Edmund risked looking askance at his mother and quickly regretted the choice. It wasn't that she was purple with rage, swollen to the appearance of an ogre, but the quiet set of her jaw and the slow pulsing of her the vein her temple showed her barely contained wrath. Helen Pevensie rarely reacted with pure anger, preferring to be gentle and understanding with her children while also rebuking their mistakes.

Edmund winced within himself, and rubbed a tenuous hand over his brow. This really wasn't how he had expected their first day back at Harrow to go. Goodness, they'd been on one adventure just hours ago. They'd just gotten back from Narnia, and here they were off again with the potential for Peter to be the father of a baby. A baby that most likely didn't really exist in England at all.

Peter's slight gasp caused both Helen and Edmund to snap to attention and pinion the young man with their eyes. Helen's hardened and she took a shaky breath to make sure that she didn't react badly, but Edmund felt his heart break and simultaneously rejoice. Peter wasn't crying, he had lost the distraught look that had marked him since they returned from England and the remainder of their time in Narnia.

Helen spoke harshly as she turned the corner of the road that held their home. " Peter, you better not think that you're going to get off easily on this. I know that your world was turned upside down. I assume that you were just looking for comfort and stability. But Peter, a child! How could you have a child? I could almost understand an affair, but a child?"

Peter turned towards his mother and with a hint of his old warmth, he enjoined, " How do you know that I am the father of the child? Moreover, how do you propose to ascertain that my prospective offspring has been born out of wedlock, madame?"

Edmund swallowed a laugh that half-choked him as it went down. Helen Pevensie's color fluctuated as the tides of astonishment and anger fought with each other, and suddenly she slammed on the brake. The hazy outline of their house was just before them, and Peter's eyes snapped to it. They narrowed even as his mother began a diatribe; and Edmund, even as he watched his brother, knew exactly what they were contemplating.

" Peter Pevensie, that little girl could only be your child? Professor Digory says he is almost certain of it, and you know the Professor: he is not one to leap to outlandish conclusions. Moreover, I saw the girl, and I am almost completely convinced."

Edmund interjected, " Why? Is she so singular that it necessarily appears that her patrimony must be established?" He then bit his tongue and tried to keep from laughing at both himself and Peter, who exchanged a knowing glance with him. A week in Narnia and already they were reverting to their old selves. Selves that had loved and lost, regained and then lost again.

Helen Pevensie exclaimed as she put the car into gear again. " Where have you learned to speak like that? Even the professor is not so archaic. And as for the child, every lineament of her features scream, ' Peter, Peter!'"

Edmund felt his heart rate spike and saw his brother grasp the door handles with a brutal strength. " Why? Does she have golden brown hair, not unlike Peter. Eyes of cerulean that are yet entwined with a red ring?"

Helen nodded and then asked, " How do you know how she looks?" She then became even more suspicious, " Unless, you know exactly what I'm talking about and you've been lying?"

Edmund ignored her and swerved to look at his brother's stricken features. " Pete!" He hissed, " It must be her. Somehow, someway, it's her."

Before Helen Pevensie could interpose with her inquiries, Peter flung open the door of the moving car. He was almost hit by an oncoming vehicle, but with a litheness that was Narnian born, he swung his whole body up and over the car in a desperate back flip.

Edmund watched his brother land on the other side of the curb and then saw him take off running towards their house. Their house that potentially held the daughter who had died in his arms only hours ago in their own time.

Helen Pevensie stopped the car and then gazed at her middle son. " Edmund, please explain what is going on?"

Edmund had assumed a contemplative mode and was currently thinking of the multifaceted ways that Aslan worked in their lies. " What is occurring indeed, madame, that is a true question. Is it only what we see in the moment or is there a parallel motion in many different realms? I must believe, through my own discoveries, that every occurrence is seconded by others in every other dimension."

Helen gazed at her son, unaware where he had departed to and unable to comprehend the difference in her children. They had returned from Professor Kirke's a year ago, and all that year they had been a little different; more mature and severe, but that could have been the effect that the Blitz had wrought upon them. But this-this contemplation and these actions of Peter seemed completely unlike them at all. She could not comprehend it.

Edmund bestirred himself and then, getting out of the car, he escorted his mother from the vehicle. " Come, we must meet a most welcome visitor to this world."

Helen Pevensie sighed and decided that for the moment she was going to let her son sail this ship. He apparently understood what was happening. She didn't.

Once through the door, they saw Peter standing between the archway into the sitting room. His form was straight, almost too straight and both Helen and Edmund saw that he was in pain.

He turned round once he felt their presence and gazed helplessly at his brother, his face coursing with the kind of pain that can never be described, and can never be understood unless it is felt by oneself.

Edmund reached out towards his brother and then inquired in a simple voice. " What do you need, Pete?"

