₁.₀ YES TO HEAVEN; peter pevensie ✔

019.

The cool surface underneath her back causes coldness to seep all the way through her clothing.

Birdie allows her fingers to graze along the stone below, hoping that the roughness shall ground her while the drowsiness fades away slowly. It is oddly comforting, truly, even though a violent shiver travels up the length of her spine; she had been so confused, so alone and utterly miserable, she remembers, begging Aslan to put her to rest at last, and she welcomed his consent with tears of relief spilling down her cheeks unashamedly. And yet, if such a thing was even possible, she has a feeling she truly did miss having her consciousness at her will. She missed being a mistress of her own senses, she realises in the dark.

Only then does she allow her eyes to open.

A great mass of stone sits heavy over the room she finds herself in, and, at first, panic settles in her limbs as she pushes herself up on her elbows. Her chest heaves rapidly in uneven breaths as one of her hands travels towards her back instinctively. Her fingertips hover above a part of her spine that once came in contact with a sharp piece of rock while a terrible sound makes its way towards the surface from the depth of her memory; it comes with a wince that twists her lips into an expression of pure dread.

There was a time she used to adore the earth below her feet, but then one of its elements had killed her, and now she finds herself buried underneath it all.

However, the ceiling does not cave in.

Still, it takes a while for her breathing to calm, for her heart to cease throwing itself against her ribcage. Bridie cannot stand the wait, so she does the one thing that she has always been good at - she puts her mind to use.

Now that her eyes her open, she comes to the conclusion that the room is only slightly brighter than the emptiness underneath her eyelids. The only source of dim light are two wall brackets placed on the wall to her left, fire cracking ever so gently with no wind to put a threat to those twin flames. At first, the contrast between the orange tones and the darkness surrounding them is nearly blinding, yet, once her sight becomes accustomed to the new circumstances, Bridie manages to distinguish some shapes carved into stone.

The conclusion is quite simple - this place is nothing else but a thomb.

Is it hers, she wonders briefly, perhaps..? Is this the place her body has been put to rest in? So dark, so cold, so... lonely? It is a perfectly logical deduction, and her heart breaks a little over the terrible suggestion that the Pevensies would dedicate her to such fate, even if after death. Have they truly learnt so little about her, to deprive her of the warmth of the sun, of the beauty of the world outside this grimness?

But then a voice so familiar her very heart responds to it comes forward from the depths of her mind, a surge of light and comfort among all things strange and unsettling - it's Peter's, of course, just as it has been for many years in the past. She recalls one of those blissful days spent in the royal gardens at Cair Paravel, when he told her about the tree that had sprung towards the sky in the same place where earth had previously swallowed her.

Its roots were to be her coffin, its crown - her gravestone.

She plants her feet on the ground before standing up at last. She does so carefully, a part of her expecting to experience dizziness that never comes. It feels natural, right. If it wasn't for the circumstances, she would surely be tempted to put her ability to run to a test as well. Perhaps...

But it is no time, she reprimands herself, to dwell on such silly desires. First and foremost, she should focus her attention on deciphering where she is. Where and why.

Walking forward towards the nearest wall, a bit of hesitancy in her step, Birdie slowly extends her hand to touch the stone. The relief is one of a lion, appearing as solemn and grand as he did when she saw him last. Still, despite almost untamed power, one to be reckoned with, manifested in his mighty figure, his gaze remains kind. A little sad, too, as though the artist whose hand sculpted had seen that other side to him, the one bearing the knowledge of all the atrocities happening to those he cares for dearly.