Fic: The Gift That Keeps (On Giving)
Sep. 10th, 2009 07:02 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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narniaexchangeTitle: The Gift That Keeps (On Giving)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zempasuchil
Recipient:katakokk
Rating: PG
Possible Spoilers/Warnings: suggestive of intimacy
Summary: England in Narnia, or, By the time Christmas comes again Lucy knows exactly what to give.
AN: thanks muchly tobe_themoon for the beta!
THE FIRST YEAR
The first time Lucy has chocolate in a very long time, it is wrapped in fine paper in a cotton-lined box. “Do you know,” she says, “this is the first time I’ve had it since I can remember. I know I’ve had it before, I couldn’t forget that taste. But I simply can’t recall when or where.”
“This is from our furthest isle,” the ambassador says. “There, they make a bitter drink of the powder. We find it too strong for our tastes, so we add sugar. The King prefers it powdered in cow’s milk with sugar, or a solid piece eaten slowly with a goblet of wine.”
The heady taste of the chocolate, darker and stronger than she thought she could stand, is nearly intoxicating. She only takes one bite before she puts it away, for another occasion.
=
THE SECOND YEAR
The next gift she receives is several hanks of silk embroidery thread that she knows she’ll never use; she’s too used to the precision and fluidity of the paintbrush to settle for painstaking needlework. But when Christmas comes she knows exactly what to do.
_
Susan thinks it would be good to pick up sewing. Practical. She doesn’t like burdening the seamstress with everyday rips and tears. Everyone she asks to teach her tells her it’s not queenly, doesn’t she have more important things to do like listen to minstrels and dance with the visitors from Galma? Finally, she gets Mrs Beaver to teach her after much cajoling, because Mrs Beaver just can’t say no to her – she is Susan Pevensie whom she has known from Susan’s youth, for one, and for another she is her Queen. When Lucy gives her the thread Mrs Beaver rejoices, for she will teach Susan embroidery, a beautiful and dignified diversion for a Queen. Susan sighs inwardly and picks up her needle with sore fingers.
But all this frivolous embroidery ends when war threatens and breaks loose. She is occupied instead with maps and counts, strategy and calling on alliances. Not weeks later she is crawling through the brush of the wild Western Woods, waiting for Edmund to bring reinforcements. Lucy is already out among the wounded with her cordial but they need more healers, more surgeons, and Peter has just crawled over to Susan, a long straight slash in his thigh.
“Lucy’s gone,” she says, paling at the sight and at his pale face. “I’ll call her.”
“No, no, no,” Peter urges, taking the hand that reaches for her horn. “They’ll hear us and our location will be given away.”
“But Peter, you need help, you’re bleeding,”
“You can sew me up. Look, it’s not that deep,” but it’s far deeper than she’d ever like to see on him.
“I can’t, I’ve never –“
Firmly holding her shoulder and cupping her cheek, his eyes hold his faith in her, and, stomach in knots, she knows what she must do. She crawls over and picks up her satchel. The needle and thread are in the front pocket.
She can tell he’s trying his hardest for her sake not to shout when she pierces his skin. Susan is trying too, trying to remember Mrs Beaver’s patient paws, and after two breaths she watches her tired hands moving nimbly and capably.
_
It is like the hands of god held hers, she remembers, and she hardly thinks of pain every subsequent time her needle pierces flesh. She gives them life, at whatever cost.
=
THE THIRD YEAR
The next, a cold mountain night’s cup of tea that she holds with both hands till they are warm, and savors till only the dregs remain.
_
Finally, the tariffs have been drastically lowered in an agreement between Narnia and Terebinthia: enough to have black tea leaves imported, and so they celebrate by throwing a High Tea. It strikes Edmund as a little frivolous, the whole teatime tradition; even in war there was a regular tea with a spread of food. But none of them would think of actually objecting. Peter enjoys the ceremony, Susan the regularity, Lucy the sweetness, and Edmund just enjoys the tea.
