Narnia (movieverse) fic: "Snow Day"
Jan. 19th, 2009 12:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardTitle: Snow Day
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bedlamsbard
Fandom: Chronicles of Narnia movieverse
Rating: G
Summary: The first snow of the year covers Narnia with a light dusting of white, like powdered sugar. Gen.
Disclaimer: The Chronicles of Narnia and its characters, settings, situations, etc., belong to C.S. Lewis. Some characters, settings, situations, etc., belong to Walden Media.
The first snow of the year covers Narnia with a light dusting of white, like powdered sugar. With it comes a kind of collective release of breath; this isn't one of the killing snows of the White Witch, snowfall after snowfall without respite for days on end. The White Witch's snows had never come so softly or so lightly; this is winter alone, not the Long Winter come again.
Children are the fastest to forget, and their shouts of laughter rise up to the highest towers of Cair Paravel as they race through the gardens and across the lawns and courtyards, packing snowballs and flinging them at each other with deadly accuracy. Lucy's giggles seem to be everywhere; she has friends here, real ones, young enough that they don't realize that there should be any distance between a kitchen maid’s son and a queen of Narnia. Susan's glad of it for Lucy's sake; the rest of them have no such willful blindness. Edmund is with her sometimes, especially as fall drags into winter and the snows come thicker and deeper, but his duties are lighter than Susan's or Peter's. Susan finds the time -- a few hours now and then -- but she spends them curled up on various window seats throughout the palace, cradling a mug of hot chocolate between her palms as she watches the others play in the snow.
It's worst for Peter; no one will ever let him forget that he is the High King of Narnia. He spends all his time in his study or the salle when he's not in court. His hands are smooth with callus, his arms thick with muscle, but he gets thinner and more drawn, blinking a little when he emerges into daylight because he's spent so much time reading by lamplight. Susan sees him pause by Cair Paravel's tall, arched windows from time to time, a book or a scroll or a thick file briefly forgotten in his hands as he stares out at the snow-covered gardens below, Lucy and Edmund and their friends dark shapes against the white fields. Susan approaches him one of these times and says, "We could --"
Peter jumps, startled, and stares at her. Then he shakes his head and raises the file he's holding, papers bulging out of its sides. "We didn't get enough of a harvest put in because of the flooding in the lowlands," he says. "Unless we want to starve, we're going to have to import food from somewhere. Maybe Archenland, if the mountain passes are open." He stares out the window again, but this time his gaze goes straight past the gardens and towards the grey sea. "It's a pity we don't have any ships, I'm sure the islands --"
"Peter," Susan begins hesitantly.
"Su, we have to eat," Peter says, straightening the papers in the folder absently, then goes past her without another word, one of the great cats that form the Royal Guard trailing after him.
Susan stares out the window, smiling a little as Lucy tackles a boy satyr to the ground, but her thoughts aren't down below. Then she turns and follows her brother, because Peter's right: they have to eat, and grain isn't going to magically produce itself.
It's Edmund and Lucy who take things into their own hands. Peter's irritability is increasing by the day; he's spending equal amounts of the time in his study and in the salle, and all those hours leave precious little time for necessities like sleeping or eating. Susan has found herself awake at odd hours of the night, when the rest of the palace is lost in dreaming, and walked down the wide white halls of the royal wing to find a light glowing beneath Peter's door, accompanied by either the scratching of a quill pen or the thump-thump of his punching bag. This kingship is going to kill him if it doesn't drive him mad first, and everyone in Cair Paravel can see it. It doesn't stop them from bringing him their problems, though. For God's sake, Susan wants to scream, he's only fourteen, why can't you just -- But they're more than that now. Not just Peter, though he gathers the brunt of it. Aslan has turned them into more than what they ever might have been back in England, and they have no choice but to step into the places he's laid out for them. Susan understands that. Peter understands that. Even Lucy and Edmund understand that.
It does not, however, stop Edmund from catching Peter in the face with a snowball as Peter steps out of the great hall one day, distracted but with his arms free of books or weapons for once.
"Edmund!" he splutters, and Susan can't help it; she claps her gloved hands to her mouth and giggles.
"Su!" he protests, and manages to dodge Edmund's second snowball, diving sideways into the thick snow -- up to their hips now -- to pack a snowball of his own.
