Prompt: One of the followers of Narnia is called mad/insane.
Sisters are supposed to be the best of friends. They're supposed to shop together, study together, and tell each other everything. It's almost wrong if they aren't.
We used to be like that, Lucy and I. Now, it's all gone—and it breaks my heart.
Especially now, staring into Lucy's sparkling eyes. I don't know what to say to her ridiculous proposals sometimes, much as I love her. Tonight, an excuse is the best I can come up with.
"I'm sorry, Lu." I turn away, taking up a pen and the paper for my essay. "I have schoolwork to finish and friends to meet tonight."
"Can't you join us for dinner just this once?" Lucy pleads, circling around my mahogany desk. "We don't talk about it aside from there and—oh you'd love to hear about what Eusta—"
"Lucy. I'm not going to join your medieval party one more time." I dip the pen into my inkwell, glancing up to meet her eyes for a moment. "I've got quite enough to worry about without hearing more about everything you still believe in. Not to mention walking across town to– where do you have it arranged?"
Lucy reaches out a pleading hand. "Susan, please… the professor will be joining us and I know he'd love to see you."
Lucy's ring catches in the light. I hide a wince and hastily bend over my work. The regal lion's head on the ring glistens like a flash of starlight.
"I told you, Lu, I'm too old for those games. Really, so are you." I place the pen on the paper and scratch out my name at the top.
Susan Pevensie. Why does that feel so empty?
"It's better to leave it be, before others find out and begin calling you batty." I meet her gaze for a moment, then look back at my paper. Whatever she says next, I ignore— and a moment later the latch clicks quietly. A soft sob drifts through the closed door, but I only dip my pen into the ink again.
I could have sworn that I saw Lucy's heart break that day. I'd said similar things before, but something was different that day. She seemed to finally accept that what I said, I meant.
And that was the beginning of our drifting apart.
Sometimes, I do remember Narnia— I remember the trees swaying in the wind, I remember training with bows and swords, I remember the starry nights looking up at the Leopard constellation.
But then I recall how many woods were at the Professor's when we went to stay there during the war. He had swords— wooden and metal— in that giant house, and also an old bow stored on the wall. And constellations… constellations are easy to make up.
When I think of that, it's hard to believe Narnia was anything but a game.
It sounds awful of me, almost as terrible as Edmund was that first summer, but sometimes, I really do wonder if Lucy and the others are quite alright in the head. It's for their own good that they snap out of it.