I love not man the less but nature more 3/3 - for anastigmatfic
Title: I love not man the less but nature more
Author: rthstewart
Recipient: anastigmatfic
Rating: T/PG-13
Possible Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers for all books in Chronicles of Narnia; includes sexual- and narcotic-based rituals and mature themes.
Summary:
Narnia is not Men’s country, but it’s a country for a man to be King of ( Read more... )
Author: rthstewart
Recipient: anastigmatfic
Rating: T/PG-13
Possible Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers for all books in Chronicles of Narnia; includes sexual- and narcotic-based rituals and mature themes.
Summary:
Narnia is not Men’s country, but it’s a country for a man to be King of ( Read more... )
Writer, do be forgiving as my usually more or less cromulent speech fades into ecstatic squealing and hand-flaily capslocked wordsmashes because OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG I LOVE THIS
Narnians would say the smooth was easy, but the rough was better.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Lucy: "I do think building a nest without hands or ambushing dumb prey from above would be terrific fun!” Yessssssss, this is totally my Lucy, wild as the world she lives in.
“With Aslan, we delivered them,” Susan said. “But in the Great Bonding, we become one of them.”
This is a really cool concept, *becoming* Narnians, literally, by the rules of the native Narnians themselves. NOM NOM DELICIOUS WORLDBUILDING.
“It never goes smooth,” Peter said, echoing the apt Narnian adage and her own thoughts on it of earlier.
Again: BWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA
Step lightly here. Love well.
<3
Blind Tiresias! Hello mythology and Eliot, two of my favorite things!
It took effort to not smile as a little Hedgehog lumbered back and forth, swinging his head and pretending to be the Great Lion singing Narnia into being.
AAWWWWWW. SO CUTE. SO CLUMSY. SO SILLY.
“We came from each hump,” the Beasts repeated.
*inappropriate snort*
I really like how you've tied in the humans inadvertently bringing Jadis into Narnia as the reason that humans should rule -- to right the wrong they did at the beginning. This is a very clever twist on canon and I really want to steal it for myself.
Love the blood-magic using Lucy's dagger, giving some to the earth and using some to mark the two taking the challenge.
ON TO PART TWO!
She had never thought of clothing as being a division between her and the Narnians, yet they obviously did given the number of challenges undertaken bare.
Ooooh. I love this. What marks a Human? Clothes. (And a Dwarf, I suppose, but they're different.)
SUSAN'S ORDEAL IN THE LAKE. HOMG. This is so beautiful, the symbolism, the death and rebirth, the comparison of the lake cold to the hundred years of winter. Incredible. I am in awe here, Susan giving all of herself to the water, and then the water returning her to land and life. This is incredible. If the fic was just that it'd be amazing.
... heehee, fratricide....
CUDDLING WITH BABY MERLE AAAWWWWW
and Ruch would tell anybody to HIT IT HARDER, he would
Peter in the egg is an amazing twist on the rebirth theme, and I adore it. (Though I admit I am totally imagining him sitting in there itching his butt for six hours before "Oh, bugger all this for a LARK, I am coming out now.") But, seriously, this is a very cool image. Sorta reminds me of the wicker man that is traditionally built and then burnt, but.. in reverse.
OMG THE MEETING OF PETER AND DALIA. A PATCH OF THORNS. THE CHALLENGE IS DOING THE HARD THINGS. I LOVE THIS SO MUCH.
LAMBERT LAMBERT LAMBERT
You know I love circular and obscure and unreliable characters in dialogue. And I love lizards, or anything lizardly. So I love love love the Fire Salamander. HE MIGHT EAT ME. Oh, bless.
"A tide is gentle until you drown in it. A tree grows gently until its roots strangle you." I ADORE XUCOATL.
RIDDLES WITH A FIRE SALAMANDER OMG THIS IS SO AMAZING -- let me try that again with some restraint. Riddles, awesome. Salamanders, awesome. Teasing taunting rhyming riddling ancient spirit-persons who can see glimpses of the future and garble the message before it gets out, incredible. Oh so incredible.
"I will eat the whole world and don’t you forget it!”
Oh, reptiles. All stomach. <3
“You won’t see it, Black-eyed Susan. Pity. My finest hour, and all that.”
