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femgenficathonTitle: Out from the Shadow-Lands
Author: Cirolane
Fandom: Chronicles of Narnia
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Some gore in chapter 5. Spoilers for all seven books.
Prompt: 108) If I waited to be right before I spoke, I would be sending little cryptic messages on the Ouija board, complaints from the other side. -- Audre Lorde
Summary: “The morning was grey. When she looked out the window, it looked as if someone had forgotten to put the colour on this day.” After the death of her family, Susan tries to cope.
AN:This will be my first ever chaptered fic. There are 5 chapters plus an epilogue. Thanks a bunch to Elecktrum for the wonderful beta, without her this story wouldn’t be this good. I did not use the prompt.
(Chapter 1)
(Chapter 2)
Chapter 3:
She realized that she was crying and she hurriedly dried them before they could ruin her makeup.
Both of her brothers had grown to be great swordsmen. In the end, the two of them together had made an unstoppable team until nobody dared to wage a war against Narnia. They always fought side by side, so one king’s shield was never far away to protect the other. Oreius had once said something about how her brothers fought, a quote she would never forget:
“Back to back, side to side. Each one was the other's greatest weapon and defence, both on the field and off. And so they balanced each other.”
She counted herself lucky that she hadn’t had to watch that many battles or fights. But she had gone to watch Peter and Edmund practice, something they did every morning. In later years, when they were both adults, their matches were something to be seen. When they fought together against their teachers, it was beautiful to watch. Their swordplay looked like a complicated dance that only they knew the steps of. She would almost call it art.
When they returned to England she knew that sword fighting was probably one of the things they missed the most. It had become a passion for the both of them, a way to get all stress out of their bodies.
She had her own way of working off her pent-up emotions. When she got tired and angry she would go for a swim. She could spend hours in the ocean just gliding through the water. The feel of all her muscles working and stretching always got her into a good mood. She always got more energy after an hour in the sea. Sadly she hadn’t gotten to swim much after they got back. One of the reasons was because it brought back too many memories, and also there were no lake near by the Professor’s house.
Susan never directly asked, but she thought that Lucy’s way of coping with stress was taking her horse out for a long ride, or spending time in her garden. Lucy could spend hours soaked in mud and earth taking care of her flowers. Her garden grew to be big and beautiful. Lucy’s garden had become a place were the four of them could just relax. Ed would go there to read, and Peter would go there to hide. He thought it was an excellent hiding place, but of course, the whole castle knew he would go there. They would leave him alone anyway, because whenever the High King went to the garden they knew he needed a break. Susan herself would go there for the peace and quiet, or to listen to the birds sing.
So when they returned back here to England, all these ways of coping were taken away from them. They were in this stressful situation and they didn’t have their usual tools to help them handle it.
There was no lake were she could swim off the tension, there were no swords that Peter and Edmund could clash together and use to fight off the aggression with, and there was no horse Lucy could take out for an energizing run. And Mrs. Mcready wouldn’t even let Lucy touch her garden with a ten- foot pole. So without their tools of handling stress, they felt frustrated and lost.
Susan walked around Peter and Edmund’s room and realized that it had been a very long time since she’d last been in there. She looked beside the bookcase and blinked in surprised at what she saw: In the corner lay two broadswords and a bow with some arrows.
She recognized one of the swords. If she remembered correctly it had been a gift from Professor Kirke. The old man had tutored Peter through the summer and he had presented the sword to Peter after her brother had passed his entry examinations for Oxford. Peter had been ecstatic at the gift, so had Edmund. Since they only had one sword they couldn’t really fight, so it didn’t see any use until the following year when Peter and Lucy gave Edmund a sword of his own for his seventeenth birthday. She lifted up Edmund’s sword and remembered the first time she had seen it.
She was sitting in the living room; there were a couple of days before Edmund’s birthday and she had yet to find him a present. The door flew open and Lucy came running in.
“Susan! You will never guess what a perfect present we just found for Ed!” Her eyes were sparkling and her face was radiant. For a second Susan could pretend that Lucy was a queen again. Then Peter came in carrying something long.
“Well, what is it?” she asked, trying to conceal how curious she was. She had a feeling that it would be something she didn’t like, something to do with… That place.
Lucy looked at Peter and something passed between them, before Lucy nodded slightly. Peter un-wrapped the thing from the brown paper and pulled out a long sword.
