(Untitled)

[healerofharms]

Of all the absurd things to think, Jill woke up feeling cold. Not cool, for all that it probably wasn't winter outside, but cold. It probably had something to do with what she slept in (or the lack thereof), and if you add into the face that she seemed to be lying on the carpet

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[giftless]

Still dazed and feeling utterly lost, but hiding it quite well, Edmund headed down for breakfast. Magic, you see, though always surprising, becomes less shocking to the body after a while. Ed was confused, unsteady, and honestly more worried than he would have liked to have been, but also ravenously hungry.

His clothes were a bit too big for him, his shoulders holding up his shirt much like a hangar would, the cuffs of his trousers tucked under so he wouldn't trip. It was nice to know that he still had some growing left to do, but he would have rather just grown instead of swim in the clothes of his future.

He sat down next to Susan the second he saw her. Peter hadn't forgotten the island, so Ed had to imagine Su hadn't either. Especially when she looked much the same as when he last saw her, if a little pale, when by rights and dates she should look less of an adult and have better fitting clothes. Jill had flitted by, dragging Eustace with her, moving faster than any girl Ed had ever seen. But that was Jill; he'd first met her running.

Giving Susan a meaningful look -- grateful she was there and commiserating on their awkward situation -- Ed helped himself to eggs. "I think Eustace thinks us a bit mad," he said quietly. "Not much, but a bit."

[onceaqueen]

"Eustace hasn't a clue," Susan said quietly. She didn't want Polly being nosy and listening in on their conversation. "Edmund, do you remember the story I told you the other day? About..." She glanced at Polly, who was looking at her with suspicion. "... travelling?"

[giftless]

So much had happened already that morning that Edmund didn't remember at first, just stared at his sister with a slight frown of concentration. He knew, as anyone who knew Susan surely must, that she was not just making breakfast conversation.

It hit him as he reached for his juice and stopped. "So this isn't.." He paused, glancing around the table, at the Professor and Polly and dear Lucy, and lowered his voice and leaned close to his sister. "This isn't real?"

[onceaqueen]

Susan did her best to look slightly empty-headed and careless, as some assembled at the table would expect her to be, and smiled brightly, but beneath the table she poked Edmund's foot very deliberately with her toe. "Of course it's real, you silly goose," she said, for the benefit of anyone not from the island who might hear. "It just reminds me of the time I went up north with Jon and stayed a few days before coming home."

[giftless]

His shoes were a touch too big, so Susan's poking didn't do much good, or bad as the case may be, but he got the point.

"Didn't you say that trip was like a dream?" he asked, actually going for his juice this time. "Just a few lovely days and then it was over."

[onceaqueen]

"Yes, indeed it was." Susan put some sugar in her tea and sipped it, though her food was mostly untouched. She already missed her son terribly and hoped with everything in her that this was just another island trick and they would be back in no time. "All over and back to reality. It was nice while it lasted."

[giftless]

"Well, I can't argue that visiting the Professor's house and seeing everyone isn't a lovely sort of dream of its own," Edmund replied. It had been mostly for show, but the thing of it was this was a very lovely dream, seeing Eustace and Lucy and the Professor (he had never met Polly before today, though it certainly seemed she knew him).

"But don't you think this feels a bit... different?"

The Professor jumped cheerfully into the conversation then, blue eyes alight as though, for all his gray hairs, he had never aged from childhood. "Exactly, my boy! Exactly. I said I had a feeling we'd be needed in Narnia, and I'm glad you feel it, too. Now if only we knew what it was all about!"

[onceaqueen]

The Professor was jolly and kind, but his words made Susan's blood run cold, because she knew what was coming. "Sorry," she said, pushing her chair back. "I think I need a bit of air." She got up from the table before anyone could say anything and ran out back to the garden

Susan knew exactly where this was headed, and why--and the worst part was that even though they were trying to get to Narnia to help, it didn't matter; there was no helping Narnia, only death and what came after. And there was no way she was letting her brothers go there now when they still had plenty of life to live. She just had to figure out how to keep it from happening.