For a while, there was a full embargo; they had to resort to equally expensive chai from Calormene, which was delicious but too spicy and soporific, more orange than brown in flavor. It sent them right to sleep. The Calormenes drink coffee to wake up, also strong and rich, but too sourly bitter for Edmund. For both coffee and chai, they add a lot of cream and sugar, and so it’s too rich to drink more than a little at a time, like chocolate (another import they only rarely could find).
No, chai has not gained hold in Narnia, but sugar certainly has, and the first step Edmund takes in trade negotiations is to ascertain a supply of the cane sugar grown on far Calormene islands. Trade is trade, and Narnia cannot afford an embargo just because of the barbarous institution of slavery practiced in Calormene and its island colonies.
There’s something about tea that reminds Edmund of – what? Childhood? He doesn’t remember much of that. Anyway, he can’t have actually had black tea then; Narnia has only drunk herbal teas as long as he’s known. It has only now became affordable to have more than a pound of tea leaves per year between the four of them – they’re royals and they live in luxury, but they’re not going to strain their budget for tea no matter how much Lucy loves it with cream and sugar, or how good it is with Peter’s favorite biscuits, or how much Susan loves its smell, or much it reminds Edmund of something he can’t put his finger on.
_
That winter, he brings a cup of tea to the window and inhales deeply as he watches the snow fall. Peter drapes a blanket around his shoulders, and he’s never felt warmer.
=
THE FOURTH YEAR
The next gift is a set of face paints from Lune. Both she and Susan receive them, but after putting them on Lucy shows the dryads who wait on her and they laughed to see her face so highly colored. “You already have pink roses in your cheeks,” a young crabapple said to her. “Why paint them on, so unnatural-looking?”
So while Susan painted her lips and lined her eyelids with charcoal, Lucy found that she could imitate these faces rather than cake more color onto them, drawing with eye-pencil on spare scraps of paper, smudging rouge for color, mixing powders with water to make even more colors.
When Lune returned their visit and came to Cair Paravel, he came with a set of oil paints and yards of canvas. Lucy gasps to see them. “But how did you -“ she begins, but he winks and tilts his head toward Susan, who giggles at Lucy’s side. “I sent him one of your drawings to show him how much you were enjoying his gift to us.”
_
She’d never thought herself much an artist, but looking at all the colors of the oil paints, she began to turn the idea over in her head, started looking at the way the light fell in the woods, keeping her eye on a scene to contemplate the color and shadow, noticing the visual impressions of distance, warmth, depth.
In the wood there’s a pool the naiads love to visit, where the cold water swirls around and the bottom is sandy and the weed clings to the banks, waving like red thick hair. One day instead of going swimming she says to her handmaidens (all dryads and naiads), “Please, go ahead and swim without me. I’d like to try something.” They giggle and cajole Lucy to come bathe with them, let them braid her hair, but she says, “No thank you, I want to paint you all while you play. I want to paint this little glade.”
She sits there by the edge with her oils and a piece of stretched canvas, and paints. It starts out badly but she works little by little and slowly gets used to the wetness of oils, how they blend and don’t blend, how she they’re not like watercolors since she can put more on top if she wants to fix something. It’s a struggle but in the end she thinks, in this corner of the painting she got the cast of light just right. And this naiad’s back looks like she is stretching, which she was. It’s perfect. She’ll go back tomorrow.
Lucy goes there again the next day, and the next, with and without the dryads and naiads, and sits in different places, trying different angles, moving forward to look into the pool, moving back to peer through the trees at the brightly lit glade.
She can’t make it every day; after all, she is Queen and has duties, but she tries to go somewhere to paint as often as she can. Somehow the oils don’t ever run out. Sure, she uses as little paint as possible, but it almost seems magical. She would not be surprised.