A low gasp escaped her before she could stop it. There was a twinkle in her brother’s eyes, so she carefully rearranged her face.
“What a pretty sword,” was all she said before she turned back to her magazine.
Peter sighed and Lucy’s smile wavered. “Don’t- Don’t you want to know how we got it?” Lucy asked. Susan could clearly hear that there was a story that her sister longed to tell.
She sighed. “Yes. How did you get it? It looks expensive.” Lu’s smile widened even more. Susan guessed that that was the question her sister had been waiting for.
“Well, you see, we were walking down London looking for a good gift for Edmund. Peter said that he wanted to give him something who would remind Ed about Narnia.”
Susan made a strangled sound. A shadow passed over Lucy’s face, but when Susan didn’t say anything, she continued.
“Then I said, that is a good idea, do you have anything in mind? He said it would be great if we could find a sword. So we went looking for an antique store. Finally we found one. And there in the corner it stood, Edmund’s sword!” she almost squealed.
Susan held out her hand to Peter in a silent question if she could see the weapon. He handed it over. The sword was heavy in her hand and while looking at it a name sprang to mind. She knew what Edmund would call it, because it looked like all his other swords.
“What number would this one be?” the question slipped out before she could stop it.
Lucy gasped, while Peter answered the question like it was a normal occurrence that she talked about Narnia. “I believe it’ll be the tenth.”
She nodded and continued to study the blade. The hilt had the same length, and the grip and detail was surprisingly alike the ones Ed had carried in Narnia. He had had many swords through their years as royals. He had broken them, or out grown them. It wasn’t always his fault, off course, once he had fought the Ettins and one of them had snapped it off with his club. So, while he always got a new sword from Peter and the Blue River Smithy, he always named it the same: Shafelm, (which ever number he was on,) the Blade of the Western Wood.
She shook her head out of her stupor and asked, “Was it very expensive?”
“Yes, well the price was a little stiff,” Lucy said. “But lucky for us, the clerk was a young man who thought I was very pretty…” The young girl wiggled her eyebrows.
“No! You didn’t?” Susan exclaimed, but couldn’t help smiling.
“Oh, yes. I used my sweetest voice and looked at him with my big blue eyes and asked if it wasn’t anything he could do to lower the price for us?” Lucy giggled.
“It was a sight to be seen, Su,” Peter said. “I was not sure if I wanted to laugh or- or- you know, vomit.”
“He was putty in my hands, Susan. I understand now why you do it so much.” Her sister said and flung herself down on the sofa.
“I do not!” Susan said in indignation.
The blond boy leaned back into the chair he sat in and said while closing his eyes, “Yes, you do. It’s sickening. And now you’ve gotten Lucy to do it too.”
“Hey! At least I got us the sword!” Lucy huffed.
That was around the time when Susan wasn’t home much. She would spend all her time with her girl friends or at parties. Today, she could only think back on that with shame. Now that she was standing in the middle of her dead brothers’ bedroom she could not understand why she did it. Funny, how the death of her family was the thing she needed to gain some perspective.
She mentally added the swords and the bow to the list of things she wanted to keep, before leaving the room.
She slowly walked down the stairs. On the walls were framed photographs that were Helen’s pride and joy. Her mum loved taking pictures of her four children. There were four pictures of each stage of their childhood. There were pictures of when they were all newborns, pictures of their first steps at one, then when they were four on their bicycle, then first day of school at six. Every two years she would frame and hang up a new picture of them on the wall. Susan thought sadly that there would never be any picture of her, Edmund and Lucy joining Peter at university.
When she reached the kitchen she was met by her aunt and her aunt’s husband, Charlie. She was enveloped into a warm hug by her aunt before she could even walk through the door. Aunt Anne’s eyes were red, a tell-tale sign that she had been crying. Susan kept forgetting that she wasn’t the only one who had lost her family. Anne lost her brother and his wife, a niece and both her nephews. Their eyes met and Susan could see that her aunt wanted her to know so badly that she wasn’t alone. But she was. Nobody would know how much her siblings had meant to her. She would always walk around feeling like three pieces of her soul was missing.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
TBC
AN: “Back to back, side to side. Each one was the other's greatest weapon and defence, both on the field and off. And so they balanced each other.” is a direct quote from elecktrum’s story: Heydensrun
Shafelm, and its history, and the Blue Rive Smithy are also borrowed from elecktrum and her awesome stories.
