Accidentally Falling | Narnia

38 | scars

"Su, do you have any idea what sleep means?" Lucy asked, annoyed while looking at Susan through the large mirror in the latter's bedchambers.

The eldest Pevensie didn't respond.

"Let me guess," Lucy said, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. "You couldn't. Because of your bloody insomnia."

"Not now, Lu," Susan grumbled in reply. She already knew she looked terrible. She discovered it the moment she got up from her bed at dawn after giving up the fruitless attempts to sleep. She didn't need to be reminded about it by her sister or by any of her ladies-in-waiting who were present in her bedchambers not five minutes ago.

Susan stared at herself in the mirror. She looked exhausted. Her ladies-in-waiting already applied considerable amount of powder under her eyes but they seemed to have done nothing to conceal the dark shadows. Her eyelids looked as if they were about to droop close any moment now.

"Well, I guess you need to be in the mood..." her younger sister continued. "...since you'll be walking into the Great Hall filled with guests ten minutes from now."

Susan wanted to be annoyed at Lucy for acting like their mother but was too tired to feel so. She just wanted to lie on her bed for the whole night even though she had already done that the whole morning and afternoon. She continued to look at her haggard face in the mirror, trying very hard not to think about what happened the night before.

She resisted the urge to touch her lips.

"Honestly, Su," Lucy went to sit on the edge of her bed. "Edmund and I are starting to worry. Is this about the prophecy?"

Susan wanted to tell her that it wasn't about the prophecy. That she didn't even give the prophecy another thought after Edmund told her that her part of it was approaching the day before at the courtyard.

She wanted to tell her sister about everything.

But then Susan looked at Lucy through the mirror. She looked at her sister's young and innocent face. She remembered how only three months ago, she prepares her breakfast before going to school. She remembered how she hold her in her lap when the school bullies tease her for being an orphan. She remembered how her face lights up everytime they'd play hide-and-seek.

"Yes," Susan answered.

Lucy stood up and went over to her. She placed a hand on Susan's shoulders. "It's all going to be fine, Su. I know you're going to choose correctly."

Lucy's gaze was so piercing and so... knowing even through the mirror that Susan wondered if she was talking about the prophecy or if she knew Susan was lying and that she meant something else entirely. Was it possible that Lucy might have been more mature than Susan had given her credit for?

"Thanks, Lu," she said.

Lucy smiled at her, patting her shoulders lightly. "Come on, get up. Edmund will be here any minute and you know how he hates everytime he's all ready and we're still not finish with 'girl stuff.'" She drew air quotes in the air, rolling her eyes.

Susan couldn't help but smile, too. "Yeah."

She stood up from her chair and examined herself from head to toe at the mirror. She was wearing a green long sleeved satin dress with elegant gold embroideries on the bodice and cuffs. Her hair was tied up behind her head in an elegant knot with glittering brooches holding them in place, a few curly ones hanging and framing her face.

She looked so grown-up and so... far from that London schoolgirl that stumble into that world through a wardrobe just three months ago.

"I know," Lucy said, as if she read her mind. "I couldn't believe it either. It felt like years ago."