Susan shrieks in surprise as Lucy blindsides her, dancing out from behind a snow-covered hedge with an armful of snowballs. She stoops to gather up her own snowball, throwing it with the same accuracy she looses her arrows. For a moment the word deadly crosses her mind, then Susan shoves it aside with an effort that's getting less and less fierce by the day. They're all faster, they're all better than they ever were in England. And if this was a rock in her hand instead of a snowball, she could kill a man easily.
But it's not, and she determinedly doesn't think about the fact that one day it could be as she gathers up another handful of snow.
"Not the face!" Peter shouts, throwing up his arms belatedly and choking out the last word on a mouthful of snow as Edmund's snowball hits him head-on. He's sweeping snow out of his eyes with one hand and packing a snowball with the other when Susan tackles him down into the snow, listening to him yelp in surprise with some satisfaction as she smashes snow into his hair.
He rolls them over, stuffing snow determinedly down the neck of her dress. Susan squeaks in surprise and protest, batting at him with both hands.
Edmund pounces on Peter from behind, then Lucy piles on too, giggling hysterically, and for a few minutes the four of them roll around, laughing and shouting and getting soaked through to the skin.
"Get off!" Susan shouts, breathless. "Get off, get off! You're all heavy, get off!"
Lucy just giggles some more. Peter's fingers dance up along Susan's ribs and beneath her breasts; he determinedly ignores both Edmund shoving snow down the back of his shirt and Susan pushing at his shoulder.
Out of the corner of her eye, Susan sees a pair of faun legs pause briefly in the courtyard before hurrying on. She spares a brief thought to wonder what these Narnians think of their kings and queens playing in the snow like the children they haven't been for months, then shoves that aside too. What does it matter what they think? Surely they've earned this, at least.
"You're going to get frostbite," Peter's bodyguard Louhanna says lazily.
"No, we're not," Peter says, grinning down at her with Lucy clinging to his back like a monkey.
"Yes, we are," Susan exclaims, laughing despite herself. She swats halfheartedly at Peter's hands.
His expression is bright and lively, his cheeks flushed with cold and laughter. His smile is genuine and Susan finds herself beaming back, thinking, Oh, thank God, thank God, because she'd been starting to watch her brother slip away and she likes her brother; she doesn't want to lose Peter for the High King of Narnia.
It does not, however, mean she's going to let him keep sitting on her, especially when she's covered in snow and he's bulked out from the last time they did this, months of weapons practice adding muscle to his previously spare frame.
"Get off," she insists again, and pushes snow into his face to show him she means it.
"Okay," Peter laughs, "okay, okay."
Edmund and Lucy scramble off, shoving at each other, and Peter pulls Susan to her feet, dusting snow off the front of her dress. On a whim, she stands up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, and he looks a little surprised.
"As rulers of Narnia," she says, "I think we should abuse our power and get hot chocolate."
"That's not abuse," Edmund says, the words lost as Lucy whoops and throws a double handful of snow up into the air; it showers down on Edmund's shoulders and he lets out a shout of surprise, shoving at her automatically.
"Stop that," Peter says lazily, his body utterly relaxed. He looks like the Peter Susan used to know, and she's absurdly grateful to Edmund for that; if she'd known that hitting him in the face with a snowball would help, she would have done it herself ages ago.
Louhanna leaps up from her perch on the steps, tail lashing in the falling snow. She's a slim, handsome leopard, her fur a bright splash of color against the snow, and she regards it with the same vague distaste as the rest of the grown Narnians. "I'll go inform the kitchens," she says. "I'll have them bring it to your rooms, sire. Meanwhile," she adds, eyeing them, "I suggest you change your clothes."
Susan glances down; their clothes are soaked through, and she's starting to shiver. "Yes," she says, and Peter adds wryly, "You may have a point there."
There's a fire burning in Peter's sitting room, the fireplace a single elaborate piece of marble carved to look like a dragon; the fire burns in its belly, while its neck forms the chimney and its wings flare out to the side, supporting a mantle already cluttered with an assortment of oddments, gifts from various Narnians. Susan warms herself by the fire, reveling in the feel of the soft wool of the dress she's changed into against her skin, and picks up a carved wooden puzzle box, putting each piece aside as she works her way inside. She takes a pinch of the dried leaves there between her fingers and holds it up. "What is this?" she asks.
Edmund is sitting on Peter's desk, maybe as a deterrent to keep him from looking at the new message-cases sitting on top of the thick stacks of paper there. The ribbons on them are blue and cream -- important, but not urgent. They can wait a few hours. He raises his eyebrows when he sees the leaf, but shakes his head.
