Charmed Life - for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
liminalliz
Oct. 17th, 2010 12:08 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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narniaexchangeTitle: Charmed Life
Author:bedlamsbard
Recipient:liminalliz
Rating: PG
Possible Spoilers/Warnings: The Silver Chair
Summary: The queen of Narnia has been dead for three days, and Rilian still can’t believe it.
Author’s Notes: So much thanks to [my beta] for the super-quick last-minute beta and the brain-storming!
Rilian can hear arguing in the hallway outside the study – his father, Trumpkin, Doctor Cornelius, and Lord Drinian, he thinks. He can’t tell if Father is shouting because Trumpkin is losing his hearing or because he’s angry. It might be both.
They’re arguing about Mother’s funeral. She’s lying in state in the chapel now, has been since they brought her home. Rilian winces to remember it. He’s been trying not to, has been trying to obey his father and think of Mother happy, laughing, dancing, anything but the still, quiet form in the chapel. It doesn’t work very well, because every time he tries to picture, she shifts into the undignified sprawl of her body on the grass, her lips moving soundlessly as the blood bubbled up from the corner of her mouth. It’s been three days, but it still seems fresh, like it had only happened this morning. He keeps thinking that she’s going to come around the corner any minute now, that he’s going to hear her laugh in the hallway and her gentle rebuke of Father for taking things so seriously, why doesn’t he just take a moment to calm down and remember that it’s just one day in a long parade of many?
Except she’s not. She’s not going to come around a corner ever again, and Rilian’s never going to see her again, and Father has to make a decision on the funeral soon, or she’ll start to rot – they’ve been lucky so far, because the warm spring weather that had tempted them into the field in the first place has lapsed back into the chill of late winter, and the unheated chapel is freezing. Every time Rilian goes in there, his lips turn blue within ten minutes. As soon as the last of the snow had melted, the carpenters had started up on the renovations to the castle, which Rilian is positive will be going on long after his death, and through some fluke of prescience they’d removed the furnaces from the eastern quarter of the castle, which is where the chapel is. Mother had been laughing about it just last week –
“So what do you suggest I do, then!”
Father’s voice is suddenly just outside the door. Rilian bends over his translations miserably and tries his best to concentrate on the unappealing prospect of turning Cynaegiros of Glasswater into common Narnian. The old faun’s work gets less attractive with every passing minute, and Rilian uses his pen to sketch an armored knight on the side of his parchment instead, next to his scrawled so Edmund spoke, the most clever of the kings of the east: “Do you think I left the white arms and soft breasts of my fair-tressed mistress for the jabbering of fools? Speak sense, o lords, or Narnia will withdraw the shining spears of her many-footed army. Cynaegiros is interesting enough, usually; he writes all the dirty parts of the saga clouded in fancy language, but Rilian can’t bring himself to care right now. He concentrates on the details of the knight’s armor, then shades it in – a black knight, like King Edmund in The Saga of King Edmund Lawspeaker, with an unmarked shield and a lance with a gloomy pennant that trails against the lance head, on a prancing dark stallion.
Drinian suggests something, his tone soothing but too low for Rilian to make out the words. Father’s voice rises in anger.
“Well, then! Should I put her on the Dawn Treader and hope that the worms have left something of her by the time I reach her father’s island?”
“Caspian!” Drinian rebukes, his voice sharpening, and Rilian applies himself furiously to Cynaegiros again, trying to block out the sound of the argument.
I would that I were lying in the bed of love with Thyra of the white arms rather than standing here before you, listening to the lies that you speak of me. Would that my brother the High King were here! He would not long stand for these insults, and I think that you, you cravens, would not dare to speak such lies of me before him.
King Edmund seems to spend a lot of time talking about his mistress, Rilian thinks, and sketches what he thinks she might look like on the opposite side of the parchment from the knight. He puts her on a horse too, for continuity’s sake, and makes the horse white for contrast, giving it big eyes and a flowing mane. He switches inkpots and makes her dress green, because the ink is new and a very nice shade of green, like the first grass of spring, and it won’t get used otherwise, unless Doctor Cornelius decides to mark his essays in green. Then it should be gone within the week.
