and sometimes when you fall...
She dreams.
She's been walking a long time, she knows (and sometimes she's a girl, and sometimes she's a woman, and sometimes she's a lioness, and, most the time, she's a little of all three) when she reaches the beach ( Read more... )
She's been walking a long time, she knows (and sometimes she's a girl, and sometimes she's a woman, and sometimes she's a lioness, and, most the time, she's a little of all three) when she reaches the beach ( Read more... )
It's not as far down to go this time
(further up and further in)
and it doesn't take as long to get there
(time has no real meaning here)
and when Susan Delgado-that-was comes up beside Lucy, her gentle smile is bright. She slips her hand into the other girl's, and as she does the sea-breeze picks up, tossing their golden hair into a brightness on the wind.
"Long days and pleasant nights, Lu."
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She's not surprised. And she can't remember if she ever knew that saying before, but here she does, now, and whether it's possible or not--there's courtesy, always.
"It's been a while."
It's been no time at all.
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"Has it?" She's laughing now, just a little. "Well, mayhap so, then."
Susan swings their hands as though to encourage Lucy to walk with her, but takes no step yet.
"How do'ee fare?"
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"Will you listen? It's a long story," and she's still smiling, but it's the sea she looks at now, not Susan.
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"I'll listen, an'ye'd have me do so -- and we've time enough and more besides."
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More time than she'd like.
"I was going to say I shouldn't be here, when I came, but that's not true," Lucy murmurs, and it's as much to the waves as to Susan.
"You know that I loved Adam Young?"
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The waves wash over their feet as they walk, darkening the sand before them in a variety of shades. The water is warm here, touched as it is by the sun, and the sound of the surf is a murmuring counterpoint to their words.
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When Lucy was fifteen, her mother found her up late one night in the kitchen. The only explanation Lucy could give as for why she was awake was that it was hard to sleep without the sound of the sea. Her mother didn't understand. The Pevensies has rarely been to the seaside. But the sound of waves crashing is one Lucy grew up with, the first time through, and even now it makes her feel better, just to listen for a few moments.
"He made me live again."
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"Oh, Lu," she says, finally. It's the merest whisper of a breath, but the arm she slips around Lucy's waist is strong and comforting.
"Oh, my dear."
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It's softly said, and there's an echo of mourning in her voice.
Around them, the wind picks up, pulling at their hair until one lock can't be told from another. From somewhere, the scent of lilies drifts on the salt breeze -- or the scent of roses, mayhap.
"How could'ee not want it?"
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Sixteen years only had she lived, and died in flame -- Susan Delgado, lovely girl at the window, who had moved on but whose memory had remained a bright shining thing for Roland Deschain of Gilead for years beyond ease of numbering.
She had died, and he had lived, and they'd met each other again beyond the end of the world, there at Milliways --
(bird and bear and hare and fish)
-- but some things cannot be set aside, and some chasms not crossed over.
(go with my love)
"It's hard, I wot," she says at last. "To love, and to lose, and to watch those ye love leave ye behind. Aye it is, and well I kennit, and others, too..."
Where Susan's gone is not a place for grief, exactly, but here in the dream they're further down, oh aye, and the sorrow is clear in the music of her voice.
"But as long as thee love, ye'll never truly lose what ye've loved-- do'ee ken that, Lu? Do'ee see it?"
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(go then)
The sound of her voice rings clearly through the suddenly-still air, echoing off the cliff near where they stand.
(other worlds)
She draws Lucy to a stop, and the two of them stand by the water still. But Susan's looking away now, looking into the distance, toward the mountains.
(further up)
"Thee could, in time," she murmurs, her glance still cast upward. No laughing girl this, not in this moment -- there's a quiet deep wisdom to the Girl at the Window, the girl who stands by Lucy and whose gaze is directed at the stars visible above. "No peace but the clearing, say true."
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Lucy looks down, and when she looks up, she looks so much older than nineteen, even though she'll never be any older than it.
"Oh, thee doesn't understand," unhappily. "My sister Susan for so long wanted to lose it all, whether she had to or not, and would throw out love with it if that's what it took. And I cannot say she was wrong, entirely. We forgot, Su. When we lived there, we forgot England and mother and father. Some more than others," and Edmund says Lucy always remembered the most, but even she didn't remember as much as all that, "but we forgot. And we were happy, there, with only one world and one life, and I'd do it all the way I did again, oh aye, in a heartbeat or less, but I cannot say Susan was wrong, and in the end, she's the one still alive. And Susan lost her parents, and her siblings, and before that a child and the lover who left her with it. How can I leave her more alone than she is? How can I have peace in ( ... )
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