(Chapter 4)
Author: Cirolane
Fandom: Chronicles of Narnia
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Some gore in chapter 5. Spoilers for all seven books.
Prompt: 108) If I waited to be right before I spoke, I would be sending little cryptic messages on the Ouija board, complaints from the other side. -- Audre Lorde
Summary: “The morning was grey. When she looked out the window, it looked as if someone had forgotten to put the colour on this day.” After the death of her family, Susan tries to cope.
AN:This will be my first ever chaptered fic. There are 5 chapters plus an epilogue. Thanks a bunch to Elecktrum for the wonderful beta, without her this story wouldn’t be this good. I did not use the prompt.
(Chapter 1)
(Chapter 2)
Chapter 3:
She realized that she was crying and she hurriedly dried them before they could ruin her makeup.
Both of her brothers had grown to be great swordsmen. In the end, the two of them together had made an unstoppable team until nobody dared to wage a war against Narnia. They always fought side by side, so one king’s shield was never far away to protect the other. Oreius had once said something about how her brothers fought, a quote she would never forget:
“Back to back, side to side. Each one was the other's greatest weapon and defence, both on the field and off. And so they balanced each other.”
She counted herself lucky that she hadn’t had to watch that many battles or fights. But she had gone to watch Peter and Edmund practice, something they did every morning. In later years, when they were both adults, their matches were something to be seen. When they fought together against their teachers, it was beautiful to watch. Their swordplay looked like a complicated dance that only they knew the steps of. She would almost call it art.
When they returned to England she knew that sword fighting was probably one of the things they missed the most. It had become a passion for the both of them, a way to get all stress out of their bodies.
She had her own way of working off her pent-up emotions. When she got tired and angry she would go for a swim. She could spend hours in the ocean just gliding through the water. The feel of all her muscles working and stretching always got her into a good mood. She always got more energy after an hour in the sea. Sadly she hadn’t gotten to swim much after they got back. One of the reasons was because it brought back too many memories, and also there were no lake near by the Professor’s house.
Susan never directly asked, but she thought that Lucy’s way of coping with stress was taking her horse out for a long ride, or spending time in her garden. Lucy could spend hours soaked in mud and earth taking care of her flowers. Her garden grew to be big and beautiful. Lucy’s garden had become a place were the four of them could just relax. Ed would go there to read, and Peter would go there to hide. He thought it was an excellent hiding place, but of course, the whole castle knew he would go there. They would leave him alone anyway, because whenever the High King went to the garden they knew he needed a break. Susan herself would go there for the peace and quiet, or to listen to the birds sing.
So when they returned back here to England, all these ways of coping were taken away from them. They were in this stressful situation and they didn’t have their usual tools to help them handle it.
There was no lake were she could swim off the tension, there were no swords that Peter and Edmund could clash together and use to fight off the aggression with, and there was no horse Lucy could take out for an energizing run. And Mrs. Mcready wouldn’t even let Lucy touch her garden with a ten- foot pole. So without their tools of handling stress, they felt frustrated and lost.
Susan walked around Peter and Edmund’s room and realized that it had been a very long time since she’d last been in there. She looked beside the bookcase and blinked in surprised at what she saw: In the corner lay two broadswords and a bow with some arrows.
She recognized one of the swords. If she remembered correctly it had been a gift from Professor Kirke. The old man had tutored Peter through the summer and he had presented the sword to Peter after her brother had passed his entry examinations for Oxford. Peter had been ecstatic at the gift, so had Edmund. Since they only had one sword they couldn’t really fight, so it didn’t see any use until the following year when Peter and Lucy gave Edmund a sword of his own for his seventeenth birthday. She lifted up Edmund’s sword and remembered the first time she had seen it.
She was sitting in the living room; there were a couple of days before Edmund’s birthday and she had yet to find him a present. The door flew open and Lucy came running in.
“Susan! You will never guess what a perfect present we just found for Ed!” Her eyes were sparkling and her face was radiant. For a second Susan could pretend that Lucy was a queen again. Then Peter came in carrying something long.
“Well, what is it?” she asked, trying to conceal how curious she was. She had a feeling that it would be something she didn’t like, something to do with… That place.
Lucy looked at Peter and something passed between them, before Lucy nodded slightly. Peter un-wrapped the thing from the brown paper and pulled out a long sword.