He casts a desultory look back at the text, where the King of Archenland is berating King Edmund for being flippant in the most horrendous abuse of old Narnian Rilian has ever seen, and he’s read Nicomedes, so that’s saying something. Rilian reads it, or tries to, more out of sheer fascinated horror of what in Aslan’s name Cynaegiros has done to the ablative and subjunctive cases to try and show that King Lune isn’t a native Narnian speaker than out of actual interest in what he’s saying. In hopes of throwing a crumb to Doctor Cornelius, he scratches out his translation.
You are not an easy one to speak (? you are not one to speak?), King of the north; yourassignations dalliance affair (?) with the White Witch is well-known. Your liver (??? head?) is turned at every pair of pretty arms and large breasts. Did you put eyes in on her in a tree forest also?
Just looking at is enough to make Rilian shudder in horror, which at least serves as a distraction until the argument outside starts up again. Rilian resists the urge to crawl under the table and weep, and maybe burn the Cynaegiros.
Trumpkin rumbles something about a proper Narnian funeral. Father snaps back at him, his voice sharp enough that Rilian jumps, pen scratching a jagged line across the page beneath the lady in green. He stares at it in dismay, then decides that he can do something with that and applies himself to it, using the green ink to shade the edges of a spiky throne, like something out of one of the sagas. When he and Princess Marged of Archenland get married, he decides, the first thing he’s going to ask her is how she’d like her funeral to go, so he doesn’t end up in the state that Father’s in right now.
“Then send her off in Telmarine style,” Lord Drinian suggests, which sets off a whole new round of arguments. They’re just outside the door now; the door in question is two inches thick and made of solid Narnian oak, so Rilian thinks that it’s really just utterly unfair that he can hear anything through it.
He shuffles gloomily through the papers on his desk, hoping for something more interesting than Cynaegiros, his language exercises in Calormene, Terebinthian history, or arithmetic. Instead he finds the list of study questions Doctor Cornelius had made up in a fit of wild optimism that Rilian would get the entire way through Cynaegiros before the funeral: highly unlikely. He wonders what the doctor will think if he just scrawls I don’t think Cynaegiros likes King Edmund very much in answer to question number three.
Outside the window, the sound of hammering starts up again from the renovations of the east wing. Rilian lets his pen fall aside and stares at the diamond-shaped panes of glass. The construction crews had broken for lunch; he hadn’t realized that it was already over. This means that what’s going on outside is going to go on until nightfall. He really doesn’t think he can take it.
“Your majesty, you must make a decision –” Cornelius says soothingly, and Rilian decides he’s had enough. His bootheels click on the stone floor as he storms over to the door and throws it open.
“I’m going riding,” he announces, and ignores his father’s slightly panicked, “Rilian!” before he turns the corner.
He runs up the nearest set of stairs and keeps turning corners until he finally makes it to his rooms. It doesn’t take long to change into riding clothes; he fastens his sword belt on and snatches up his favorite cloak, which is a little short on him now after his last growth spurt, but still warm and comforting, made of sturdy Narnian wool dyed dark green. He fastens it with a cloak pin in the shape of a lion’s head and hurries downstairs to the stables, ignoring the servants who look at him askance. He hates sympathy, especially when it’s the only thing he’s been getting for the past three days.
His horse is glad to see him, at least. Rilian pets Juniper’s nose, feeding him a carrot from a storage bin near the front of the stables, then goes to get his tack.
It’s cold outside when he finally rides out, nothing like the warm spring weather of four days earlier. He rides into the town in a gloomy contrast to the previous excursion, which had been all laughing courtiers and flying banners. It seems like something out of a dream now. Juniper’s hooves clop dully on the cobblestones as he rides past the houses of the nobility and into the town proper, keeping his gaze fixed firmly forward so that he doesn’t see the sympathetic looks everyone throws him. In the Narnian Quarter, which butts up against the shores of the Great River, each house has a little figure in the window, made out of cloth or straw or even carved out of wood. He thinks he sees one that might be bone, and it makes him shudder. It’s only the respect due a dead queen, but – it seems a little primitive, a little barbaric. More like something he’d read about in one of the sagas Doctor Cornelius likes so much. Once he’s out of the gates, he digs his spurs into Juniper’s side, sending the gelding into a gallop across the bridge that leads to the northern marches.
