(1) BEAUTIFUL // Edmund Pevensie

NARNIAN

CATHERINE DIDN'T GIVE HERSELF TIME to think about the battle that was about to arise. It was as if a cliff was looming in front of her, begging her to jump and jump. The only thing keeping her was her sheer will and determination that she was not going to let it get to her. She had promised Caspian that she would save them all. He disagreed and said that he would save them all, but they bickered quite a lot as siblings and didn't think it was all that important.

She looked out onto the field, the greenery in front of her outlined by the treeline in the distance that always seemed to be make her feel calm and at home. She found it easy to clear her thoughts as she sat on the top of the How. She mostly thought about Caspian.

Although her brother no longer stared at her with a burning resentment, there was a time where they did not always get along.

After their parent's death, Miraz realized that he would need a new King once Caspian becomes of age, and decided to take the throne. Miraz had always tried to make the siblings resent eachother – believing that they would be much more easy to co-operate if they were separated.

Catherine, of course, thought the whole idea was ridiculous, deciding early not to believe whatever lies Miraz told her were just that – lies. She loved her brother and none of that could change, no matter what anybody told her or how desperate they tried to keep them apart.

It made her upset when Caspian did not feel the same way.

Caspian always looked up to his superiors, finding it much easier to do everything right when he was told exactly what to do and when. So when they told him to not speak to Catherine anymore, he agreed without hesitation. When they told him to take his lessons alone, he didn't flinch. Back then, he didn't pay much attention to her at all. As a six-year-old, his obliviousness bruised her ego a little, and she found it much easier to sulk outside his bedroom door, the wood that barricaded her from her brother, because although he resented her presence and told her he didn't want her in his life, their parents were dead and she didn't have anyone else. She didn't wat to be left alone, excluded from her family and watch as all of Caspian's fun disappeared when she would enter a room.

Then, Miraz asked Caspian if he wanted to play outside with a few of the other Telmarine boys.

It was then that the line was drawn.

Caspian told him no. He felt like he couldn't play with people his age while his sister stayed, silently alone in her room, playing only with inanimate dolls that didn't' speak back when they sang to her, and only smiled when she opened up, crying about her parents on nights she didn't want to share with anybody else. So, Caspian had declined Miraz's offer and all the ones that followed after that.

Catherine began to notice how Caspian would adjust his conversations to include her, who generally found it a struggle to communicate with someone she still believed would rather play alone than with her. She knew nothing of his interests, and couldn't remember what games he liked to play or how to play them.

And so he taught her. And they played together.

Caspian was the one to teach her how to draw a sword, to fight like a true warrior, announcing that girls should know how to defend themselves because thugs wouldn't care if they were kidnapping a girl or a boy, and that he didn't want her to leave him.

He didn't want her to leave him.

He never did.

'Can I join you?'

Caspian was always one to read her mind. She laughed at the thought that she could summon him at her own will; a simple thought of his name and he would come running. He would always run to her, to stop whatever he was doing.