Lucy, sprawled out on the couch with her head on Peter's shoulder, springs up. "Oh!" she exclaims. "That's blazeleaf, it grows in the south. Tumnus says that people smoke it for fun -- with alcohol, sometimes. I think he said pear brandy specifically." She waves one hand. "It's supposed to make all your troubles go away, but they couldn't get it very easily during the Long Winter because it couldn't grow outside; people had to grow it inside in pots. So there hasn't been a lot of it in years, even though it would have been helpful." She grins in triumph, but Susan dusts her fingers of the stuff and puts the puzzle box back together, replacing it on the shelf.
Peter just shrugs. "Is that what it is?" he asks. "I thought it might have been some kind of tea." He tugs Lucy back down.
Susan wipes her hands clean on her skirts and drops into one of the big comfortable armchairs next to the couch, tucking her legs up under her.
Peter puts his head back and grins at her, his eyes bright and very blue. "About the grain shipments," he begins, and Edmund comes up off the desk and hits him upside the head. Peter twists around to look at him indignantly.
"We're not going to starve this second," he says, sprawling out in a second armchair, and before Peter can say anything else, the door opens and a badger comes in, carrying a tray carefully in her paws. Susan has a brief sighting of Louhanna just outside the door, along with another member of the Royal Guard, but neither one of the two comes in.
Peter gets up to take the tray from her, and the badger bows before leaving and shutting the door behind her.
The hot chocolate is sweet but not too sweet, a hint of bitterness leavening that, and a thick swirl of pale cream on top a contrast to the dark richness of it. Susan cups her hands around her mug and sips at it slowly, watching her siblings over the rim. Lucy adds a handful of chocolate chips and then a heaping spoonful of sugar, and Edmund is not-so-stealthily eating his way through the plate of biscuits, dunking each one in his hot chocolate beforehand. Peter just watches them benevolently and smiles, sipping occasionally.
"You have cream on your nose," Susan informs him.
Peter scrubs at it with the back of his hand. "Got it?" he asks, and she nods, not bothering to hide her amusement. "Don't eat all those, Ed," she adds, reaching for two biscuits, and Edmund makes a face.
"I wasn't going to," he protests. "I was just, you know --"
"Eating most of them?" Lucy suggests brightly, stirring her hot chocolate so enthusiastically that some of it splashes out onto her skirt. She doesn't appear to notice.
"No!" He pushes the plate away, towards her, and Peter glances down at it and raises his eyebrows. Fewer than half the biscuits remain, and one of them is half-eaten.
"You can have that one, Ed," he says. Then he looks down at the hot chocolate in his hand. "How much is this costing to --"
"Peter!" Lucy shrieks.
He raises one hand in apology. "I can't help myself," he says defensively. "Narnia's treasury is --"
"Peter!" Susan, Edmund, and Lucy all chorus together, and he makes a face.
"But --"
"Peter!"
Peter makes a face, but wisely says nothing and sits back, sipping at his hot chocolate. Lucy eyes him for a moment and then says, "Did you hear about Galatea? She's a centauress, she works in the kitchens, she's the one that makes those fabulous cakes -- anyway, she's going to have a baby." She beams around at them.
Edmund coughs. "A baby?" he says. "Wait, isn't Galatea Oreius's wife?"
"No, that's Graecina," Lucy informs him. "And she's with the palace guard, she's an archer. She's teaching me how to shoot. A baby!" she says again, sounding utterly thrilled. "Unless Ismene's baby is born first, Galatea's baby will be the first one born in Cair Paravel."
Edmund looks as blank as Susan feels. "Who's Ismene?" he asks, but it's Peter who answers.
"She's a tigress in the Royal Guard," he says, "but I didn't know she was expecting. I'll have to give her some kind of bonus," he adds thoughtfully.
"Why are you the only one with a bodyguard?" Edmund says.
"Because I'm the only one someone's tried to kill?" Peter offers up, shrugging. "Although you're right, you should probably get one too, I'll talk to Louhanna --"
"Edmund!" Susan hisses, and he says defensively, "I was just asking."
Lucy, watching them, says in a rush, "Will we see Father Christmas again?" and that gets their attention.
"I don't know, Lu," Peter says, but his smile is easy and he leans back, grinning around at them, and they don't talk about anything relating to the ruling of Narnia for the rest of the afternoon.