He doesn’t know why he goes north. North is where they’d gone Maying only a few days earlier; north is where Mother died. He should go south, or west. South is safe, west is safe for a full day’s ride out of the town, north – north was supposed to be safe. Safe from bandits, at least, bandits and all the kinds of dangers that they’d thought of. Not from accidents.
Rilian rides aimlessly. There’s only a mile or so of cleared land on the northern side of the Great River, then the deep forests of the north begin, a seemingly endless expanse of trees and wooded hills that go on until they begin to filter into the swampy lands where the Marsh-Wiggles and the Bog People make their homes. They hadn’t gone that far the other day. All they’d wanted was to do a little exploring in the woods, find somewhere nice for lunch – Mother had been so pleased when they’d stumbled across the ruins of some dead Narnian noble’s garden –
It doesn’t take long to get there. The clearing doesn’t look any different than it had three days ago, calm and quiet, with the chipped thousand-year-old fountain burbling away. One of Mother’s ladies had left her scarf in the grass, a discarded slip of red silk that shines like a jewel in the shadows. Rilian dismounts slowly, dropping Juniper’s reins so that the gelding can graze as he wants, and goes over to pick it up. He wraps it around his gloved hand, looking at the way it stands out against the brown leather.
“What are you doing here?”
Rilian drops the scarf and draws his sword, turning on his heel to find the speaker standing behind him. She’s tall, taller than any human woman Rilian has ever seen, with long dark hair and pale skin, like she’s never seen the sun. Her gown is the same brilliant green as the serpent had been. It only takes Rilian a minute to decide that she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen, far more beautiful than his – than the statue of Susan in Bath that the Duke of Galma had given his father for his coronation. Father had always said it was a very good likeness – of Susan’s face. Rilian doesn’t think cold stone has anything on the very alive woman in front of him.
“I’m −” he begins, and stutters over the words.
She looks irritated, which on any other woman would be unattractive, but makes her even more beautiful. “What? Are you dumb?”
“No!” he exclaims, and realizes it might be a good idea to sheathe his sword, which he does hastily. He raises his chin. “I am Prince Rilian of Narnia, the son of King Caspian the Tenth, called the Seafarer.”
Somewhat to his surprise, she doesn’t appear at all impressed. “I didn’t ask who you were, I asked what you were doing here,” she snaps.
Rilian opens his mouth to reply, then realizes he doesn’t know himself, and deflates. “I’m – not quite sure,” he admits. “What are you doing here?”
“What should it matter? This wood is mine.”
Rilian decides he still loves her, even if she is delusional. “No,” he points out, “technically it’s mine, I’m the heir to the throne –”
The woman gives him a disbelieving look. “So you’re mad,” she decides abruptly.
“I’m not!” Rilian protests. He takes a step towards her, and she takes a step back, then turns and runs. Rilian follows her, ignoring Juniper’s startled snort. “Wait!”
She’s a flash of bright green in the deeper greens and dark shadows of the forest; Rilian chases her until an aggrieved tree branch slaps him in the face and sends him tumbling backwards onto his arse.
“Hey!” he protests, but the tree’s dryad doesn’t respond. He picks himself up as quickly as he can, looking frantically in all directions for the woman in green, but she’s nowhere to be seen. “Come back!” he shouts, his voice echoing hollowly through the woods.
But she doesn’t come back.
Rilian goes back to the clearing slowly, where Juniper’s gorging himself happily on the spring grass, flipping his tail to keep away the first of the spring flies. The fountain burbles away, the same way it has for a thousand years. Rilian looks around at it, hoping against hope that the woman has come back, then relents and picks up the reins, petting his horse’s nose when Juniper nuzzles at his hair.
The ride back to Cair Paravel is longer than it had been coming out, and when he leads Juniper into the stable it’s coming on dark. He notices a little distantly that the construction has stopped for the day, but can’t bring himself how far they’ve gotten this time or if they’ve finally fixed the furnaces. He hands Juniper over to one of the grooms and goes inside, unfastening his cloak.
His father is waiting for him in his sitting room, looking out one of the windows at the sea. He turns around when the door opens. “Where were you today?” he demands, his expression worried. “Rilian –”
“I told you,” Rilian says, tossing his cloak over the back of a chair. His rooms are a mess; he can’t bring himself to clean it and he’d yelled at the servants the last time they’d come in; apparently they’re avoiding him. “I went riding –”
“Cornelius says you skipped your lessons.”