One day when she is sitting behind the trees looking at the way the light and shadows play on the water and flash through the brush, she hears a little splash, and sees something move in the water. She can’t tell what or who it is, her view is blocked by the undergrowth, but she hears a soft voice humming, sees flashes of curly dark hair. Yes, a curly head dappled in sun and shade. Moving in shadows quickly, behind that branch, a low laugh, alone, but who? but not alone – oh!
What kind of beast?
- a flash of pale skin –
Bacchus? A faun? She sees no horns but perhaps (she shifts to see better) perhaps it is one –
- and another voice joins, too soft to hear but lower, and she sees a golden head turned bobbing upon the water – two fauns? They are too gentle with each other for Bacchus to be near.
Suddenly (the dark head turns and pauses in a little window of view) she recognizes them (his voice a little louder, his strong jaw and shoulders, his freckled back) and her brush pauses in mid-stroke.
And she resumes, and she paints the bathers there.
_
Peter unwraps it from its colorful paper and Lucy is proud, and nervous. He looks and looks, looking more than smiling, and before he can turn his surprised gaze on her she hugs him, burying her face in his chest.
“It’s beautiful, Lu,” he say, quiet. “But isn’t it a little... it’s not like that. It’s not what it looks like.”
“I know,” Lucy says, giving and forgiving. “I saw.”
=
THE FIFTH YEAR
In the back of her wardrobe she finds the box of chocolate, years old now, and finds to her delight that, far from spoiling, it tastes even richer and more savory than she remembered.
That night she brings it to her siblings, and they sit together by the fire, shaving off slivers of the lump to lay on their tongues and let melt away. Peter and Susan have wine, Edmund and Lucy milk.
“I decided I didn’t need an occasion after all,” she says, and Susan smiles.
“I think it rather makes the occasion.”
Peter winks and raises his wine glass to Susan as Lucy leans back against her brother’s legs.
They stay up late into the night. Peter doesn’t remember what they talked about, only the cast of the firelight on Edmund’s flushed face, Susan’s bright eyes, Lucy’s head on his lap. Thinking there could be no one else, no one else he could hold like this.
Too much wine, really.
Waking late, he rushes to the stables in half-buckled boots with cuffs unlaced. The rest of the hunting party is already waiting for him, eagerness fed by rumors of the White Stag; he can hear their voices outside the stables. He calls for his mount, who is already saddled thanks to the attentive stable boy.
It didn’t used to be like this, he thinks suddenly as he shifts in the saddle, smelling the leather and oil. He doesn’t remember riding into battle with the White Witch on a saddled horse. And he doesn’t remember the last time he rode a unicorn, though he is High King. When they came to Narnia, did they carry saddles with them from the other country? Not, he considers, exactly.
He thinks of Susan’s needle and thread serving her better as a surgeon than as a seamstress, of Lucy painting both impressionism and portraiture for all of Cair Paravel, of Edmund the tea connoisseur, and thinks, when did our kingdom of Narnia change? It was different, before we came. The fauns’ wild dances are developing steps now. Maybe it was a natural consequence, after a hundred years of being driven underground, that some of the structure and richness of culture would be repressed and lost. When Aslan banished winter, when he brought us to banish winter, it was only bound to develop complexity and formalization with greater freedom and more practice. But he misses the wildness. He has made order and wellbeing his rule, but some days he wishes Narnia would have remained a wilderness at the barest edge of civilization. He wonders what freedom is.
We’ve changed it, and no one asks if it’s for the better, do they?
Peter does not recognize these doubts until too late, and they have already stumbled out of their world – their world, no longer their world, it would seem. The guilt haunts him, and he never tells, certain that this thought was what sent them back, what deemed them unworthy of every gift Aslan and Narnia had given them.
_
He remembers this: the glow that night. It wasn’t from the darkest chocolate nor the reddest wine nor the fire. It is something that stays with him, in Edmund’s pale skin, Susan’s bright eyes, Lucy’s warm hand, and no world or god can take that from him.
Original Prompt:
What I want: Golden Age fic set towards the last 5 years of their reign
Prompt words/objects/quotes/whatever: Pools, presents, needles, tea (any combination of the above)
What I definitely don't want in my fic: I'm fine with pretty much anything.
