Fairytale?

Chapter 3- Everywhere Didn't Suit It

All other sound in awe
Repeats its law:
The bird is mute; the sea
Sucks up its waves; from rain
The burthened clouds refrain,
-

"Have you unpacked yet?"

Sanya, who was lying on her stomach on her dorm-bed and was very absorbed in Murder On the Orient Express, did not register Jessie Denham's query at first. There were so many characters it was difficult even for her to keep track- it had been the same when she had been reading Death on the Nile- even And Then There Were None had quite an ensemble, but she had been so engrossed in the seamless and nail-biting mystery, that it had been easy to remember them all.
Of all the books she had read in England so far, regardless of genre or author, And Then There Were None was probably her favourite.
And Pride and Prejudice, of course. Dracula, too, maybe.
And perhaps also The Blue Castle, to add another romance- that genre was a guilty pleasure for her.
Though, truthfully, The Blue Castle was far more about finding freedom and understanding oneself than it was about-

"Rainsford!" Jessie threw a pillow at her face. "Have you gone deaf?"

"No." She scowled, dog-earing the page she had been on. She asked Edmund to buy bookmarks every time they went into town, for she was too shy to go to the shops on her own, but she always ended up losing them before the week was over. "What do you want?"

"We came back from hols today. Ring a bell, numpty?" Jessie gave an exaggerated eye-roll, before repeating, "Did. You. Unpack. Yet?"

And Sanya was supposed to be the oblivious one. She'd not been anywhere for the 'hols'. She'd spent the holidays here at school, along with a handful of other children who couldn't go home (and Edmund was there, too, at Hendon), because her 'grandmother' had been away on some medical retreat in the south of Frank.

Farce.

Something like that.

It was the country the language of which Edmund spoke so attractively.

The three Pevensies who were going home had suggested that she stay with them- it was only two weeks, after all, and her going would mean that Ed would get to go home, too- but Sanya had shaken her head. She didn't think she could take staying with Ed's parents for so long.

She had met them in the summer. The first time had been two weeks after the summer vacation had started- the lateness was because, of course, Sanya had been doing her best to avoid the inevitable meeting for as long as possible.

She'd been right to avoid it.
George and Helen Pevensie had not been rude to her, or unwelcome- far from, they had been very kind and gracious- but she got the sense that they were displeased with their son's choice of a significant other. She wasn't very personable, or chattily charming, or even of the same background as them- so she understood where they were coming from.

Thankfully, the day after this onek baaje- very bad- meeting, she had visited the London Zoo for the first time. It had been sickeningly and overwhelmingly packed with humans- but all the animals, the majestic, wonderful, adorable little critters, had made her heart sing as she had wandered around, followed closely by Edmund, who had tried his very best to not lose her in the crowd.
(He had lost her thrice- once near the Komodo Dragon exhibit, once near a herd of zebras, and once in the aquariums.)
Now, that was one worthwhile reason to keep living in this world.

"Well?" Jessie tapped her well-polished shoes. It was almost bed-time, why was she still wearing shoes? "Did you?"

Sanya could easily have told the plain truth, and had the matter done with- but Jessie was the dorm-monitor, and it was always easy to rile her up.
"What's it matter to you?"