According to Doctor Cornelius, Father skipped his lessons fairly often when he was Rilian’s age, so Rilian doesn’t see where he gets off being strict about it. “It’s all useless stories of dead kings,” he says. He unbuckles his sword belt and tosses that aside too.
Father’s mouth tightens. “That’s not what I’m talking about! Just because –” He swallows. “Just because your mother isn’t –”
Rilian clenches his fists. His mother is the last thing he wants to think about. “Mother’s dead. I know that. But you can’t even –”
“I can’t even what?” Father says, his voice sharp. “What can’t I do?”
“Nothing,” Rilian snaps. “You can’t do −” Anything, he wants to finish it with, but he bites his tongue on that and says instead, “Forget I said anything. Look, I’m tired, I want to sleep before dinner –” He tries to step past his father towards his bedroom, but Father grabs his arm, holding him in place.
“Rilian –”
He pulls away, ignoring his father’s slightly frantic expression. “I’ll see you at dinner, Father,” he says, and leaves his father standing there, his eyes squeezed closed.
Rilian shuts his bedroom door on him and sits down on the edge of his bed to pull off his riding boots, then flops back onto his bed, staring up at the constellations on his canopy. Mother had helped him put them up when he’d been little; he can remember her slightly wistful expression as she made up stories about them, giving them names and personalities utterly different from either the Telmarine or the Narnian traditions.
He tries to think of Mother, tries to think of what she’d say about him running out on his lessons. She’d probably laugh. She liked to laugh. Rilian thinks that the woman in green must have a pretty laugh too and rolls over onto his stomach, thinking of her. He wonders what her name is. Maybe she’s a princess. Maybe Father can cancel his betrothal to Princess Marged and arrange a new contract with the woman in green. He’s sure Mother would want him to be happy, and she’s the only thing he can think of. The only thing he wants.
Original Prompt:
What I want:
Pick whatever tickles your fancy:
- I am dying for more explorations in fic of Edmund/Jadis vs. Rillian/The Lady of the Green Kirtle.
- Pick something that happens in the VDT trailer that surprised you or creatively inspired you and write me something about it!
- Eustace/Jill
- The yet untold story of Tarkheena Lasaraleen
Prompt words/objects/quotes/whatever: temptation
What I definitely don't want in my fic:
- Lucy and Edmund not being totally freakin' awesome.
- I really don't like OC's in central roles in fic
- When the lady characters are sidelined, ignored, avoided, and/or extremely badly written
Author:
bedlamsbardRecipient:
liminallizRating: PG
Possible Spoilers/Warnings: The Silver Chair
Summary: The queen of Narnia has been dead for three days, and Rilian still can’t believe it.
Author’s Notes: So much thanks to [my beta] for the super-quick last-minute beta and the brain-storming!
Rilian can hear arguing in the hallway outside the study – his father, Trumpkin, Doctor Cornelius, and Lord Drinian, he thinks. He can’t tell if Father is shouting because Trumpkin is losing his hearing or because he’s angry. It might be both.
They’re arguing about Mother’s funeral. She’s lying in state in the chapel now, has been since they brought her home. Rilian winces to remember it. He’s been trying not to, has been trying to obey his father and think of Mother happy, laughing, dancing, anything but the still, quiet form in the chapel. It doesn’t work very well, because every time he tries to picture, she shifts into the undignified sprawl of her body on the grass, her lips moving soundlessly as the blood bubbled up from the corner of her mouth. It’s been three days, but it still seems fresh, like it had only happened this morning. He keeps thinking that she’s going to come around the corner any minute now, that he’s going to hear her laugh in the hallway and her gentle rebuke of Father for taking things so seriously, why doesn’t he just take a moment to calm down and remember that it’s just one day in a long parade of many?
Except she’s not. She’s not going to come around a corner ever again, and Rilian’s never going to see her again, and Father has to make a decision on the funeral soon, or she’ll start to rot – they’ve been lucky so far, because the warm spring weather that had tempted them into the field in the first place has lapsed back into the chill of late winter, and the unheated chapel is freezing. Every time Rilian goes in there, his lips turn blue within ten minutes. As soon as the last of the snow had melted, the carpenters had started up on the renovations to the castle, which Rilian is positive will be going on long after his death, and through some fluke of prescience they’d removed the furnaces from the eastern quarter of the castle, which is where the chapel is. Mother had been laughing about it just last week –
“So what do you suggest I do, then!”