When they finally get up to leave, their mugs are empty and the biscuits have been demolished and Susan is almost giddy with relief. Peter sees their younger siblings off at the door, then traps Susan against the frame before she can follow them, his arms brace on either side of her shoulders.
"Did you put them up to that, Su?" he asks.
"I didn't have to," Susan tells him. "You've been working yourself into knots, and everyone in Cair Paravel can see it. Ed and Lu aren't blind, you know."
"No," Peter agrees.
She reaches up and cups his cheek in her hand; Peter turns his face into her palm, smiling a little, mellowed and soft around edges that have been growing sharper and sharper for months now. "Thank you, though," he says. "I think I needed that."
"Peter," Susan says, "everyone needed that." She stands up on tiptoe and kisses his cheek -- Peter has shot up four inches since they arrived in Narnia -- and then slips under his arm and out into the hall, leaving him smiling after her before he shuts the door with a soft click.
Louhanna and the other guard, a big tiger with half his tail missing from the battle with the White Witch, are sprawled outside Peter's door, and Susan steps carefully around them as she heads down to her own rooms.
"The whole of Cair Paravel thanks you," Louhanna calls after Susan, raising her head from her paws.
"Thank Edmund," Susan says, turning to look over her shoulder. "He's the one that threw the snowball."
"Oh," Louhanna says, "we did." She grins, her teeth white and very sharp-looking, and Susan smiles back before she goes into her own room.
Someone has lit the fire in her sitting room, and she crosses the room to pick up a book of Narnian fairy tales from her desk and curl up on the window seat, a little chill leaching through the thick glass. Outside, it's started snowing again.
Author:
bedlamsbardFandom: Chronicles of Narnia movieverse
Rating: G
Summary: The first snow of the year covers Narnia with a light dusting of white, like powdered sugar. Gen.
Disclaimer: The Chronicles of Narnia and its characters, settings, situations, etc., belong to C.S. Lewis. Some characters, settings, situations, etc., belong to Walden Media.
The first snow of the year covers Narnia with a light dusting of white, like powdered sugar. With it comes a kind of collective release of breath; this isn't one of the killing snows of the White Witch, snowfall after snowfall without respite for days on end. The White Witch's snows had never come so softly or so lightly; this is winter alone, not the Long Winter come again.
Children are the fastest to forget, and their shouts of laughter rise up to the highest towers of Cair Paravel as they race through the gardens and across the lawns and courtyards, packing snowballs and flinging them at each other with deadly accuracy. Lucy's giggles seem to be everywhere; she has friends here, real ones, young enough that they don't realize that there should be any distance between a kitchen maid’s son and a queen of Narnia. Susan's glad of it for Lucy's sake; the rest of them have no such willful blindness. Edmund is with her sometimes, especially as fall drags into winter and the snows come thicker and deeper, but his duties are lighter than Susan's or Peter's. Susan finds the time -- a few hours now and then -- but she spends them curled up on various window seats throughout the palace, cradling a mug of hot chocolate between her palms as she watches the others play in the snow.
It's worst for Peter; no one will ever let him forget that he is the High King of Narnia. He spends all his time in his study or the salle when he's not in court. His hands are smooth with callus, his arms thick with muscle, but he gets thinner and more drawn, blinking a little when he emerges into daylight because he's spent so much time reading by lamplight. Susan sees him pause by Cair Paravel's tall, arched windows from time to time, a book or a scroll or a thick file briefly forgotten in his hands as he stares out at the snow-covered gardens below, Lucy and Edmund and their friends dark shapes against the white fields. Susan approaches him one of these times and says, "We could --"
Peter jumps, startled, and stares at her. Then he shakes his head and raises the file he's holding, papers bulging out of its sides. "We didn't get enough of a harvest put in because of the flooding in the lowlands," he says. "Unless we want to starve, we're going to have to import food from somewhere. Maybe Archenland, if the mountain passes are open." He stares out the window again, but this time his gaze goes straight past the gardens and towards the grey sea. "It's a pity we don't have any ships, I'm sure the islands --"
"Peter," Susan begins hesitantly.
"Su, we have to eat," Peter says, straightening the papers in the folder absently, then goes past her without another word, one of the great cats that form the Royal Guard trailing after him.