Author:
zempasuchilRecipient:
katakokkRating: PG
Possible Spoilers/Warnings: suggestive of intimacy
Summary: England in Narnia, or, By the time Christmas comes again Lucy knows exactly what to give.
AN: thanks muchly to
be_themoon for the beta!THE FIRST YEAR
The first time Lucy has chocolate in a very long time, it is wrapped in fine paper in a cotton-lined box. “Do you know,” she says, “this is the first time I’ve had it since I can remember. I know I’ve had it before, I couldn’t forget that taste. But I simply can’t recall when or where.”
“This is from our furthest isle,” the ambassador says. “There, they make a bitter drink of the powder. We find it too strong for our tastes, so we add sugar. The King prefers it powdered in cow’s milk with sugar, or a solid piece eaten slowly with a goblet of wine.”
The heady taste of the chocolate, darker and stronger than she thought she could stand, is nearly intoxicating. She only takes one bite before she puts it away, for another occasion.
THE SECOND YEAR
The next gift she receives is several hanks of silk embroidery thread that she knows she’ll never use; she’s too used to the precision and fluidity of the paintbrush to settle for painstaking needlework. But when Christmas comes she knows exactly what to do.
Susan thinks it would be good to pick up sewing. Practical. She doesn’t like burdening the seamstress with everyday rips and tears. Everyone she asks to teach her tells her it’s not queenly, doesn’t she have more important things to do like listen to minstrels and dance with the visitors from Galma? Finally, she gets Mrs Beaver to teach her after much cajoling, because Mrs Beaver just can’t say no to her – she is Susan Pevensie whom she has known from Susan’s youth, for one, and for another she is her Queen. When Lucy gives her the thread Mrs Beaver rejoices, for she will teach Susan embroidery, a beautiful and dignified diversion for a Queen. Susan sighs inwardly and picks up her needle with sore fingers.
But all this frivolous embroidery ends when war threatens and breaks loose. She is occupied instead with maps and counts, strategy and calling on alliances. Not weeks later she is crawling through the brush of the wild Western Woods, waiting for Edmund to bring reinforcements. Lucy is already out among the wounded with her cordial but they need more healers, more surgeons, and Peter has just crawled over to Susan, a long straight slash in his thigh.
“Lucy’s gone,” she says, paling at the sight and at his pale face. “I’ll call her.”
“No, no, no,” Peter urges, taking the hand that reaches for her horn. “They’ll hear us and our location will be given away.”
“But Peter, you need help, you’re bleeding,”
“You can sew me up. Look, it’s not that deep,” but it’s far deeper than she’d ever like to see on him.
“I can’t, I’ve never –“
Firmly holding her shoulder and cupping her cheek, his eyes hold his faith in her, and, stomach in knots, she knows what she must do. She crawls over and picks up her satchel. The needle and thread are in the front pocket.
She can tell he’s trying his hardest for her sake not to shout when she pierces his skin. Susan is trying too, trying to remember Mrs Beaver’s patient paws, and after two breaths she watches her tired hands moving nimbly and capably.
It is like the hands of god held hers, she remembers, and she hardly thinks of pain every subsequent time her needle pierces flesh. She gives them life, at whatever cost.
THE THIRD YEAR
The next, a cold mountain night’s cup of tea that she holds with both hands till they are warm, and savors till only the dregs remain.
Finally, the tariffs have been drastically lowered in an agreement between Narnia and Terebinthia: enough to have black tea leaves imported, and so they celebrate by throwing a High Tea. It strikes Edmund as a little frivolous, the whole teatime tradition; even in war there was a regular tea with a spread of food. But none of them would think of actually objecting. Peter enjoys the ceremony, Susan the regularity, Lucy the sweetness, and Edmund just enjoys the tea.