Father’s voice is suddenly just outside the door. Rilian bends over his translations miserably and tries his best to concentrate on the unappealing prospect of turning Cynaegiros of Glasswater into common Narnian. The old faun’s work gets less attractive with every passing minute, and Rilian uses his pen to sketch an armored knight on the side of his parchment instead, next to his scrawled so Edmund spoke, the most clever of the kings of the east: “Do you think I left the white arms and soft breasts of my fair-tressed mistress for the jabbering of fools? Speak sense, o lords, or Narnia will withdraw the shining spears of her many-footed army. Cynaegiros is interesting enough, usually; he writes all the dirty parts of the saga clouded in fancy language, but Rilian can’t bring himself to care right now. He concentrates on the details of the knight’s armor, then shades it in – a black knight, like King Edmund in The Saga of King Edmund Lawspeaker, with an unmarked shield and a lance with a gloomy pennant that trails against the lance head, on a prancing dark stallion.
Drinian suggests something, his tone soothing but too low for Rilian to make out the words. Father’s voice rises in anger.
“Well, then! Should I put her on the Dawn Treader and hope that the worms have left something of her by the time I reach her father’s island?”
“Caspian!” Drinian rebukes, his voice sharpening, and Rilian applies himself furiously to Cynaegiros again, trying to block out the sound of the argument.
I would that I were lying in the bed of love with Thyra of the white arms rather than standing here before you, listening to the lies that you speak of me. Would that my brother the High King were here! He would not long stand for these insults, and I think that you, you cravens, would not dare to speak such lies of me before him.
King Edmund seems to spend a lot of time talking about his mistress, Rilian thinks, and sketches what he thinks she might look like on the opposite side of the parchment from the knight. He puts her on a horse too, for continuity’s sake, and makes the horse white for contrast, giving it big eyes and a flowing mane. He switches inkpots and makes her dress green, because the ink is new and a very nice shade of green, like the first grass of spring, and it won’t get used otherwise, unless Doctor Cornelius decides to mark his essays in green. Then it should be gone within the week.
He casts a desultory look back at the text, where the King of Archenland is berating King Edmund for being flippant in the most horrendous abuse of old Narnian Rilian has ever seen, and he’s read Nicomedes, so that’s saying something. Rilian reads it, or tries to, more out of sheer fascinated horror of what in Aslan’s name Cynaegiros has done to the ablative and subjunctive cases to try and show that King Lune isn’t a native Narnian speaker than out of actual interest in what he’s saying. In hopes of throwing a crumb to Doctor Cornelius, he scratches out his translation.
You are not an easy one to speak (? you are not one to speak?), King of the north; your
Just looking at is enough to make Rilian shudder in horror, which at least serves as a distraction until the argument outside starts up again. Rilian resists the urge to crawl under the table and weep, and maybe burn the Cynaegiros.
Trumpkin rumbles something about a proper Narnian funeral. Father snaps back at him, his voice sharp enough that Rilian jumps, pen scratching a jagged line across the page beneath the lady in green. He stares at it in dismay, then decides that he can do something with that and applies himself to it, using the green ink to shade the edges of a spiky throne, like something out of one of the sagas. When he and Princess Marged of Archenland get married, he decides, the first thing he’s going to ask her is how she’d like her funeral to go, so he doesn’t end up in the state that Father’s in right now.
“Then send her off in Telmarine style,” Lord Drinian suggests, which sets off a whole new round of arguments. They’re just outside the door now; the door in question is two inches thick and made of solid Narnian oak, so Rilian thinks that it’s really just utterly unfair that he can hear anything through it.
He shuffles gloomily through the papers on his desk, hoping for something more interesting than Cynaegiros, his language exercises in Calormene, Terebinthian history, or arithmetic. Instead he finds the list of study questions Doctor Cornelius had made up in a fit of wild optimism that Rilian would get the entire way through Cynaegiros before the funeral: highly unlikely. He wonders what the doctor will think if he just scrawls I don’t think Cynaegiros likes King Edmund very much in answer to question number three.