Susan stares out the window, smiling a little as Lucy tackles a boy satyr to the ground, but her thoughts aren't down below. Then she turns and follows her brother, because Peter's right: they have to eat, and grain isn't going to magically produce itself.
It's Edmund and Lucy who take things into their own hands. Peter's irritability is increasing by the day; he's spending equal amounts of the time in his study and in the salle, and all those hours leave precious little time for necessities like sleeping or eating. Susan has found herself awake at odd hours of the night, when the rest of the palace is lost in dreaming, and walked down the wide white halls of the royal wing to find a light glowing beneath Peter's door, accompanied by either the scratching of a quill pen or the thump-thump of his punching bag. This kingship is going to kill him if it doesn't drive him mad first, and everyone in Cair Paravel can see it. It doesn't stop them from bringing him their problems, though. For God's sake, Susan wants to scream, he's only fourteen, why can't you just -- But they're more than that now. Not just Peter, though he gathers the brunt of it. Aslan has turned them into more than what they ever might have been back in England, and they have no choice but to step into the places he's laid out for them. Susan understands that. Peter understands that. Even Lucy and Edmund understand that.
It does not, however, stop Edmund from catching Peter in the face with a snowball as Peter steps out of the great hall one day, distracted but with his arms free of books or weapons for once.
"Edmund!" he splutters, and Susan can't help it; she claps her gloved hands to her mouth and giggles.
"Su!" he protests, and manages to dodge Edmund's second snowball, diving sideways into the thick snow -- up to their hips now -- to pack a snowball of his own.
Susan shrieks in surprise as Lucy blindsides her, dancing out from behind a snow-covered hedge with an armful of snowballs. She stoops to gather up her own snowball, throwing it with the same accuracy she looses her arrows. For a moment the word deadly crosses her mind, then Susan shoves it aside with an effort that's getting less and less fierce by the day. They're all faster, they're all better than they ever were in England. And if this was a rock in her hand instead of a snowball, she could kill a man easily.
But it's not, and she determinedly doesn't think about the fact that one day it could be as she gathers up another handful of snow.
"Not the face!" Peter shouts, throwing up his arms belatedly and choking out the last word on a mouthful of snow as Edmund's snowball hits him head-on. He's sweeping snow out of his eyes with one hand and packing a snowball with the other when Susan tackles him down into the snow, listening to him yelp in surprise with some satisfaction as she smashes snow into his hair.
He rolls them over, stuffing snow determinedly down the neck of her dress. Susan squeaks in surprise and protest, batting at him with both hands.
Edmund pounces on Peter from behind, then Lucy piles on too, giggling hysterically, and for a few minutes the four of them roll around, laughing and shouting and getting soaked through to the skin.
"Get off!" Susan shouts, breathless. "Get off, get off! You're all heavy, get off!"
Lucy just giggles some more. Peter's fingers dance up along Susan's ribs and beneath her breasts; he determinedly ignores both Edmund shoving snow down the back of his shirt and Susan pushing at his shoulder.
Out of the corner of her eye, Susan sees a pair of faun legs pause briefly in the courtyard before hurrying on. She spares a brief thought to wonder what these Narnians think of their kings and queens playing in the snow like the children they haven't been for months, then shoves that aside too. What does it matter what they think? Surely they've earned this, at least.
"You're going to get frostbite," Peter's bodyguard Louhanna says lazily.
"No, we're not," Peter says, grinning down at her with Lucy clinging to his back like a monkey.
"Yes, we are," Susan exclaims, laughing despite herself. She swats halfheartedly at Peter's hands.
His expression is bright and lively, his cheeks flushed with cold and laughter. His smile is genuine and Susan finds herself beaming back, thinking, Oh, thank God, thank God, because she'd been starting to watch her brother slip away and she likes her brother; she doesn't want to lose Peter for the High King of Narnia.
It does not, however, mean she's going to let him keep sitting on her, especially when she's covered in snow and he's bulked out from the last time they did this, months of weapons practice adding muscle to his previously spare frame.
"Get off," she insists again, and pushes snow into his face to show him she means it.
"Okay," Peter laughs, "okay, okay."
Edmund and Lucy scramble off, shoving at each other, and Peter pulls Susan to her feet, dusting snow off the front of her dress. On a whim, she stands up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, and he looks a little surprised.
"As rulers of Narnia," she says, "I think we should abuse our power and get hot chocolate."
