Far From Home

Silence

Lauren stood, breathing heavily. The wand lay useless and dull on the ground. All of its power was gone. Even though she was still on the top of an icy mountain, Lauren felt warm. She tried to summon a snowflake, but nothing came out. Lauren sighed, realizing the truth: her powers were gone.

    With one last glance at the mountain, Lauren grabbed her sheath and bow and slung them over her back and picked up the wand. She then began her treacherous journey down the large mountain.

    The snow was deep and there was ice at the bottom which made walking very difficult. Lauren slipped and fell on the ice at the bottom and fell all the way to the mountain's base.

    The wind began to pick up and Lauren was exhausted. She had no strength left to stand up. She lay, freezing in the snow; her only wish was to be back home with Caspian, Tam, Emily, and Astra, but once again, she was far from home.

    An idea suddenly struck her. She had hidden her magical horn that Caspian had given her in her quiver. With her remaining strength, Lauren pulled out the horn and blew on it: loud, sad, and desperate.

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    Back at Cair Paravel, the battle was over. The Calormenes that had not fled, were taken prisoner, along with the Tisroc (at least until they would trade him back to Calormen for some land) and the Narnians were healing from the Tisroc's reign.

    Emily was repairing some of her arrows when Tam came and sat next to her.

    "Are you alright?" he asked her.

    Emily looked up at him. "Yeah," she said hesitantly.

    Tam furrowed his brow. "You don't seem so sure."

    Emily sighed. "It's just, I'm worried about Lauren. It's been several hours and she's not back yet. Something could have happened."

    Tam nodded, sliding his hand into Emily's. "We can go look for her if you want."

Emily was about to respond when a loud, almost musical sound filled her ears. "Did you hear that?" she asked Tam who only shook his head. "That's Lauren's horn! She needs help!"

Tam nodded. "We need to go find Caspian."

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At the mountain, Lauren was trying to hold on to the last of her strength to stay awake. Twenty minutes had passed since she blew on her horn and it seemed like no one was coming. A storm was rolling in and a light, freezing rain started to fall. The rain only added to the tears that were already on her face. She was about to give up hope when a shrill whinny pierced through the storm.

Lauren lifted her eyes to see a white creature flying through the grey clouds with three people astride it. The creature's horn emitted showers of light that illuminated the three people's faces. It was Caspian, Emily, and Tam riding Astra!

Knowing that they had come, Lauren closed her eyes and let her head fall into the snow.

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    Lauren's eyes opened slowly. She looked around to see that she was in a huge room on a comfy chair next to a fireplace with a fire blazing inside. A warm blanket was wrapped around her. The sun was just coming up over the trees and she knew that someone would be in soon to check on her.

The only sound that could be heard was the crackling of the fire in the fireplace. Other than that, there was no noise. No battle cries, no shouts of anger and despair, or any Calormene language being spoken. It was silent, and Lauren liked it.

The End