Outside the window, the sound of hammering starts up again from the renovations of the east wing. Rilian lets his pen fall aside and stares at the diamond-shaped panes of glass. The construction crews had broken for lunch; he hadn’t realized that it was already over. This means that what’s going on outside is going to go on until nightfall. He really doesn’t think he can take it.
“Your majesty, you must make a decision –” Cornelius says soothingly, and Rilian decides he’s had enough. His bootheels click on the stone floor as he storms over to the door and throws it open.
“I’m going riding,” he announces, and ignores his father’s slightly panicked, “Rilian!” before he turns the corner.
He runs up the nearest set of stairs and keeps turning corners until he finally makes it to his rooms. It doesn’t take long to change into riding clothes; he fastens his sword belt on and snatches up his favorite cloak, which is a little short on him now after his last growth spurt, but still warm and comforting, made of sturdy Narnian wool dyed dark green. He fastens it with a cloak pin in the shape of a lion’s head and hurries downstairs to the stables, ignoring the servants who look at him askance. He hates sympathy, especially when it’s the only thing he’s been getting for the past three days.
His horse is glad to see him, at least. Rilian pets Juniper’s nose, feeding him a carrot from a storage bin near the front of the stables, then goes to get his tack.
It’s cold outside when he finally rides out, nothing like the warm spring weather of four days earlier. He rides into the town in a gloomy contrast to the previous excursion, which had been all laughing courtiers and flying banners. It seems like something out of a dream now. Juniper’s hooves clop dully on the cobblestones as he rides past the houses of the nobility and into the town proper, keeping his gaze fixed firmly forward so that he doesn’t see the sympathetic looks everyone throws him. In the Narnian Quarter, which butts up against the shores of the Great River, each house has a little figure in the window, made out of cloth or straw or even carved out of wood. He thinks he sees one that might be bone, and it makes him shudder. It’s only the respect due a dead queen, but – it seems a little primitive, a little barbaric. More like something he’d read about in one of the sagas Doctor Cornelius likes so much. Once he’s out of the gates, he digs his spurs into Juniper’s side, sending the gelding into a gallop across the bridge that leads to the northern marches.
He doesn’t know why he goes north. North is where they’d gone Maying only a few days earlier; north is where Mother died. He should go south, or west. South is safe, west is safe for a full day’s ride out of the town, north – north was supposed to be safe. Safe from bandits, at least, bandits and all the kinds of dangers that they’d thought of. Not from accidents.
Rilian rides aimlessly. There’s only a mile or so of cleared land on the northern side of the Great River, then the deep forests of the north begin, a seemingly endless expanse of trees and wooded hills that go on until they begin to filter into the swampy lands where the Marsh-Wiggles and the Bog People make their homes. They hadn’t gone that far the other day. All they’d wanted was to do a little exploring in the woods, find somewhere nice for lunch – Mother had been so pleased when they’d stumbled across the ruins of some dead Narnian noble’s garden –
It doesn’t take long to get there. The clearing doesn’t look any different than it had three days ago, calm and quiet, with the chipped thousand-year-old fountain burbling away. One of Mother’s ladies had left her scarf in the grass, a discarded slip of red silk that shines like a jewel in the shadows. Rilian dismounts slowly, dropping Juniper’s reins so that the gelding can graze as he wants, and goes over to pick it up. He wraps it around his gloved hand, looking at the way it stands out against the brown leather.
“What are you doing here?”
Rilian drops the scarf and draws his sword, turning on his heel to find the speaker standing behind him. She’s tall, taller than any human woman Rilian has ever seen, with long dark hair and pale skin, like she’s never seen the sun. Her gown is the same brilliant green as the serpent had been. It only takes Rilian a minute to decide that she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen, far more beautiful than his – than the statue of Susan in Bath that the Duke of Galma had given his father for his coronation. Father had always said it was a very good likeness – of Susan’s face. Rilian doesn’t think cold stone has anything on the very alive woman in front of him.
“I’m −” he begins, and stutters over the words.
She looks irritated, which on any other woman would be unattractive, but makes her even more beautiful. “What? Are you dumb?”
“No!” he exclaims, and realizes it might be a good idea to sheathe his sword, which he does hastily. He raises his chin. “I am Prince Rilian of Narnia, the son of King Caspian the Tenth, called the Seafarer.”
