AN: Hey all I don't know if anyone is still here after alllll this time but I am back with this fic. IT was one of my first ones when i was a little kid back in the day starting out my account. I am updating it with this new chapter. Hope you enjoy! Read and review please! This was last updated 12-06-2005
Chapter 4
Reunion
The manor sat totally asleep in the still of the night as the clock struck past 2 o'clock in the morning at the Kirke residence.
In the pitch black of the night, Professor Kirke awoke with a start.
Unable to go back to sleep, he stood up and lit a miniature gas lamp on his bedside table, the single flame lighting his way as he felt around the dark with his cane.
He walked out into the dark corridor outside his unlit bedroom, tightening his house robe around his pajamaed frame.
His footsteps creaked the antique wood floorboards.
Not a sound or motion stirred within the still house or in the night around it, and the Penesvie children lay fast asleep in their designated bedrooms.
Passing by a slightly open door, Professor Kirke spied a dim glow coming from within it through the door cracks.
He pushed the door open cautiously, holding the small glass encased gas lamp forward and dimly wondered if one of the Pensevie children had gotten into a guest storage room and was also up at this hour.
He halted to a stop, his footsteps suddenly stopping their creaking wooden thuds as he saw a large and grand decoratively carved wooden wardrobe in the back of the room against the wall, a door slightly open and a glow emanating from within it.
He leaned forward and adjusted his spectacles for a better look.
It was the very closet he and subsequent children generations later had stepped through to find a whole new and fantastical land dubbed Narnia.
Professor Kirke blinked, he could barely remember the last time he was there, if he was ever even there, and what it was like, but slowly, he could recall a time in his youth when this closet had held a lot of meaning to him and his neighbor friend Polly. Before both grew up, moved away and apart and led separate lives.
He walked towards it and opened the door wide, using his cane to poke through the coats inside, pushing them aside to reveal the wooden back of the closet. Only to discover that...
There was no wood wall there...It was a doorway that only went further out into what appeared to be hilly grass plains and meadows under a clear blue sky.
Professor Kirke gasped and leaned forward, balancing himself on his cane as he suddenly felt unable to stand on his own.
Quickly hurrying into the closet without a second's thought, he stepped through and onto fresh grass.
He looked down. Suddenly his clothes were too large on him and he was wearing pajamas that had sleeves overly long going down and past his hands, the legs of his pajama trousers suddenly pilling up at his feet, too baggy in size now. The waist was too large on him and he had to firmly grip them up, folding them over and over until they stayed put.
His hands were smaller and more youthful, the hands of a young boy.
Digory looked around and saw a vast emptiness in the blue and green space before him.
He kept walking, until he saw a speck in the distance.
Then he ran and ran until it got larger and closer.
There, a girl with blonde hair down past her shoulders, a watery lavendar blue ribbon in her hair, and a nightgown slipping almost off and much too long for her slim form, stood on top of a grass hill, lone and looking down demurely as if caught off guard.
"By golly, Polly Plummer?" Digory heard his own youthful voice come out, it sounded so unfamiliar to him, he forgot he had sounded like this at this age, the last time he was in Narnia as a child.
She looked up and smiled weakly, "Digory? Is that really you? We must be dreaming. Or I must be. Except this feels too real..."
Digory gathered his courage and approached her, as if he were approaching a ghost.
"How did you get here? Wait, how old are you now? Last I checked, I wasn't a little boy, I was the dignified Professor Kirke."
Polly looked aghast, "I don't know how I got here... I just woke up in the middle of the night, I couldn't sleep. My closet was...lit inside so I opened it and now here I am. How did this happen, Digory? What is going on? We haven't seen each other in...ages. Why, I'm an old maid now! I've been living in London, and I've grown up since Narnia, lived lifetimes in...in..that place...the real world? Oh now that I'm here I'm starting to forget where I just came from more and more...It feels like we've been here forever..."
Digory eagerly gripped her arm, "The same is happening to me! I was a professor living on my own out at my uncle's old place next to your family's old home. Never married, devoted my entire life to my studies and research.
I have a family of children staying over I am housing but I suddenly...am forgetting my old life more and more and you're right it feels as if we've already been here our entire lives and that other...place...was just a dream I'm already forgetting...Polly.
We must stay here and never go back, we can never make that mistake we made the last time we were here together and go back and live out our lives and grow up there, where we could never come back here again, and where we stopped being friends. Let's stay here forever, as us now, I can't even begin to recall what was so important about that last place or what I needed to do there... What do you say Polly? Say, did you ever get married? Didn't you...the last time we-."
Polly quickly clutched Digory's hand and cried out, "Yes, Digory, we must stay here forever and never go back! And I don't even remember the real life any more Digory, I'm just a girl now, and we must stay here forever I am so glad Narnia opened up for us again."