And why would that stop you from coming to me?
Is your faith shaken? Do you need to do some soul searching? Just want a listening ear?
Feel free to dive into action threading here. Just tag with any location of your preference and Aslan will come to you in some way, shape, or form.
Feel free to dive into action threading here. Just tag with any location of your preference and Aslan will come to you in some way, shape, or form.
That's his initial thought.
It's followed quickly by: but I would have checked both anyway, does it really make a difference?
The fact that it's not a question he dares let past his lips is telling enough, but he stands with his own pride and strength, on which and from which he has built many things and defended others. All stillness and replying silence, there is eventually only the modest inclination of his head, an arguably poor replacement for kneeling or a bow, but there is something to be said for subtle authenticity and an honest if understated respect. Before him, the great lion knows, of all creatures, how Peter ultimately feels toward him, as a symbol, as an entity, and though more distant and never tame, a friend--though this last only, perhaps, when the High King is at his most needy and vulnerable. This is not one of those times, though it borders on similar territory.
The last time I came to you because my brother was lost, you--- But he doesn't finish. This is certainly not that. Comparing is ridiculous and the sudden piling and rising of irrational frustration that always comes of things taken out of his hands dies as fast as it came into being. This is no one's fault and it's self-indulgent to blame himself. It should be enough to know that his brother is okay, wherever he is, presumably England. How does one ask that though? Simply, is the obvious answer but his throat is dry and despite the quiet rustle of trees and the hush of night, his head feels noisy, as if it is trying to keep busy.
No one likes their family to be separated, but this is truer of Peter Pevensie than others, not in small part because he has so long connected that wholeness to that first 'important' responsibility he was given, not by the great lion or by prophecy or other such grand and sometimes impossible things. Mentally, he sends a wordless apology to their mother. Again it's no one's fault, but see if that stops him from feeling responsible anyway.
Unable to meet the golden-bright gaze for long, he averts his own eyes at last, not shifting, not allowing himself to fidget, instead trying to find words that could go here. Some time passes, how much he isn't sure, but at some point he settles on something being better than nothing.
"It was very unexpected," is the unintentionally soft confession, and it almost gets lost in the sound of leaves, wind, and other more ambiguous echoes in the dark.
I was just meaning to speak with him too...
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"These things are not meant for us to know before they happen, Peter," he speaks quietly but no less bold in tone nor less deep in chest.
"Save your apologies," the lion nods his head once. He does not need to hear them on the wind to know they exist. Neither does Aslan need to ask if the Englishman questions whether this might be punishment for the Just or not. He knows better. He must.
Paws that have stepped into the light of the moon in reflective pools and blood spilling in rivulets on stone pad along a forest path that bends for them and them alone. He doesn't ask Peter to walk with him. This too is a given.
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And will you come back?
Selfishly, he hopes so, but he keeps that to himself as well, arms carefully staying at his sides, shoulders squared to remind himself whose presence he is in and the sort of strength with which he is supposed to handle these kinds of things, if he can. While they walk, blue eyes move sideways from time to time, never staying too long on present company, but looking often enough to clearly state an attentive nature, however wordless. If Aslan has something else to say, Peter knows he doesn't need any prompting for it to be said. The way the forest moves for them--for you, he thinks, but does not say--is familiar and strange, and the line it rends down a heart or through a thought is clean but ever permanent, a space for what is missing.
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He does.
"Whether or not your brother returns to this world, don't forget what I said that day," the lion sits again before craning his thickly maned neck to look at Peter.
You two are. At least, I think he means you two.
He does mean that.
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He can't, of course.
So he says the only thing he trusts himself to.
"I remember."