Somewhat to his surprise, she doesn’t appear at all impressed. “I didn’t ask who you were, I asked what you were doing here,” she snaps.
Rilian opens his mouth to reply, then realizes he doesn’t know himself, and deflates. “I’m – not quite sure,” he admits. “What are you doing here?”
“What should it matter? This wood is mine.”
Rilian decides he still loves her, even if she is delusional. “No,” he points out, “technically it’s mine, I’m the heir to the throne –”
The woman gives him a disbelieving look. “So you’re mad,” she decides abruptly.
“I’m not!” Rilian protests. He takes a step towards her, and she takes a step back, then turns and runs. Rilian follows her, ignoring Juniper’s startled snort. “Wait!”
She’s a flash of bright green in the deeper greens and dark shadows of the forest; Rilian chases her until an aggrieved tree branch slaps him in the face and sends him tumbling backwards onto his arse.
“Hey!” he protests, but the tree’s dryad doesn’t respond. He picks himself up as quickly as he can, looking frantically in all directions for the woman in green, but she’s nowhere to be seen. “Come back!” he shouts, his voice echoing hollowly through the woods.
But she doesn’t come back.
Rilian goes back to the clearing slowly, where Juniper’s gorging himself happily on the spring grass, flipping his tail to keep away the first of the spring flies. The fountain burbles away, the same way it has for a thousand years. Rilian looks around at it, hoping against hope that the woman has come back, then relents and picks up the reins, petting his horse’s nose when Juniper nuzzles at his hair.
The ride back to Cair Paravel is longer than it had been coming out, and when he leads Juniper into the stable it’s coming on dark. He notices a little distantly that the construction has stopped for the day, but can’t bring himself how far they’ve gotten this time or if they’ve finally fixed the furnaces. He hands Juniper over to one of the grooms and goes inside, unfastening his cloak.
His father is waiting for him in his sitting room, looking out one of the windows at the sea. He turns around when the door opens. “Where were you today?” he demands, his expression worried. “Rilian –”
“I told you,” Rilian says, tossing his cloak over the back of a chair. His rooms are a mess; he can’t bring himself to clean it and he’d yelled at the servants the last time they’d come in; apparently they’re avoiding him. “I went riding –”
“Cornelius says you skipped your lessons.”
According to Doctor Cornelius, Father skipped his lessons fairly often when he was Rilian’s age, so Rilian doesn’t see where he gets off being strict about it. “It’s all useless stories of dead kings,” he says. He unbuckles his sword belt and tosses that aside too.
Father’s mouth tightens. “That’s not what I’m talking about! Just because –” He swallows. “Just because your mother isn’t –”
Rilian clenches his fists. His mother is the last thing he wants to think about. “Mother’s dead. I know that. But you can’t even –”
“I can’t even what?” Father says, his voice sharp. “What can’t I do?”
“Nothing,” Rilian snaps. “You can’t do −” Anything, he wants to finish it with, but he bites his tongue on that and says instead, “Forget I said anything. Look, I’m tired, I want to sleep before dinner –” He tries to step past his father towards his bedroom, but Father grabs his arm, holding him in place.
“Rilian –”
He pulls away, ignoring his father’s slightly frantic expression. “I’ll see you at dinner, Father,” he says, and leaves his father standing there, his eyes squeezed closed.
Rilian shuts his bedroom door on him and sits down on the edge of his bed to pull off his riding boots, then flops back onto his bed, staring up at the constellations on his canopy. Mother had helped him put them up when he’d been little; he can remember her slightly wistful expression as she made up stories about them, giving them names and personalities utterly different from either the Telmarine or the Narnian traditions.
He tries to think of Mother, tries to think of what she’d say about him running out on his lessons. She’d probably laugh. She liked to laugh. Rilian thinks that the woman in green must have a pretty laugh too and rolls over onto his stomach, thinking of her. He wonders what her name is. Maybe she’s a princess. Maybe Father can cancel his betrothal to Princess Marged and arrange a new contract with the woman in green. He’s sure Mother would want him to be happy, and she’s the only thing he can think of. The only thing he wants.