"That's not abuse," Edmund says, the words lost as Lucy whoops and throws a double handful of snow up into the air; it showers down on Edmund's shoulders and he lets out a shout of surprise, shoving at her automatically.
"Stop that," Peter says lazily, his body utterly relaxed. He looks like the Peter Susan used to know, and she's absurdly grateful to Edmund for that; if she'd known that hitting him in the face with a snowball would help, she would have done it herself ages ago.
Louhanna leaps up from her perch on the steps, tail lashing in the falling snow. She's a slim, handsome leopard, her fur a bright splash of color against the snow, and she regards it with the same vague distaste as the rest of the grown Narnians. "I'll go inform the kitchens," she says. "I'll have them bring it to your rooms, sire. Meanwhile," she adds, eyeing them, "I suggest you change your clothes."
Susan glances down; their clothes are soaked through, and she's starting to shiver. "Yes," she says, and Peter adds wryly, "You may have a point there."
There's a fire burning in Peter's sitting room, the fireplace a single elaborate piece of marble carved to look like a dragon; the fire burns in its belly, while its neck forms the chimney and its wings flare out to the side, supporting a mantle already cluttered with an assortment of oddments, gifts from various Narnians. Susan warms herself by the fire, reveling in the feel of the soft wool of the dress she's changed into against her skin, and picks up a carved wooden puzzle box, putting each piece aside as she works her way inside. She takes a pinch of the dried leaves there between her fingers and holds it up. "What is this?" she asks.
Edmund is sitting on Peter's desk, maybe as a deterrent to keep him from looking at the new message-cases sitting on top of the thick stacks of paper there. The ribbons on them are blue and cream -- important, but not urgent. They can wait a few hours. He raises his eyebrows when he sees the leaf, but shakes his head.
Lucy, sprawled out on the couch with her head on Peter's shoulder, springs up. "Oh!" she exclaims. "That's blazeleaf, it grows in the south. Tumnus says that people smoke it for fun -- with alcohol, sometimes. I think he said pear brandy specifically." She waves one hand. "It's supposed to make all your troubles go away, but they couldn't get it very easily during the Long Winter because it couldn't grow outside; people had to grow it inside in pots. So there hasn't been a lot of it in years, even though it would have been helpful." She grins in triumph, but Susan dusts her fingers of the stuff and puts the puzzle box back together, replacing it on the shelf.
Peter just shrugs. "Is that what it is?" he asks. "I thought it might have been some kind of tea." He tugs Lucy back down.
Susan wipes her hands clean on her skirts and drops into one of the big comfortable armchairs next to the couch, tucking her legs up under her.
Peter puts his head back and grins at her, his eyes bright and very blue. "About the grain shipments," he begins, and Edmund comes up off the desk and hits him upside the head. Peter twists around to look at him indignantly.
"We're not going to starve this second," he says, sprawling out in a second armchair, and before Peter can say anything else, the door opens and a badger comes in, carrying a tray carefully in her paws. Susan has a brief sighting of Louhanna just outside the door, along with another member of the Royal Guard, but neither one of the two comes in.
Peter gets up to take the tray from her, and the badger bows before leaving and shutting the door behind her.
The hot chocolate is sweet but not too sweet, a hint of bitterness leavening that, and a thick swirl of pale cream on top a contrast to the dark richness of it. Susan cups her hands around her mug and sips at it slowly, watching her siblings over the rim. Lucy adds a handful of chocolate chips and then a heaping spoonful of sugar, and Edmund is not-so-stealthily eating his way through the plate of biscuits, dunking each one in his hot chocolate beforehand. Peter just watches them benevolently and smiles, sipping occasionally.
"You have cream on your nose," Susan informs him.
Peter scrubs at it with the back of his hand. "Got it?" he asks, and she nods, not bothering to hide her amusement. "Don't eat all those, Ed," she adds, reaching for two biscuits, and Edmund makes a face.
"I wasn't going to," he protests. "I was just, you know --"
"Eating most of them?" Lucy suggests brightly, stirring her hot chocolate so enthusiastically that some of it splashes out onto her skirt. She doesn't appear to notice.
"No!" He pushes the plate away, towards her, and Peter glances down at it and raises his eyebrows. Fewer than half the biscuits remain, and one of them is half-eaten.
"You can have that one, Ed," he says. Then he looks down at the hot chocolate in his hand. "How much is this costing to --"
"Peter!" Lucy shrieks.
