~By the Lion's Mane~ >A Narnian Fanfiction<

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

After the battle, everything seemed to have changed, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Now that we were no longer wondering if we would be alive the next week, the world seemed a brighter, friendlier place. Now that the Witch was dead and gone for good, it seemed that there was absolutely nothing to worry about, except to get to Cair Paravel.

Also, since the battle, something had changed between Edmund and I. Where before he had been moody and quiet and sometimes even hostile towards me, and I had been sarcastic and annoyed by him, now we were civil to each other, even to the point of friendliness. I saw his other side, the side that I had only caught glimpses of before in his weakest moments. But now he opened up a little more and relaxed. He joked with me, smiled a lot more around me, and wasn't always so moody and mean. He thought of me as a friend now, just like Peter and Susan and Lucy did. And I thought of him the same way. At least I thought I did, for a while.

After the battle, we went back to camp for a week. We cleaned up the battlefield, helped the wounded heal, and buried our dead. Much of the time the kings and queens were too busy to spend time with me, and I the same. But in the late afternoons, when the sun hung low in the sky and the shadows grew long, we retreated to the hills. We sat on the boulders, talking and laughing.

Peter and I grew much closer. I noticed he would steal glances at me, and that when he talked to me now, it was different. But it wasn't anything thing I could name or even pinpoint. He just looked at me differently, though I wasn't sure how he saw or perceived me.

Susan and Lucy quickly became like my sisters, and we brushed and braided each other's hair and gossiped like girls do. But Edmund became... more special to me.

I first noticed it about three days after the battle. When he called out to me one morning, I felt my heartbeat quicken when I whirled around to face him. I silently scolded myself, telling myself that he had only startled me, and that was all, I was only being foolish. But after that I began to notice him more, things I hadn't really bothered to pay attention to before. Like how his dark curls fell into his eyes and he would brush them out of his face to see me better. And his eyes were rich, warm brown, the color of chocolate. And how he had just a few brown freckles sprinkled across his nose.

He was nice to me now, and often we would ride together in the hills and talk about our pasts, how it had been for us back in England. I told him about life in the orphan's home, and he told me about how much he missed his dad who had gone off to war, and how he felt like Peter was trying to replace him. Out of the four children, Edmund had always been the closest to his father.

The more we talked and the better friends we became, the more it became apparent; I was falling in love with Edmund Pevensie. The same boy who, only a few weeks before, I had despised. But I knew, even from the beginning, it was impossible, and a very bad idea. I told this to myself a thousand times, but that didn't stop me from looking at how he moved, how he smiled, or how he looked down at his feet when he was being shy.

I even talked it over with Anduril, asking him for advice. He would listen to me closely, his silver ears pricked forward in attention as he rested in the straw of the stable. He snorted and flattened his ears when he disagreed and shook his head. But when he did agree with me, he bobbed his handsome head up and down and made a low, throaty noise of agreement. I told myself from the moment I realized that those heart-leaping moments weren't just surprise, but the feelings you get when you think of someone you love, that I couldn't do this. He was to be a king, it was doomed from the start. I was an orphan, a follower, and a friend, absolutely nothing more. He would court some princess from the other countries surrounding Narnia, and then when he found the right girl, he'd marry her. And I would never marry. Instead I would perfect my fighting skills, becoming the very best warrior I could, and maybe work my way up in the ranks. I would go on adventures in distant lands, and would not have a husband who didn't understand me, who tried to control me. That was what I decided in all of my talks with my unicorn. That was how it would be.