In Exile - for edenfalling

[nfe-gremlin.livejournal.com]

Title: In Exile
Author: therck
Recipient: edenfalling
Rating: G
Possible Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers for the ending of Prince Caspian and for the premise of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (book continuity for both)
Summary: This isn't the way Prunaprismia ever imagined her life going.
Author's Notes: Thanks to my beta readers. All remaining errors are mine. This story didn't go where I expected it to (and it kept trying to go even further off course). I hope it's acceptable to my recipient anyway.

( In Exile )

Original Prompt that we sent you: Here are some semi-specific prompts, in case any of them ping you:

1. The first post-Winter interaction between Narnia and Archenland - the Pevensies meeting Lune (and his wife!), Narnians having to relearn how to deal with the surrounding human-dominated lands, etc. Friendship or tension are both fine. (Or the first post-Winter interaction with any other country, since I am sure Narnia's sudden reappearance after a century of magical isolation -- which probably upset the climate of the surrounding lands -- must have been of interest to almost everyone.)

2. What happened in Narnia in the years around the death of the Tree of Protection? Did Jadis kill it (by magic or by proxy), or it just died of old age? How soon thereafter did she enter Narnia, and did she do so via subterfuge or via conquest? Who set up the resistance and how? (Clearly a resistance exists, along with a black market of some sort, by the time the Pevensies arrive.)

3. Caspian fighting giants before VoDT, maybe using the war to help unite Telmarine Narnia with Old Narnia. Or just tensions between Telmarine Narnia and Old Narnia during his reign. How did his marriage to the Star's Daughter help or hinder his efforts to hold his people together? How often did people try to set his cousin -- Miraz and Prunaprismia's unnamed son -- up as a figurehead king with themselves as regents? Stuff like that.

4. What led to the Telmarine invasion and conquest of Narnia? Aslan says it was a famine, but famine alone is unlikely to lead to the entirety of a settled people migrating to a new country; some must have stayed in Telmar. Was it a regional thing, or did families split down the middle? Also, was Caspian I royalty before the invasion? How quickly (and why) did the Narnian Telmarines lose contact with their home country? That entire episode is crying out for exploration.

5. Susan and Lucy going on an adventure as two sisters together. Ambushes! Captures! Daring escapes and rescues! Deceit and diplomacy! Expressions of love, faith, and trust in each other! Basically, you know those epic brotherly devotion/adventure fics? Write me one of those, but with sisters instead. Preferably in the Narnian world, but if you can find a way to play out something from that genre in England, that would be awesome too.

Prompt words/objects/quotes/whatever: "....for if you live you may yet have good fortune but all the dead are dead alike." (I can't help it; I love that quote.) Swords. Knife-fights. Epic speeches before battles. Conversations about love wherein the word itself is never spoken but the sentiment is nonetheless clearly expressed and understood by both parties. Politics. Arguments. Magic.

"Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

I don't know, I am just throwing ideas around! Hopefully something will click for you!