Fearless • P. Pevensie

The Decline

"Rose, you've grown up in the Professor's house since you were a girl, right?" Peter asks me as we reach the top of an embankment. Lucy trudges forwards, carefully guiding herself down the slight decline towards wherever this Faun lives.

"Yeah. The woods surrounding the house are nothing like this, though. This is..." I shake my head, staring up at the treetops as I take a moment to look around. "This is wonderful!" I say, beginning to walk foreword again carefully.

"So you've seen a few wintery woods in your day?"

I stop in my tracks.

"What is that supposed to-"

Suddenly, I'm tackled to the ground. I gasp as we begin rolling down the embankment, spiraling out into the snow until we reach the bottom. I can hear Lucy giggling from in front of us, and I can see a few tufts of blond hair beside me, though covered in snow.

"Peter! I can't believe you!" I call, though having a smile on my face. His head pops up as he prepares to say something, but I throw another snowball into his face before he can. Not that it'll do much damage now.

"I- I guess I deserved that." He laughs. He stands up, dusting snow off of himself briefly before reaching down a hand. I accept it gratefully, though still not entirely sure if I should trust him to not throw me back down into the snow. He doesn't though, as the other three meet us at the bottom.

"You've got snow in your hair, Rose." Lucy tells me, giggling as I reach up and find that I do, in fact, have snow all in my hair. I nearly let it out of it's updo, but I decide against it. That'll only make it more accessible for even more snow to get stuck in my hair if Peter decides to make me take another spill.

"We should get a move on. We have to be back in the wardrobe before dark." Susan tells us. She sort of brushes past me, confusing me as to what I ever did to her.

"You heard her." I decide to play nice, sighing as I start marching forward through the snow again.

-

Lucy stops, cutting her own sentence off as she looks ahead of us. I lift my head from the ground to look at what she's seeing.

There's a door carved into a stone boulder. Actually, more of a mountain face, given it's size. That itself is not the problem. The problem is that the door is left open in the dead of winter.

"Lu?" Peter asks.

I feel it before it even happens. She's a loyal girl, almost to a fault. So it comes to no surprise when she takes off towards the potential threat.

"Lucy!" Peter calls, but by the time he even says anything, I'm chasing after the girl as well. "Rose- wait!" He calls after us.

The snow makes it hard to run. The bundle of fur on me meant to keep me warm makes it even harder. However, I reach Lucy just before she gets to the door.

I press the girl into me, wrapping my arms around her as I spin her to be behind me. If whatever left the door open is still here, then she can't be the first one inside. I turn back around to face the open door as I hold her hands behind me. I look into the house, but it's relatively dark inside. The brightness of the white snow doesn't help my eyes adjust either.

Peter reaches us as I slowly step into the house. Lucy will never leave if we don't at least check it out. I can't hear anything inside, but as soon as I'm passed the beaten-in door, I realize that there was definitely a fight in here.

Glasses, tables, chairs. All broken as if they were nothing. Snow has mounded up inside from the broken door. I carefully descend the steps as the four siblings follow me inside of the Faun's home.