Other things, he will not speak to, but if he thinks them--and he does--he has a feeling the lion as good as knows these too, that in his mind what Peter says is that there are many ways to be okay and to not be okay, ways that leave you whole enough for another journey but fractured all the same. That isn't to be taken for granted, however, and he is aware of this, glad for knowing his brother will be physically kept safe, and likely, if this world is consistent in anything, even with the rest of his family. Existing here and there simultaneously still makes no sense to Peter who only knows of traveling through worlds and leaving others behind, but he supposes anything is possible at this point, forcing back a sigh that could betray everything else he wants to keep to himself, at least as much as he can. For all that he misses Edmund already, feels his absence like a ripple of winter where only spring should be, he tells himself it's best this way. Eventually they will all leave, and some ignorable part of him knows that it is too ideal to hope to always leave together.
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"Twice now you've come to learn what it means to live a lifetime in one moment," he continues, not even mentioning that by all technical terms he has experienced this phenomenon in the City as well. Edmund? Moreso than Peter if one counts his previous visit to this world. "Your brother is not below that privilege," says the lion, his manner still calm yet never tame.
Another moment of silence passes before the great cat speaks again.
"It isn't wrong to miss him," but you cannot want wrong things will have to wait.
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But, again, it's no one's fault. That thought sticks, skips, repeats. Looking out at the field and then up to the sky, Peter finds simultaneous comfort and restlessness in this presence, but whether wretched or jubilant he doesn't know that there is any situation that he could think of that would have him directly turn him away. For that he would, likely, have to stop believing in him at all, and he can't afford to do that. Not then. Not now. Not ever, anymore.
"I trust him," to take care, he decides on at last, glad of how steady his voice is even if it seems half a deception in light of the way his pulse seems unnerved and distracted. "...and I miss him." More of the obvious, but also a way of admitting that he is somehow grateful to be told he isn't feeling all the wrong things.
But there's something else still.
Turning his gaze back, he rests it on a safer place of mane before flickering up to knowing eyes. It occurs to him, briefly, that they too seem both old and young. Interesting. Fitting. Confusing. Ah well.
"Thank you," he bows his head this time fully, not entirely sure of all that he is saying thank you for, but deeming it close enough to what he thinks is appropriate, though never quite adequate.
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"Your trust is well-placed," Aslan affirms what he knows Peter already knows. He has known this since the events that spiraled in snow after setting foot in a wardrobe, and afterward a wound he took upon himself for his brother, and afterward the care of Narnia in the hands of the Just and his sisters in the Magnificent's absence, and afterward a hunt for a stag that ended their first adventure, and afterward the return to a ravaged Narnia. It did not escape the lion's notice--as most things do not--that it was Edmund who walked through the door in the air before his brother and sisters. His trust is well-placed as is his worry and concern and the longing. Neither of these are wrong, he would expect nothing of it.
For his thanks the lion only bows his head because to refuse it would be rude and to say it isn't necessary too lenient.
"It is a good field," Aslan adds, "worthy of a picture." Subtly, the black lines that form his muzzle curve.
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Of course he already thought it, so there goes that, but whatever. Details.
"It will do," the High King agrees and it isn't forced, a mild smile playing across his features, a little less reluctant in the dark. It is a shame. Edmund would have done well and Peter enjoys when the Just has partaken in such events, exhibited his skill. It shows his years as his older attitude and quiet candor sometimes do, and is a reminder of the reality of their adventure, fifteen years long. He would have liked to see that, no threat of life and death or equivalent dangers, all sport and good friends, some older than others.
But he tries not to dwell, because there is little point, and he knows that his brother would kick him for it--verbally or otherwise--as well as he knows that Aslan, though never forthcoming with fine pointed facts, tells him the truth. Peter remembers who will return to Narnia, and he remembers that everything has a time.
And he remembers that separation of a kind does not always mean the breaking of the whole.
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As for humor... well he ought to know, having never been punished for threatening to turn Mr. Beaver into a hat. Come now. Regarding those pictures, be glad Aslan doesn't sing a melody in the Telmarine's sleep to inform him of his opinion on the matter. And Peter's thoughts? Well make no mistake Aslan already knows his feelings on the click of a shutter, click after click after click after click after... you get the idea. It's something he doesn't push and in fact responds with the equivalent of a lion's smile.
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