Thanks to all readviewers! Machina: oh, one was a drabble where Susan references the ugly duckling while doing Lucy's hair, which was unexciting, and the other one was a Last Guide AU chapter based on Andersen's On the Last Day, which was...more than I wanted to tackle at 9 pm.

And so begin the amnesties! The syllabication here is O-ry-i-li-e-li-a.


Amnesty 1: Tell a tale from under the sea—near Narnia or in the Dawn Treader's explorations, you pick.


It was a warm, bright day. The greatlight shone in the heights, and Oryilielia led her shoal to one of their favored plains, where the kelirinial grew thick and hearty. A little behind and just below the swiftwash—indeed, she had to be careful that she did not accidentally rise into it—she found a rock and sat in the midst of the arilorniae, keeping watch as they nibbled their fill.

And as they ate, she sang, a burbling (but then, all speech burbled in the water) little song of keeping fish, and of thanks for the heights that gave them a safe place to dwell. Occasionally an arilornia would bumble its way off from the shoal or toward the swiftwash, and she would gently hook the silly thing back.

When the greatlight stood near to overhead, she saw a strange thing coming along the plain. It was a great patch of darkness that moved quickly, following the path of the swiftwash, as though it were a shadow. But it could not be a shadow, not this close to the skin. Oryilielia knew as well as all seafolk that nothing so large could live in the void where there was no water to breathe. The strange white broadfish that passed to and fro each day, with huge side fins even larger than their bodies, were its only inhabitants.

The thing that was not a shadow crossed in front of her. She looked up.

There was something in the void, green like the darkness of the Ulyrie Wali just before the point at which descent became dangerous. The skin of the swiftwash split round it, so that part of the thing was in the water and part in the void. The top of the thing was like a deepstair tilted over, so that the short bars ran up and down instead of side to side. Above the deepstair there was a face. It was a strange face—the pale pink of sandy plains when lightset was just beginning to break red upon them. Surrounding it was hair that shone like the lightblood mined in the deeps to make crowns for the nobility, and the eyes were dark as the backs of eryoni.

She was looking at a girl, a girl about her own age, a girl in the void, and the girl was looking back at her.

Oryilielia's mouth fell open, and in that moment the great green thing had shot past her and the girl was gone, and she was left with only the feeling that something wonderful had happened. Yet she could not help feeling a little sad, too, for in that single moment she had come to like the void girl, and thought perhaps the void girl had liked her. But she had never even heard of a thing that moved along the skin, much less people that could live in the void, and she could not imagine she would see any of these strange things twice.

Still...if there ever did come such a day...she would like to see the girl again.