He was quiet, his thoughts still unsteady. Then gradually, in a haltering voice, he began, " To know that I am not dreaming. That this is not a fluke. That she could actually be here."

Edmund nodded and then, deciding that he wanted to be near his brother, called out, " Professor?"

A rush of footsteps and the pattering of feet too light for the Professor greeted them. Lucy ran around the corner, her face flushed with pleasure and a light that had dimmed while she watched the life drain from her brother's face as she was unable to help him had returned to her features. " Oh, Peter. Come and see!"

She seized his hand and then pulled him after to the sitting room. She was confident, her long hair falling in slight waves. The youth that had died after seeing Narnia destroyed had returned, but only slightly. It was now mixed with the divine potion of maturity, and painted a picture far more lovely than the untouchedness that had marked her.

As she pulled him into the sitting room, he became aware of the largish form of the Professor sitting on a small sofa, his feet up in the air, puffing away on his pipe that carried the marks of Narnia. Susan was pacing about the room, her features a mixture of incredulity and pain.

She caught his glance and then responded to the unasked question. " Mum came to get us almost before we arrived at big school. I was-" and then like her brother she became the Queen that she had been. " I must confess that I was quite dismayed by this development. But I cannot deny that, that it seems to be in keeping with that word which was given unto us."

Helen Pevensie exhaled sharply and then glanced at her youngest daughter. In a conspiratorial whisper, she asked Lucy, " Can you speak as they do?"

" Certainly, my lady mother? Why would you doubt it? Because I am the youngest of the four or because I do appear to be a modern woman of modern principles?" Lucy would later admit to putting it on a little thick, but somehow it felt as natural to her as saying, " Jove."

Helen Pevensie threw up her hands and then sank onto the sofa beside the Professor who had watched the entire debacle with great interest.

Peter was quiet, but his eyes roved the entire apartment. Edmund followed his view and then inquired when he found nothing, " Where is she?"

Susan sighed and then pointed to the corner that was nicely situated to their right and rear. Peter remembered playing with his toys there and getting into several fights with Susan about having to share. But he pushed all the memories away, in fact they were flung from him when he saw the one who now inhabited his old haunt.

A little girl of about a year old, she shimmered in all the light that was suspended in the cell. Her eyes looked up from the photo album that she was perusing and immediately latched upon the man boy that stood before her. She tilted her head and glossy golden brown curls fell down her back in a tumbling of sunshine that caused the ormolu gleam to gild the room even brighter.

Helen Pevensie felt herself gasp as his son felt to his knees before the little angel. Seeing them together, and seeing the pleasure and pain that was caught all up in a web of joy and suffering such that no child should understand made her understand that there was no possible way that his child was base-born.

She was no bastard sired through desire. There was love in her every feature and she knew that this child had been conceived full of joy and pleasure and in the union of two entwined souls.

The little girl allowed her aquiline gaze to rest upon the woman who had been enraged and humiliated at her coming. Though she might not have had the words or the ability to express exactly what she knew of it, Helen felt her heart rise a little and her soul flutter as she realized that this girl wasn't exactly that.

However, Peter had taken none of these changes into account. He was still seeking looking for something that he had yet to see that sealed who she was. As her eyes flashed back to him hr caught the glimpse of crimson that outlined her eyes and signified her as what she was. A zephyr: eyes of blood, features of ice, and wings that could slice flesh as well air. And here she was alive and well, who only hours or days before, depending upon the time, had been lying in his arms, her blood turning heavy with death and coating his fingers.

He tried to speak but the words crumbled before they were built. Another attempt; another failure.

The girl smiled at him, the same smile that she had graced him with when she had said dying was something she could never regret. And with a diction that was faltering and quaint, she spoke:

" Father."

Peter felt his heart break, and as he saw her toddle towards him, he drew her into his arms in an embrace that was tight, he felt her fragile little bones shift beneath his grip. Loosing her slightly, he nestled his face in her downy hair and allowed her baby hands to caress his features. He felt his heart be undone, and before he could stop it, he started sobbing.

He sobbed out her name through an avalanche of wracking tears that refused to leave him alone. He felt her presence in a way that he had never been able to enjoy in Narnia. He felt the youth of her body, the beautiful trust given to him by Aslan. And even as he cried out her name, it was intermingled with acclamations of the God, of Aslan who had given him back this precious, inestimable gift.

He pulled her away from him, taking in the tears that also stained her countenance and sighed in the pleasure of her crimson cobalt eyes. " You know, don't you? You know exactly what he's done? That he's given you back to me?"

She grinned, a baby's grin, but with every memory of the many times that she had smiled at him: encouragingly, laughingly, painfully. Willingly, even as she died for him, the one who had abandoned.