For a while, there was a full embargo; they had to resort to equally expensive chai from Calormene, which was delicious but too spicy and soporific, more orange than brown in flavor. It sent them right to sleep. The Calormenes drink coffee to wake up, also strong and rich, but too sourly bitter for Edmund. For both coffee and chai, they add a lot of cream and sugar, and so it’s too rich to drink more than a little at a time, like chocolate (another import they only rarely could find).
No, chai has not gained hold in Narnia, but sugar certainly has, and the first step Edmund takes in trade negotiations is to ascertain a supply of the cane sugar grown on far Calormene islands. Trade is trade, and Narnia cannot afford an embargo just because of the barbarous institution of slavery practiced in Calormene and its island colonies.
There’s something about tea that reminds Edmund of – what? Childhood? He doesn’t remember much of that. Anyway, he can’t have actually had black tea then; Narnia has only drunk herbal teas as long as he’s known. It has only now became affordable to have more than a pound of tea leaves per year between the four of them – they’re royals and they live in luxury, but they’re not going to strain their budget for tea no matter how much Lucy loves it with cream and sugar, or how good it is with Peter’s favorite biscuits, or how much Susan loves its smell, or much it reminds Edmund of something he can’t put his finger on.
That winter, he brings a cup of tea to the window and inhales deeply as he watches the snow fall. Peter drapes a blanket around his shoulders, and he’s never felt warmer.
THE FOURTH YEAR
The next gift is a set of face paints from Lune. Both she and Susan receive them, but after putting them on Lucy shows the dryads who wait on her and they laughed to see her face so highly colored. “You already have pink roses in your cheeks,” a young crabapple said to her. “Why paint them on, so unnatural-looking?”
So while Susan painted her lips and lined her eyelids with charcoal, Lucy found that she could imitate these faces rather than cake more color onto them, drawing with eye-pencil on spare scraps of paper, smudging rouge for color, mixing powders with water to make even more colors.
When Lune returned their visit and came to Cair Paravel, he came with a set of oil paints and yards of canvas. Lucy gasps to see them. “But how did you -“ she begins, but he winks and tilts his head toward Susan, who giggles at Lucy’s side. “I sent him one of your drawings to show him how much you were enjoying his gift to us.”
She’d never thought herself much an artist, but looking at all the colors of the oil paints, she began to turn the idea over in her head, started looking at the way the light fell in the woods, keeping her eye on a scene to contemplate the color and shadow, noticing the visual impressions of distance, warmth, depth.
In the wood there’s a pool the naiads love to visit, where the cold water swirls around and the bottom is sandy and the weed clings to the banks, waving like red thick hair. One day instead of going swimming she says to her handmaidens (all dryads and naiads), “Please, go ahead and swim without me. I’d like to try something.” They giggle and cajole Lucy to come bathe with them, let them braid her hair, but she says, “No thank you, I want to paint you all while you play. I want to paint this little glade.”
She sits there by the edge with her oils and a piece of stretched canvas, and paints. It starts out badly but she works little by little and slowly gets used to the wetness of oils, how they blend and don’t blend, how she they’re not like watercolors since she can put more on top if she wants to fix something. It’s a struggle but in the end she thinks, in this corner of the painting she got the cast of light just right. And this naiad’s back looks like she is stretching, which she was. It’s perfect. She’ll go back tomorrow.
Lucy goes there again the next day, and the next, with and without the dryads and naiads, and sits in different places, trying different angles, moving forward to look into the pool, moving back to peer through the trees at the brightly lit glade.
She can’t make it every day; after all, she is Queen and has duties, but she tries to go somewhere to paint as often as she can. Somehow the oils don’t ever run out. Sure, she uses as little paint as possible, but it almost seems magical. She would not be surprised.
One day when she is sitting behind the trees looking at the way the light and shadows play on the water and flash through the brush, she hears a little splash, and sees something move in the water. She can’t tell what or who it is, her view is blocked by the undergrowth, but she hears a soft voice humming, sees flashes of curly dark hair. Yes, a curly head dappled in sun and shade. Moving in shadows quickly, behind that branch, a low laugh, alone, but who? but not alone – oh!