[giftless]

"Well..." The Professor stared at the door Susan had left through, confused and concerned in his warm and eccentric way. "That was strange. Do you think she's feeling well? She hardly touched her plate."

Polly suspected it had nothing to do with Susan's stomach. "This is a gathering of the Friends of Narnia. What did she think we were going to talk about?"

"Oh don't be so hard on her," Lucy pleaded, down at the other end of the table with a bowl of porridge. "She came, didn't she? I think that's more than any of us expected."

Edmund watched his sister go uncomfortably, his suspicion all but confirmed. This wasn't just a fantasy holiday. It might be a dream, but it wouldn't be easy.

[healerofharms]

Jill walked into the room, looking more then a bit red around the eyes. "Leave her alone," she said to Polly without so much as a hello, the woman's eyebrows shooting up.

She sat next to Peter, snuffling once before she looked up at Peter. She'd had no idea that it would be so completely difficult seeing Eustace after two years, with him looking at her like he'd no idea what exactly she was going on about. Add to that that none of them - least of all Polly - had any idea what exactly this whole plan would bring about? Suffice to say that Jill wasn't the calmest of girls.

"Ed, are... things.. alright?" She looked to the door before looking up at him, clearly meaning things with Susan. Her hand sought Peter's under the edge of the table, for at least a bit of stability.

[giftless]

He had to abandon his food for the moment and stick to his tea. Thinking what all this meant, for all of them and for Susan especially, made his stomach roll. It was no easier to look up and see Jill's red-rimmed eyes, and remember that Eustace was firstly her friend when he had only been a cousin, and a rather annoying one at that, to the Pevensies for so long.

He couldn't think about how other people felt anymore. It would make his head spin.

"They'll sort themselves out," Edmund replied. "It's just a lot to take in. Again."

[healerofharms]

She squeezed Peter's fingers before wolfing down more breakfast. Goodness, she felt as if she hadn't eaten in an age. "I'd imagine," she said with a swallow, closing her eyes just a moment. "I- We should all probably take a bit, have cooler heads." She had no idea if Edmund actually knew what was going to happen - how things would turn out, if he'd read the books or talked to Susan.

"We need to decide what to do."

She wasn't actually listening as Polly said something to the affect of What to do? Of course we know what to do-, letting her talk until she set down her fork abruptly, looking at the woman. "Things have changed since last night," she said, sharper then she probably should have. "This is serious."

Not that it hadn't been before, she supposed, but with the way that color was standing out in bright blotches on her cheeks, at least something had changed.

[giftless]

Peter had told Eustace about the island, and Edmund had to assume that Jill had followed suit, not keeping any secrets. But Ed hadn't been entirely comfortable listening to Peter then, and he still wasn't sure about it now. Other worlds and magic were practically commonplace to the people gathered here, but Edmund just had a feeling that this was different. It was like a mystery you had to figure out, and detectives never showed their hands in mysteries.

Edmund kept to his tea. "We do what we're supposed to do," he said, calm and rather obliquely.

[healerofharms]

She stared at him, even Polly falling quiet. "Excuse me?" She'd actually paled further, the bright pink looking almost out of place on her cheeks and forehead. "What do you mean, we do what we're supposed to do?"

He couldn't mean what she thought he meant. He couldn't.

[giftless]

He meant exactly what she thought he meant, and held her gaze rather than shying. He knew how horrible what he was to say would sound, especially to Jill and Susan who had lived through this before, but it was what he felt he had to say.

"Things are meant to fall out in a certain way," Edmund said. "We can't change that and risk who knows what happening as a result."

[healerofharms]

"You have no idea what you're talking about." She gripped the edge of the table with one hand, her knuckles white. "None." She was torn between crying and yelling at him, and gritted out words instead. "We need to talk on it, Edmund. There's more going on then you even know, and it's not that things were meant to fall out a certain way." By the end of the sentence, her voice had become more then strained, and she actually had to remind herself to breathe.

"... I'm going out. We can talk later." She stood abruptly, not even looking at Peter (or anyone else at the table, for that matter) as she pushed back her chair and walked out.