And that gave me chills. I am totally serious. Little frisson of wiggly down my spine.
The ordeal by riddle-Salamander could also easily stand on its own, there is so MUCH here, the foreshadowing, references to Narnian future, their own futures, all the things it knows. I want to see someone talk to Xucoatl again, at length. Say, 10K wordS? Pretty please with a High King on top?
“I used dung to hold it together!” Peter exulted. SO PROUD AND SO HAPPY AND SO FILTHY <3
My comment was too long. Continuing in a reply to myself....
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“Open our eyes that we might see....”
More goosebumps. Again, I am being completely honest here.
This scene reminds me of so many things... there's bits of Mist of Avalon in here, and Dune with the Water of Life - I was half expecting Fidra to squeeze the wineskin so Peter got a good amount!
And having finished that part - the Sun died, OMG - I am totally without words. This is all of Narnia's life, shown to Peter in his kingmaking, the good and the bad, and you weave it together so beautifully with the joys and sorrows, the smoke and the worm, blue shields with silver stars, descendants, Morgan and Aidan I see you both! - and Peter searches for his family. Where is Susan?
(it was only spelling so she hadn’t been planning on doing it at all)
Snort.
I love how Lucy has no awkwardness about the impending -- pollinating -- of Peter. I've always seen her as the quickest to adapt to being Narnian, since she's come through so young. All of her formative experiences happen in Narnia.
That time! More blood magic? I am intrigued!
THE SEVEN PERCENT SOLUTION OH ED YOU AND HOLMES LITERARY SOULMATES FOREVER.
Peter had just said curtly that their school’s hypocrisy notwithstanding, it was a crime in England. Snort. And at the same time, sigh. That is funnysadouch.
Lucy braiding Susan's hair! Oh, bless. Surely, goddesses understood sisters. Of course they do, Lucy, and you know that.
OH POMONA YOU ARE SO BEAUTIFUL AND POWERFUL
bringing water and sharing love and blood or seed This is breathtaking. Pomona, goddess of life and love, and especially the part where the sharing of the one creates the other. Teaching this to Susan, and Lucy watching on, knowing she herself may do this one day.
The romp with Pomona and Epona is so beautiful: the moonlight and water and blossoms and watching circle of Beasts, and I can feel just how joyous the ritual is.
And Susan with the blood in her: this is such an important detail, and something that is not gross at all (contrary to popular modern belief) but important, and powerful: it's her body's sign that she can make life of herself, and being in that state puts her on equal standing with these goddesses. This is incredible.
taking the rare opportunity to claim the lounger since Peter wasn’t in it. Peter’s desk chair was the most uncomfortable in Cair Paravel. Guffaw.
“Or try to deny what we are now and are becoming and try to hold on to what we were. I, for one, have no intention of doing that, ever.”
... Ed, you are incredible. Writer, you are incredible for making Ed see things so clearly.
Paint and wine! Peter at the bonfire! Red and black patterns on the skin... i am humbled that you can take that little story I popped out and make it so magical and significant and symbolic and... oh, everything. Have all the words, and all the wine, and all the paint.
Edmund is so funny here, just in existing. I adore the glimpses of early Ed and Merle, all the sleeping together piled like pups - and they are, sort of, aren't they? Neither of them full grown yet.
And at the end... Ed and Lucy, growing up more Narnian than their older siblings and knowing it, but wanting to do the rituals anyway just for the fun of it.. there's something very Narnian in that, in their wanting to throw themselves in and experience everything that can be, just because it's there and theirs if they want it, and they are so fully a part of their world that there's no denying to themselves any aspect of it.
AND THEN BEDTIMES. Oh, what an end note. What an amazing story, Writer.
I am grateful, and humbled, and inspired, and amazed, at this story. I hope you don't mind, Writer, if I snag bits of this for my BTB-verse later on... because I really do want to. So many parts here are taking root inside my mind and poking around, trying to make ideas out of themselves.
Thank you so very very much. I adore this. Thank you thank you thank you! I'm, really, beyond amazed at how much worldbuilding and detail and mythology and ritual you've put in here.
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Funny I had not really thought about Dwarfs and their clothing, but they are, I suppose, most closely aligned with earth and stone? It bears thinking about. But trousers on the rest? not so much.
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