What kind of beast?
- a flash of pale skin –
Bacchus? A faun? She sees no horns but perhaps (she shifts to see better) perhaps it is one –
- and another voice joins, too soft to hear but lower, and she sees a golden head turned bobbing upon the water – two fauns? They are too gentle with each other for Bacchus to be near.
Suddenly (the dark head turns and pauses in a little window of view) she recognizes them (his voice a little louder, his strong jaw and shoulders, his freckled back) and her brush pauses in mid-stroke.
And she resumes, and she paints the bathers there.
Peter unwraps it from its colorful paper and Lucy is proud, and nervous. He looks and looks, looking more than smiling, and before he can turn his surprised gaze on her she hugs him, burying her face in his chest.
“It’s beautiful, Lu,” he say, quiet. “But isn’t it a little... it’s not like that. It’s not what it looks like.”
“I know,” Lucy says, giving and forgiving. “I saw.”
THE FIFTH YEAR
In the back of her wardrobe she finds the box of chocolate, years old now, and finds to her delight that, far from spoiling, it tastes even richer and more savory than she remembered.
That night she brings it to her siblings, and they sit together by the fire, shaving off slivers of the lump to lay on their tongues and let melt away. Peter and Susan have wine, Edmund and Lucy milk.
“I decided I didn’t need an occasion after all,” she says, and Susan smiles.
“I think it rather makes the occasion.”
Peter winks and raises his wine glass to Susan as Lucy leans back against her brother’s legs.
They stay up late into the night. Peter doesn’t remember what they talked about, only the cast of the firelight on Edmund’s flushed face, Susan’s bright eyes, Lucy’s head on his lap. Thinking there could be no one else, no one else he could hold like this.
Too much wine, really.
Waking late, he rushes to the stables in half-buckled boots with cuffs unlaced. The rest of the hunting party is already waiting for him, eagerness fed by rumors of the White Stag; he can hear their voices outside the stables. He calls for his mount, who is already saddled thanks to the attentive stable boy.
It didn’t used to be like this, he thinks suddenly as he shifts in the saddle, smelling the leather and oil. He doesn’t remember riding into battle with the White Witch on a saddled horse. And he doesn’t remember the last time he rode a unicorn, though he is High King. When they came to Narnia, did they carry saddles with them from the other country? Not, he considers, exactly.
He thinks of Susan’s needle and thread serving her better as a surgeon than as a seamstress, of Lucy painting both impressionism and portraiture for all of Cair Paravel, of Edmund the tea connoisseur, and thinks, when did our kingdom of Narnia change? It was different, before we came. The fauns’ wild dances are developing steps now. Maybe it was a natural consequence, after a hundred years of being driven underground, that some of the structure and richness of culture would be repressed and lost. When Aslan banished winter, when he brought us to banish winter, it was only bound to develop complexity and formalization with greater freedom and more practice. But he misses the wildness. He has made order and wellbeing his rule, but some days he wishes Narnia would have remained a wilderness at the barest edge of civilization. He wonders what freedom is.
We’ve changed it, and no one asks if it’s for the better, do they?
Peter does not recognize these doubts until too late, and they have already stumbled out of their world – their world, no longer their world, it would seem. The guilt haunts him, and he never tells, certain that this thought was what sent them back, what deemed them unworthy of every gift Aslan and Narnia had given them.
He remembers this: the glow that night. It wasn’t from the darkest chocolate nor the reddest wine nor the fire. It is something that stays with him, in Edmund’s pale skin, Susan’s bright eyes, Lucy’s warm hand, and no world or god can take that from him.
