5"Boo, wonky Pevensie! Hey, are you going to the ball tonight, or would you rather attend to your nutter sister?"
"Oh, don't say it like that. Ask her if she'd bring her brothers. They're such fine chaps."
"The pansies, seriously? They backed out from the pub again yesterday!"
Susan forced out a small smile. It hurt her to hear how her siblings were being slandered with. Lucy was just a tad too imaginative for her age, and both of her brothers knew firsthand how ungentlemanly one could behave under the liquor, especially the cheap dubious kinds the students would no doubt be getting. At the same time however, she couldn't help but hope they would give her an easier time. Lucy and Edmund and Peter- none of them cared much for the society, but she had given her best to fit in. It was unfair for her to be the only one having to deal with the repercussions of their antics.
Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia.
Unlike Lucy's talent for storytelling, apt to her evocative senses, Edmund's keen eyes to business dealings, and Peter's gifted flair to leadership, Susan had always felt that she didn't have much going on for her. Archery, the one field she was confident in, was never fashionable enough for a proper lady to dabble with here in this world. Adults had always been enthused about her beauty, and so Susan worked doubly hard to prove them so.
Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia.
The flashback took her for a jolt. She looked around, frightened, clutched her satchel tight, and promptly went home.
She had wanted to believe, at first.
The first time it happened, with all four of them, she could not dismiss it as readily. There was no doubt in her mind that they had, indeed, went through fifteen years of their lives as kings and queens. The magic lingered, suffused into their day-to-day mannerisms, and none would be mistaken for thinking the Pevensie siblings exuded a regal air around them. Time went on, and soon the fifteen years blurred into boarding school intrigues and the awkwardness of adolescent friendships. When she was just beginning to adjust, once again they were taken into the world, commanding the same respect as figures of legend, although everything she had once loved were gone.
She was told that she was never to return.
She was not sure what to do with the information, but she took it in with a great stride. She listened to Edmund and Lucy's story the following year while navigating the ever murky scene of being a young woman, unsure whether what she felt was envy or pity. There was absolutely no doubt something did happen that summer, for none of her siblings would stand for the spoiled Eustace Scrubb before. She secretly wanted to return, but even Lucy and Edmund too were already given the edict.
The adventures were too real for a dream, although more and more lately she'd been thinking whether it was really the children in them who had woven a dream so intricate. Each and every time she wanted to admit she had believed, she was reminded of the gray dull reality they lived in, and bailed. It was cruel, she thought. It was painful to have given people the sip of the forbidden fruit, to have them taste a life more real and meaningful than they could find otherwise, that when they returned everything was muted, mundane, dampened. Painful.
There, she was a queen.
Here, she was just a lanky girl (a blossoming maiden, they had referred much nicely) not quite sure where she belonged (once upon a time, she thought she knew).
She'd been through this before, but the transition to womanhood seemed much simpler when one had the company of nymphs and naiads to console her of her fears and insecurities and an endless streams of suitors to validate her of her physical and behavioral attractiveness. She'd never been scared to reject an invitation knowing there would be more, and her clothing would always be the talk of the night for being the country's finest to offer. Who wouldn't want to wield such dignity?
Growing up was a lonely affair, but Susan persisted.
When Eustace Scrubb came the following summer excited to tell them his stories, she had had enough.
What good would it do for her to cling her hope on the world that had forsaken her?
So Susan made a choice. She outgrew the hopes, and lived her life the way she had been expected. She made a world for herself.
She worried about her siblings. It wouldn't be healthy for them to be tethered so much in the past. Would they be like Professor Kirke, a lonesome eccentric to the community way into his twilight years?
Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia.
Susan only did what was sensible.
It was painful that no one would understand.