Original Prompt:
What I want:
Pick whatever tickles your fancy:
- I am dying for more explorations in fic of Edmund/Jadis vs. Rillian/The Lady of the Green Kirtle.
- Pick something that happens in the VDT trailer that surprised you or creatively inspired you and write me something about it!
- Eustace/Jill
- The yet untold story of Tarkheena Lasaraleen
Prompt words/objects/quotes/whatever: temptation
What I definitely don't want in my fic:
- Lucy and Edmund not being totally freakin' awesome.
- I really don't like OC's in central roles in fic
- When the lady characters are sidelined, ignored, avoided, and/or extremely badly written
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(no subject)
Date: 2010-10-16 10:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-10-28 03:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-22 02:24 am (UTC)- RILLIAN’S GRIEF MANAGEMENT LEADING HIM TO DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM. Oh my gosh, I love how this shows a window into why it’s so easy to corrupt this little lost boy and how the men around him are NOT HELPING HIM AT ALL. ;_______;
- I REALLY LOVE ALL THE TRANSLATIONS AND HOW LOLZY THEY ARE. Oh the hilariousness of Edmund/Jadis misinterpreted. I ADORE IT.
- The bit where he’s OH SO IRONICALLY sketching the black knight and the lady in green, my eyes turned into GIANT HEARTS.
- I ALSO LOVE how Edmund is the Black Knight of legend.
- “Well, then! Should I put her on the Dawn Treader and hope that the worms have left something of her by the time I reach her father’s island?” OH BREAK MY HEART.
- ”King Edmund seems to spend a lot of time talking about his mistress” SO MUCH LOLS.
- ”where the King of Archenland is berating King Edmund for being flippant in the most horrendous abuse of old Narnian Rilian has ever seen, and he’s read Nicomedes, so that’s saying something.“ I LOL’D SO HARD. SO MUCH LOL
- ”When he and Princess Marged of Archenland get married, he decides, the first thing he’s going to ask her is how she’d like her funeral to go, so he doesn’t end up in the state that Father’s in right now.” So funny and so macabre at the same time. A+
- ”He wonders what the doctor will think if he just scrawls I don’t think Cynaegiros likes King Edmund very much in answer to question number three.” Oh man, I’m going to burn all the copies of Cynaegiros too!
- Asdflkj I love the little figurines in the window in respect for the dead queen and how weird and barbaric that would feel to a young man.
- ”It only takes Rilian a minute to decide that she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen, far more beautiful than his –“ with both this and the last line of the fic. MAN. I am curious at your authorial intent, if Rilian is having more than your usual dose of literary Oedipal syndrome. AND I LOVE IT and I LOVE THE AMBIGUITY, but man.
- STATUE OF SUSAN IN BATH. A VERY GOOD LIKENESS. HAHAHAH.
- Rilian falling for the witch immediately; I just love it.
- CASPIAN’S IMPOTENT SADNESS IN HIS SCENE WITH RILIAN. THE TRAGIC LIFE OF KING CASPIAN THE TENTH. I AM ALWAYS SO SAD FOR HIM.
- I just adore the little touch at the end with him looking up at the constellations in his bedroom, like thousands of other boys; and how his mom would have known these stars.
- UGHHHH POOR BB RILLIAN.
This fic is just glorious; thank you, thank you, thank you.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-07 11:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-11 07:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-10-16 11:00 pm (UTC)I love all the worldbuilding that sneaks in here as well -- the great stories and translations and the builders, the fountain. This is just a terrific story and thank you so much for delivering it.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-07 11:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-10-17 12:29 am (UTC)I loved the worldbuilding you had in this story -- different languages, the tales of King Edmund and the statue of Queen Susan; these little details make Narnia seem more real with the various cultures and rituals of the kingdom and surrounding countries.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-07 11:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-10-17 03:25 am (UTC)I think my favorite bit was the translations, and the depth of history you give it all: of course in 1300 years there would be a lot of poetry and historical biases developed about the Golden Age rulers.
Father had always said it was a very good likeness – of Susan’s face.
HEH.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-07 11:07 pm (UTC)That line is actually
(no subject)
Date: 2010-10-17 07:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-07 11:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-10-18 10:21 pm (UTC)Thank you so much!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-07 11:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-10-19 08:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-07 11:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-08 01:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-08 03:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-07 11:11 pm (UTC)