~By the Lion's Mane: See You Again~

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

~Edmund~

It had already been a week, and still my heart felt as if it had been run through with a sword. I thought about her all the time, desperately remembering everything about her, not wanting to forget a single detail. I leaned my head back into the seat cushion and closed my eyes, seeing her beautiful curling hair frame her pale, freckled face. Her jade green eyes dancing as she laughed, her mouth curled in that impish grin.

I was brought back to the present by the jolting of the train. I sighed, staring out the window at the drab winter countryside flashing by. I was off for the spring term of school.

I had just turned seventeen (for the second time) the week before going back to Narnia for the last time, and next year would be my last year of school. After that, who could say what I would make of my life? It stretched out before me, unknown and uncertain, the future a yawning void. But to be truthful, I didn’t care about this world much anymore. My wakeful hours were spent daydreaming about a country and a girl in another world, passing the time until I could fall asleep and visit her again in my vivid, peaceful dreams.

Lucy sat next to me on the hard bench seat of our train compartment. She was nearly as cheerless as me. Rosie had been like a sister to her, and I knew she missed Caspian and Reepicheep.  But most of all she missed Aslan.

She understood my depression and gloom, and did her best to comfort me. Sometimes I forgot that on the inside, she was really almost thirty, even though her body was only about fourteen. I had the feeling she knew what had occurred between Rosie and I on our last night aboard the Dawn Treader, and she strongly disapproved.

But she understood our love, and so she did her best to cheer me, and I hadn’t the heart to tell her she couldn’t. No one could.

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~Rose~

The two weeks before my wedding seemed to fly by. They were filled with dress fittings, consulting the kitchen about the food to be served for the banquet after the ceremony, solving problems about the lack of flowers in winter available for decoration, and going over the guest list.

In the final few days leading up to the occasion, the guests began arriving and filling the rooms in the castle. All of the royalty and nobility from Archenland, Calormen, the Lone Islands, the Seven Isles, Galma, Terebinthia, and any other smaller nations were invited as well as any Narnian nobles who wished to attend. The ceremony would be performed in the Great Hall, in front of the Four Thrones, and then there would be three days afterwards of feasting and celebration.

I saw little of Caspian in those final days, but when we did pass each other he would smile, his eyes sparkling, and his handsome face glowing. And then we would continue on in our opposite directions, to carry on with our preparations.

For the creation of my gown, I stood on a platform while the dressmakers from Archenland poked me with pins, taking the dress in there, hemming it a bit here, adding a bit of lace there.

The seamstresses gossiped continuously. They chattered on about which noble was courting who, and who had been shunned from that year’s best balls, and who had made the greatest conquests in battle and exploration. Of course the conversation turned to Caspian, and they giggled as they bombarded me with questions about him.

“How did he propose?”

“Is he really as brave as they say?”

“Don’t you think he’s the most handsome king there has ever been?!”

The questions began the fray at my nerves, and so to change the subject, I told them about the old wedding tradition from my world.

“Something old,

Something new,

Something borrowed,

Something blue

And a sixpence in her shoe”

The younger seamstresses clapped their hands together, delighted by the old rhyme. They made me repeat it several times and explain what it meant. I could see that they were memorizing it, perhaps for when their own days came.

“Oh, we simply must find something for each of them! Then your marriage will be perfect and long-lasting!” the plump lady in charge exclaimed.

I smiled softly, amused at their excitement. I only wished I could be as happy for myself.