He raises one hand in apology. "I can't help myself," he says defensively. "Narnia's treasury is --"
"Peter!" Susan, Edmund, and Lucy all chorus together, and he makes a face.
"But --"
"Peter!"
Peter makes a face, but wisely says nothing and sits back, sipping at his hot chocolate. Lucy eyes him for a moment and then says, "Did you hear about Galatea? She's a centauress, she works in the kitchens, she's the one that makes those fabulous cakes -- anyway, she's going to have a baby." She beams around at them.
Edmund coughs. "A baby?" he says. "Wait, isn't Galatea Oreius's wife?"
"No, that's Graecina," Lucy informs him. "And she's with the palace guard, she's an archer. She's teaching me how to shoot. A baby!" she says again, sounding utterly thrilled. "Unless Ismene's baby is born first, Galatea's baby will be the first one born in Cair Paravel."
Edmund looks as blank as Susan feels. "Who's Ismene?" he asks, but it's Peter who answers.
"She's a tigress in the Royal Guard," he says, "but I didn't know she was expecting. I'll have to give her some kind of bonus," he adds thoughtfully.
"Why are you the only one with a bodyguard?" Edmund says.
"Because I'm the only one someone's tried to kill?" Peter offers up, shrugging. "Although you're right, you should probably get one too, I'll talk to Louhanna --"
"Edmund!" Susan hisses, and he says defensively, "I was just asking."
Lucy, watching them, says in a rush, "Will we see Father Christmas again?" and that gets their attention.
"I don't know, Lu," Peter says, but his smile is easy and he leans back, grinning around at them, and they don't talk about anything relating to the ruling of Narnia for the rest of the afternoon.
When they finally get up to leave, their mugs are empty and the biscuits have been demolished and Susan is almost giddy with relief. Peter sees their younger siblings off at the door, then traps Susan against the frame before she can follow them, his arms brace on either side of her shoulders.
"Did you put them up to that, Su?" he asks.
"I didn't have to," Susan tells him. "You've been working yourself into knots, and everyone in Cair Paravel can see it. Ed and Lu aren't blind, you know."
"No," Peter agrees.
She reaches up and cups his cheek in her hand; Peter turns his face into her palm, smiling a little, mellowed and soft around edges that have been growing sharper and sharper for months now. "Thank you, though," he says. "I think I needed that."
"Peter," Susan says, "everyone needed that." She stands up on tiptoe and kisses his cheek -- Peter has shot up four inches since they arrived in Narnia -- and then slips under his arm and out into the hall, leaving him smiling after her before he shuts the door with a soft click.
Louhanna and the other guard, a big tiger with half his tail missing from the battle with the White Witch, are sprawled outside Peter's door, and Susan steps carefully around them as she heads down to her own rooms.
"The whole of Cair Paravel thanks you," Louhanna calls after Susan, raising her head from her paws.
"Thank Edmund," Susan says, turning to look over her shoulder. "He's the one that threw the snowball."
"Oh," Louhanna says, "we did." She grins, her teeth white and very sharp-looking, and Susan smiles back before she goes into her own room.
Someone has lit the fire in her sitting room, and she crosses the room to pick up a book of Narnian fairy tales from her desk and curl up on the window seat, a little chill leaching through the thick glass. Outside, it's started snowing again.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-19 08:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-20 01:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-19 08:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-20 01:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-19 08:30 am (UTC)HEAVY LIES THE HEAD THAT WEARS THE CROWN. oh peter. oh lucy playing with the servants' children! OT4 ROLLING AROUND IN THE SNOW!!!!! HAAAA the puzzlebox, there it is. heh, i thought for a minute you were gonna have them all get high right then and there.
edmund eating all the biscuits! galateaaaaaaa, i love the story of pygmalion and galatea.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-20 01:40 am (UTC)i think it goes without saying that this is, like, comfort fic to the nth degree.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-19 10:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-20 01:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-19 07:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-20 01:43 am (UTC)...needless to say, the seeds of this were written when I was still back in snow-country.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-19 10:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-20 01:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-20 01:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-20 02:29 am (UTC)Peter is such a Capricorn, which mostly just makes me worry I'm projecting, because I totally didn't mean to actually make him a Capricorn.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-20 02:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-20 02:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-20 03:44 am (UTC)See zempasuchil's icon? That is the feeling in my heart right now.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-20 03:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-20 08:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-01-20 11:06 pm (UTC)