is still so new. The crown, the court, even the air up here is different somehow. And the sky stretches upward forever.

Should I even be doing this? Or will it make things worse? I do not know that either. But I cannot go on the way I have been. I cannot keep flinching at every blonde lady, every green dress, every hissing kettle.

I have spoken to others. I have called to Aslan, and received a measure of peace. I have made the choice, but it feels unfinished. All I can think of now is to speak directly to you. Were you imprisoned, I should be at the door of your cell, though all the council might think me mad.

But you are not imprisoned, and this is the closest I can come to where you lie.

My lady...but you were never really mine, were you? I was only ever yours. A possession. A plaything. A pawn. I will never know why you hated Narnia. Or perhaps it was my father that you hated? To bereave both him and his country twice, firstly by slaying their queen and secondly by ensorcelling their prince, a grieving young man still shy of twenty...

Is that why you slew her? So that, wild with sorrow and rage, I might make an easier target? My mother was wise and perceptive. Had you come to court and tried to snare me in the usual way a woman snares a man, she would have seen through you. Perhaps that is why.

Or perhaps it was her that you hated. She was your aim, and you succeeded. I was merely an additional prize, a feather in your cap.

Or...did you always mean to strike at me? When you struck at the hand that lay atop a royal cloak, did you think it mine? Was she a victim only of coincidence?

I cannot know why it happened, only that did.

You killed my mother. Later, your soft hands smoothed my furrowed brow. Your lovely eyes eased my pain. Your sweet voice sang of good things to come. You spoke of love to me, took my hand, and I came—I thought—gladly. But you had sunk your talons deep, and already I was half under your spell.

And such a spell! To bind memory and will so tightly that I should have not the faintest inkling of truth, and know nothing but utter devotion to my lady, save a single hour each night, for more than a decade. To say nothing of the other spells cast to sustain your underground kingdom and command the earthmen, in which there were no pauses.

Whence came my hour of sanity, then? Was it part of the enchantment's design, for cruelty's sake? Did the sheer power required to hold such firm control over so many things necessitate a daily respite for you? Or was it unplanned? A snag in your weaving, a thorn in your side...a mercy granted to me by Aslan, that one day I might be rescued?

I cannot know.

I will never know, for you are dead.

I cannot say I regret killing you, for otherwise you would have killed us all. But—hm. Hah. You know, I have never realized til now that you never told me your name. I suppose you would have had to give one eventually, if you were to be queen of my country as well as my heart. But in Underland, you were content to always be My Lady, the center of my life, the delight of my eyes...my seducer, my captor, my tormentor.

No more.

I thought I had come to forgive you. But do I forgive you? Can I forgive you? They tell me that I must always grant forgiveness to those who admit their wrong and ask it of me. What of those who do not? What of those who cannot?

Would you apologize to me, seek my pardon for your actions, were you yet alive? I think it unlikely.

I do not know if I can forgive you, my lady. But neither will I stew longer in fear and anger. For my own sake at least, if not yours, I am determined to leave you here in this watery black abyss. I may carry my scars with me back into the sunlight, but I will leave behind the wounds that caused them. My life no longer belongs to you.

Nor to me, in truth, but to my people and my King. You stole eleven years from them. I will not allow you to you steal more. Though it may take me some time, I will not be a man who cowers in fear of the dead.

My lady no more...farewell.