Fairytale?

Chapter 50- Sweet Hereafter

They lay calm-breathing, on the bedded grass;
Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;
Their lips touch'd not, but had not bade adieu,
As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber,
And ready still past kisses to outnumber
At tender eye-dawn of Aurorean love:
The winged boy I knew;
But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove?
His Psyche true!
-

Sanya was lying on something soft, and she could smell saltwater, and so she saw absolutely no reason to open her eyes or to move her limbs.

For a few moments, she felt like she was incapable of doing of either the above actions- which suited her just fine.

This was probably a dream, she thought- though she wished she was still unconscious, because she didn't want to be thinking.
How she hated thinking.

The last thing she could remember before the saltwater was- the ceiling. She had been staring at the ceiling, and then there had been nothingness- she must have fallen asleep without realising it or meaning to.

And now she was deep in a dream.

"This is not a dream."

Ugh. She recognised that voice, even though she hadn't even looked at the speaker.
She turned over on the tender bed of sand, on to her side, away from the voice. She wished there was a blanket.
"I don't care." She told the Great Lion, and water came to lap at her face. Still, she kept her eyes stubbornly closed, instead taking the water's kisses as a gentle nudge back to sleep.
Sleep and dreams- those were true comforts. As was water, of course.
"Let me sleep."

"Sleep in a dream?"

"You just said it's not a dream."

"But you still believe it is, child."

"This could be a hallucination, for all I care," Sanya knew that actually was possible for her fractured mind- and she wished the hallucination was something nice, like swimming with Edmund, preferably naked, even though she wouldn't mind any sort of situation, as long as it was with him- instead of a sandy conversation with a magical Lion, "and I'd still want to sleep, Aslan."

"And to dream?"

Well, her name meant that for a reason.
"That, too."

The Lion sighed, though the Queen wasn't sure if it was in annoyance or in acceptance.
"Child." He spoke softly, and Sanya automatically felt her eyes open. "Awake and arise, True Queen."

She was right about the sand and the saltwater, she saw. She was on a beach- one that stretched endlessly in a golden-white wave behind her, and in front of her there was endless water.

Water so blue she thought she had never actually seen the colour blue before. And the sand- even baby powder wasn't as fine as what she was sitting on.

The beach was gorgeous.

Even 'gorgeous' was too little a word for it. There was no painter or artist or photographer in any world who could do justice to the beauty around her.

And it smelled like so- so many things, though she could see only white flowers in the distance. Lilies. She could smell so many other flowers, too- roses, tulips, jasmines, marigolds, lavender.
There was parchment, too- and chocolate that she could remember tasting in kisses- and old books and vanilla essence.