" I don't deserve this. But I'm so happy that I have you back, my darling girl." And Peter pulled her into his arms again, cradling her as befitted her little back. He caressed her back and shifted only slightly when he felt nubile ghosts of her wings. She was still a fledgling, he thought wryly. Before long, she would be sprouting her wing, and her juvenile flights would be filling the sky. Five years, his heart screamed, five years and the zephyr would be revealed.

He swore that he would embrace every year she had as a human, and he swore that he would protect her when her wings marked her as a freak in this twisted world.

Professor Kirke came a quiet huff, but it was all that was needed to cause Peter to come to his senses. " My dear Peter, I think that it behooves you to explain circumstances. To your mother, and to me. Though I've no doubt she is yours, I should like know how she came to be. A child that is. I am intimately aware of the processes of procreation."

Lucy giggled and then quickly refrained when she saw her mother's outraged look. Susan exchanged a look with her and nodded, agreeing that it was quite humorous.

Peter exhaled slightly and then pulled his little girl into his arms. " Right. Come along, Mum. It's quite a story and you'll want tea with it."

Helen Pevensie sighed and decided to drain her entire cup of tea before she could even attempt to make a reply to her children's preposterous stories. That seemed so true and real, especially when the Professor backed them up with his own experiences.

Their very accounts of Aslan almost convinced her. Their inability to completely describe and explain all that he meant to them and all that he had done for them, and her own soul's dependance upon God, caused her to be able to discern the truth, however impossible, in all that they said.

But the final act that convinced her was when they were speaking of the Lion and the details of his children. Peter had said the name Bacchus and was speaking of how he had blessed Narnia at Aslan's behest, when the child stirred up and then exclaimed, " My uncle." And then she grew sad and held her father's gaze.

Peter pulled her close to her and said in a soothing voice, " He's very happy to bless Narnia again. But he says he misses you. Says he misses how you flew over the trees and the seas. How you were both Terra and Marina to him. Says he misses your fights with your mother." Her eyes clouded over and Helen Pevensie knew that that this child could not hide what was so true and that she was saddened by the loss of time with her uncle.

Helen finally spoke as she took in all they said, " I believe you. It's too preposterous not to. Indeed, everything inside of me says that it must be impossible, but that's the very reason that it is real."

Professor Digory gave her an approving smile. " Quite right, ma'am. The more impossible, the more likely to be true. As Aristotle says, if the most impossible has occurred what was less must be possible as well."

Lucy inquired, her face alight with interest. " What was the most impossible thing, Professor?"

" The occurrence of this child. There is no doubt that she is Peter's. Yet he was never with any woman, and unless you would like to entertain ideas of him and my housemaids, it is impossible that she should be his children unless it occurred exactly as it is said."

Lucy was working through his reasoning while Edmund gave a slight smile that spoke of his approbation.

Susan, however, was not as happy. " But what are we going to do with her? It's not like you can be a father and attend Harrow. And I know that there is no way that they will allow her to room with you."

Professor Kirke stiffened and then looked at the assembled Kings and Queens. " Nonsense. Peter, could Edmund not room with you. You're in the same house and Edmund's a year ahead of his class. And besides I know the headmaster. He is a romantic underneath all his bluster. I think if you were able to explain it without explaining and then promise that she would be no trouble, I think that you might be able to pull it off."

Peter gave a sigh and then pulled his daughter into his arms. " I don't care about that right now. All I want is to relish this feeling of having her here, alive in my arms, and with me for however long Aslan deems." He gave her a tight squeeze which caused her to giggle. " I pray God that I have her for the rest of my life."

Helen suddenly sat upright and exclaimed, " Peter Pevensie, you've yet to tell me your daughter's name."

Edmund laughed and Susan and Lucy both seemed to find great pleasure in this omission. Even the Professor was excited for he had yet to know the name of this granddaughter of the Great Lion. " Indeed, High King, do tell us."

Peter gave a wry smile and then gazing at the little girl with all of the affection and joy he could muster, he spoke in an awe-inspired tone, " Lyra Petra, Princess of Narnia. Or simply, Lyra Pevensie. My daughter. My dear, dear daughter." And he pulled her to him once again.

And she said in a perfect quiet little tone, one that only he could hear. " My father. My father!" And she held onto him with a strength that was Narnia imbued, whispering this blessing over him over and over again. " My father, my father!"

So I will just say I am very sorry that I haven't written in a while. But I have been very busy. I will not be attending college, so hopefully I will have more time once I graduate. Though I might not because I am going to, Lord willingly, get promoted at work.

But this chapter gave me all the right feels. I really almost started crying when Peter reunited with Lyra. And I wanted to make it special so that he only said her name when he's very sure that he has her back at last. And that he won't ever let her go. I can't promise that it will be all magical and mystical through the rest of the story. She is a baby, though she has all her old memories. There will definitely be some fun with that. Oh, and there was a little bit of foreshadowing in this chapter. Comment if you figured out what it was.

Love you all,

Living for Christ,

Jetta Lee