A low gasp escaped her before she could stop it. There was a twinkle in her brother’s eyes, so she carefully rearranged her face.
“What a pretty sword,” was all she said before she turned back to her magazine.
Peter sighed and Lucy’s smile wavered. “Don’t- Don’t you want to know how we got it?” Lucy asked. Susan could clearly hear that there was a story that her sister longed to tell.
She sighed. “Yes. How did you get it? It looks expensive.” Lu’s smile widened even more. Susan guessed that that was the question her sister had been waiting for.
“Well, you see, we were walking down London looking for a good gift for Edmund. Peter said that he wanted to give him something who would remind Ed about Narnia.”
Susan made a strangled sound. A shadow passed over Lucy’s face, but when Susan didn’t say anything, she continued.
“Then I said, that is a good idea, do you have anything in mind? He said it would be great if we could find a sword. So we went looking for an antique store. Finally we found one. And there in the corner it stood, Edmund’s sword!” she almost squealed.
Susan held out her hand to Peter in a silent question if she could see the weapon. He handed it over. The sword was heavy in her hand and while looking at it a name sprang to mind. She knew what Edmund would call it, because it looked like all his other swords.
“What number would this one be?” the question slipped out before she could stop it.
Lucy gasped, while Peter answered the question like it was a normal occurrence that she talked about Narnia. “I believe it’ll be the tenth.”
She nodded and continued to study the blade. The hilt had the same length, and the grip and detail was surprisingly alike the ones Ed had carried in Narnia. He had had many swords through their years as royals. He had broken them, or out grown them. It wasn’t always his fault, off course, once he had fought the Ettins and one of them had snapped it off with his club. So, while he always got a new sword from Peter and the Blue River Smithy, he always named it the same: Shafelm, (which ever number he was on,) the Blade of the Western Wood.
She shook her head out of her stupor and asked, “Was it very expensive?”
“Yes, well the price was a little stiff,” Lucy said. “But lucky for us, the clerk was a young man who thought I was very pretty…” The young girl wiggled her eyebrows.
“No! You didn’t?” Susan exclaimed, but couldn’t help smiling.
“Oh, yes. I used my sweetest voice and looked at him with my big blue eyes and asked if it wasn’t anything he could do to lower the price for us?” Lucy giggled.
“It was a sight to be seen, Su,” Peter said. “I was not sure if I wanted to laugh or- or- you know, vomit.”
“He was putty in my hands, Susan. I understand now why you do it so much.” Her sister said and flung herself down on the sofa.
“I do not!” Susan said in indignation.
The blond boy leaned back into the chair he sat in and said while closing his eyes, “Yes, you do. It’s sickening. And now you’ve gotten Lucy to do it too.”
“Hey! At least I got us the sword!” Lucy huffed.
That was around the time when Susan wasn’t home much. She would spend all her time with her girl friends or at parties. Today, she could only think back on that with shame. Now that she was standing in the middle of her dead brothers’ bedroom she could not understand why she did it. Funny, how the death of her family was the thing she needed to gain some perspective.
She mentally added the swords and the bow to the list of things she wanted to keep, before leaving the room.
She slowly walked down the stairs. On the walls were framed photographs that were Helen’s pride and joy. Her mum loved taking pictures of her four children. There were four pictures of each stage of their childhood. There were pictures of when they were all newborns, pictures of their first steps at one, then when they were four on their bicycle, then first day of school at six. Every two years she would frame and hang up a new picture of them on the wall. Susan thought sadly that there would never be any picture of her, Edmund and Lucy joining Peter at university.
When she reached the kitchen she was met by her aunt and her aunt’s husband, Charlie. She was enveloped into a warm hug by her aunt before she could even walk through the door. Aunt Anne’s eyes were red, a tell-tale sign that she had been crying. Susan kept forgetting that she wasn’t the only one who had lost her family. Anne lost her brother and his wife, a niece and both her nephews. Their eyes met and Susan could see that her aunt wanted her to know so badly that she wasn’t alone. But she was. Nobody would know how much her siblings had meant to her. She would always walk around feeling like three pieces of her soul was missing.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
TBC
AN: “Back to back, side to side. Each one was the other's greatest weapon and defence, both on the field and off. And so they balanced each other.” is a direct quote from elecktrum’s story: Heydensrun
Shafelm, and its history, and the Blue Rive Smithy are also borrowed from elecktrum and her awesome stories.
(Chapter 4)
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