Accidentally Falling | Narnia

47 | quaints

Susan couldn't sleep that night.

Well, she hadn't had any ever since after she got back from the Emperor's country. If she luckily could get a shuteye, her dreams would be full of Peters blaming and yelling at her for the end of Narnia, and Narnians crowding around her holding torches and pitchforks, and her siblings looking her with disgust and disappointment. She would wake up in cold sweat and would be more miserable than before she had drifted off.

So she had taken to being alone all the time. She would only go out her bedchambers if it was time to eat (she just couldn't let Mr. Tumnus, or Freesia, or any other Narnians in court bring her food in her room; she was already feeling guilty enough as it was), even though it was the time of the day that she dreaded the most. Because Peter was there. He was always there. And the longer she was there with him, the more she wanted to run and hide.

He must've hated her. Everytime she would catch him looking at her and then quickly looking away when he noticed she was looking at him too... what else could it be?

With good reason, she thought. I broke his heart. I called our relationship a mistake. I kissed his brother in front of him. And then I basically made a decision that could possibly destroy his kingdom.

True, Peter had told her that he was willing to fight for her. That night, under the star-splattered skies, he said he was willing to be selfish just so he could be together with her. And that night during the celebratory feast, the night that changed their lives, he had admitted, in front of his own brother and the whole of Narnia, that he loved her.

But that was before he knew he was Sebastian, Susan thought sadly. Sebastian, to whom Narnia belongs to the moment he was born. The rightful King. The protector of the land. Susan was sure that, right at this moment, Peter only see her as someone who threw the switch of the downfall of his kingdom, not as the girl he loved.

Lucy had told her that she must have known nothing about love if she really thought that Peter would think of her like that. Edmund was being Edmund about it.

"Susan, you're my sister and even if I hate you everytime you go all Mum on me, I love you with all my heart. But you are the dumbest person I know if you really think that Peter hates you. God, if you could only see how he looks at you even now when you're avoiding him... his eyes are so love strickened it's almost disgusting."

If the circumstances were any different, if she wasn't feeling miserable, she would already have smack him upside the head. But she couldn't find the energy to do so.

But her siblings' words of comfort had done nothing to ease her emotions.

And her bedchambers were starting to suffocate her.

So she decided, as she looked out at her balcony and Narnia's new moon were shining brightly over all the land beneath it, that a touch of the sea against her toes would do her good. She went out of the castle, tiptoed around the guards that stood sentry over the staircase that led to her and her siblings' bedchambers and those at Cair's oaken front doors (those two centaurs took a lot of convincing), and headed to the shore.

For the first time in months, as she walked down the shore with her favorite purple velvet robe wrapped around her, Susan pondered about returning to England.

She thought of how peaceful her life had been there. With only schoolworks to worry about. And her siblings, of course. Even before she and her siblings went to live with Professor Kirke, when they were still living under their aunt and uncle's home (with their very annoying cousin), she had become a parent to Edmund and Lucy ever since their father went to war and never came back and their mother was killed when bombs started falling on their quiet neighborhood in Finchley. Their Uncle Harold and Aunt Alberta were too focused on spoiling their son that they'd sort of forgotten that there were also three other children living with them.