Original Prompt:
What I want: Golden Age fic set towards the last 5 years of their reign
Prompt words/objects/quotes/whatever: Pools, presents, needles, tea (any combination of the above)
What I definitely don't want in my fic: I'm fine with pretty much anything.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-10 06:05 pm (UTC)Really, really nice fic!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-11 04:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-10 08:34 pm (UTC)Good job, overall!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-11 04:35 am (UTC)THE SUN NEVER SETS ON THE NARNIAN EMPIRE
Date: 2009-09-10 11:51 pm (UTC)susan sewing peter up <3
Re: THE SUN NEVER SETS ON THE NARNIAN EMPIRE
Date: 2009-09-11 04:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-12 11:18 pm (UTC)things i <3:
BITTER POWDERED DRINK INDEED
and after two breaths she watches her tired hands moving nimbly and capably.
Edmund just enjoys the tea
THE STRONG DRINKS OF THE CALORMENE INDEED
embargos! trade is traaaaade
or much it reminds Edmund of something he can’t put his finger on.
The fauns’ wild dances are developing steps now. Maybe it was a natural consequence, after a hundred years of being driven underground, that some of the structure and richness of culture would be repressed and lost. When Aslan banished winter, when he brought us to banish winter, it was only bound to develop complexity and formalization with greater freedom and more practice.
THIS. <333 Tell me more?!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-12 11:39 pm (UTC)I... don't really know where that came from? I guess I was just thinking about how a repressed culture sort of deteriorates but then when it gets unrepressed he develops, and maybe the wildness the Pevensies see when they get to Narnia is a temporary stage, a phase of cultural development. Like how in PC they turn into dumb beasts because they're treated like it, well under the witch the same sort of thing would happen I think, but only 100 years' worth instead of 1300 years. So maybe it's a natural development, rationalization, or maybe it's induced by the concepts of civilization the Pevensies brought with them and employed in ruling their kingdom. Either way, the only constant is change, and even in the Golden Age Peter misses it.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-16 04:05 am (UTC)Funny too, how the Golden Age that CS Lewis too is so clearly from Britain's past. ALl the best things live in the past, like we've just been declining since then. And Lewis was like Ctrl+Z history, Ctrl+V myths, voila Narnia! There's this dehistoricizing thing going on.
I was totally expecting you to throw the opium war into this fic somehow. XD
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Date: 2009-09-10 11:54 pm (UTC)This is really beautiful, Z! I love the the idea that the Pevensies brought order and civilization to Narnia, but that these aren't necessarily good things and that Peter longs for wild Narnia (because Peter would.). Also, the imagery of Lucy painting is just really, really beautiful.
The fauns’ wild dances are developing steps now. Maybe it was a natural consequence, after a hundred years of being driven underground, that some of the structure and richness of culture would be repressed and lost. When Aslan banished winter, when he brought us to banish winter, it was only bound to develop complexity and formalization with greater freedom and more practice. But he misses the wildness.
This is so sad, but so true, and not just of Narnia but of everything. *loves*
ZORROSUCHIL, YOU ARE MADE OF AWESOME. THANKS MUCHO FOR MAKING MY VAGUE PROMPT SO AMAZING. <333333333333333
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-11 06:37 am (UTC)<3333333333333333 thank youuu! eeeee, I am so full of grins now :D
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-16 03:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-16 09:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-09-11 02:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-11 07:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-11 04:55 pm (UTC)No, chai has not gained hold in Narnia, but sugar certainly has, and the first step Edmund takes in trade negotiations is to ascertain a supply of the cane sugar grown on far Calormene islands. Trade is trade, and Narnia cannot afford an embargo just because of the barbarous institution of slavery practiced in Calormene and its island colonies.
THIS FIC IS SO YOU. If I hadn't known you wrote it I would still know. <3 (ALSO where do they get sugar in the days of the White Witch? 'Cause the Beavers totally seem to have some,what's up with that?)
I looooooved this. I love the little hints of what they've forgotten, what they remember. Lucy painting! Susan sewing! The little glimpses into life at Cair Paravel and growing up as royals in Narnia.
