𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐏𝐘 || A Narnian Autumn Writing Challenge (Oneshot Book)

3. Golden

england // october 16, 1948
prompt: "golden"
word count: 1,467

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"Oh, Narnia must have looked so beautiful in the fall," sighed Jill, soaking in the warmth of the fresh-baked pecan muffin nestled just under her nose between cupped hands, her school jumper affording only a thin veil of protection from the crisp wind that sent crumpled red leaves skittering over the sidewalk.

Peter hummed, and the smile came through his voice even before she turned to look up at him, arms half crossed with one hand propping up his steaming coffee mug, jacket hanging loose at his shoulders like a russet cape, exposing his black suspenders. "Can't say I've ever seen anything else like it. But—I thought you visited in autumn yourself, or am I misremembering?"

"We did." Jill shrugged. "Sort of." A leaf crunched under the thick sole of her shoe as she moved to lower herself onto a red bench outside the café where Edmund had suggested they stop for something warm on their afternoon excursion. Peter followed her. "The trees were barely turning when we left the Cair, though, and you know we only stayed one night. After that it was all mountains, and they certainly weren't much to look at."

Peter rested one arm across the back of the bench just behind her shoulders. "No, I was never particularly fond of those mountains myself." He smirked faintly, as if even the bad memories carried their own nostalgia now. "The giants caused plenty of trouble in our time, though, so I saw my fill of them whether I liked it or not."

"Oh, that's right, how could I forget? That's where you were while Edmund was having that adventure with the lost prince of Archenland, wasn't it?"

"The very same." Peter glanced over his shoulder to where Edmund and Eustace stood together under the café veranda.

Edmund said something Jill couldn't hear, and Eustace laughed—a real, honest laugh, as crisp and clear as the biting autumn breeze, and it sent something fluttering in her chest.

He never laughed like that at school.

The Pevensie boys had stopped over the weekend before Edmund's term at university began, and Jill couldn't remember a nicer surprise in all her life. Peter had even managed to get them official permission slips to come out into town, something neither of their parents had ever bothered to do in all their years at Experiment House.

The afternoon could only have been improved if Lucy had joined them, but of course she was at her own school, and the boys had already been to see her.

"What was it like?" asked Jill as she turned back to Peter. "When you were kings and queens? There must have been feasts, and dances, and— oh, I can't even imagine."

"More feasts than you could possibly count," he chuckled, "and a great deal of dancing, though more outdoors than in. Lucy could tell you more about that." He took a sip of his coffee and settled comfortably back against the painted bench, glancing up into the pale sky that reflected like a mirror in his crystal blue eyes. "What I remember most is the way the country looked in the morning."

Jill watched him, a gust of breeze ruffling his hair over the straight bridge of his nose.

"The blanket of silver mist laying over golden fields, the reds and oranges of the trees peeking up out of it like rubies and topazes, the distant blue ridge of the mountains. It felt like anywhere you turned might open a doorway into something new. And that tang in the air… I always thought that was the closest to magic you could get in the natural world."

For the clarity in his eyes, he may have been gazing into Narnia itself. Jill's muffin rested forgotten in her hands. "Do you ever feel that way here?"

He looked down at her and smiled. "All the time. I'd say there are still autumn mornings when you could find an adventure around any corner, and sometimes I even think the air tastes faintly of magic, if you're in just the right place at just the right time. Lucy says it feels like all the worlds brush up against each other a little more than usual in autumn, and I'm inclined to agree with her."