The fauns’ wild dances are developing steps now. Maybe it was a natural consequence, after a hundred years of being driven underground, that some of the structure and richness of culture would be repressed and lost. When Aslan banished winter, when he brought us to banish winter, it was only bound to develop complexity and formalization with greater freedom and more practice. But he misses the wildness. He has made order and wellbeing his rule, but some days he wishes Narnia would have remained a wilderness at the barest edge of civilization. He wonders what freedom is.
We’ve changed it, and no one asks if it’s for the better, do they?
YES, this is it exactly, and I love that Peter doubts, that he feels guilty for doubting but he doubts anyway.
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Date: 2009-09-12 06:50 am (UTC)HAHA, somehow I manage to work colonialism into like everything, especially Narnia, don't I? *is pleased*
re: the Beavers' sugar: I'm going to say... beet sugar. I made this up just now, you can tell. (no but where do they get it, seriously? I can get jam but, butter? yeah, Narnia is a magical land. *handwaves*)
Peter always, always, always just falls short in his leaps of greatness, with no little deliberation. He is still the
Father of the ChurchHigh King but in the end he is only human, still something English.he denies Christ three tiiiimesokay so you can tell what Peter fic I've been dying to write since forever, can't you. heh.(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-16 02:41 am (UTC)I DON'T KNOW EITHER. They have oranges, too, apparently. In the middle of winter! Of course Mrs Beaver has a sewing machine too, so...they can make sewing machines and fireworks but not guns? And is there any farming in Narnia?
OMG YES. Peter/rock, right? WRITE IT.
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Date: 2009-09-16 02:51 am (UTC)I would not be surprised if there were lanes of illegal smuggling. of oranges, and sugar. Maybe Jadis just doesn't care as long as there aren't people escaping Narnia for the most part? There has to be farming in Narnia. somewhere. how else can Lewis have his pastoral idyll?
yesssssss. I did, like, research on the saints with the Pevensies' names. Susan is the vaguest; there are four saints Edmund and like two of them are soooo weirdly fascinating. And of course Peter the rock.
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Date: 2009-09-16 03:58 am (UTC)so much of the plot is about this world that seems to exist only for the spiritual growth of a bunch of British kids, you know?
YAAAAAAAAAAAAA, man, one of these days I will write straight-up colonialism allegory where the Pevensies go conquering and crusading to spread Narniatholicism across the land. Saving heathens from themselves, separating them from their harmful and soul-corrupting heritage, teaching them the proper Narnian ways. Oh white Narnians' burden. THEY HAVE SO MANY SOULS TO SAVE. SO MANY RESOURCES TO HARVEST ALONG THE WAY, for the pleasure and glorification of Cair Paravel and Aslan Himself.
This I think would work written as passages from history books, or trade inventory accounts.
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Date: 2009-09-16 07:25 pm (UTC)Well done!
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Date: 2009-09-17 08:31 am (UTC)heh, I have a lot of issues with globalization and imperialism and acculturation and things, so I hash them out in fic. like the Pevensies love Narnia because it harkens back to a different age than what they live in - it's romantic and pastoral and primeval and stuff - but wouldn't their presence change it? and do they want those changes they make? and would they be able to do anything about it? because nothing stays the same forever. anyway, I could jabber on forever; to the point, I'm so glad you liked :D
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Date: 2009-09-19 05:30 pm (UTC)OH MY NARNIANS, with their tea and sugar-cane and dubious trade agreements and sewing up of wounds and painting and CHOCOLATE! I don't know how you did it, but the whole eating chocolate scene was incredibly sexy, and then Peter ruminating afterwards! they banished winter and brought cultivation and society, and what if that wasn't necessarily the right way to do things? Oh, Peter, with his insecurities and doubts!
I love the way you write the Pevensies SO MUCh.
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Date: 2011-01-11 07:02 am (UTC)which is to say, :DDDD <3! omg thank you :DD (oh now I'm all nostalgic about narnia! :D)
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Date: 2009-09-27 05:15 pm (UTC)