Drabble Challenge #2: War
Title: Blood
Rating: G
Drabble Challenge #2 Prompt: War
Summary: Their first meeting.
Author's note: gwemegil wrote one, so of course I had to do the same. This is not a proper (100-word) drabble, but it needed more fleshing out, and this is what happened.
Waking up to find Peter gone is far less disconcerting than realizing that Lucy is missing as well. Peter might be relieving himself, or patrolling the outskirts of their small camp, but Lucy’s wanderings have an unfortunate habit of being much more meaningful.
And she’s been left with a younger brother and a curmudgeonly dwarf to look after. This would improve no one’s mood.
But she doesn’t actually start worrying until she hears the shouts, men’s voices, and the song of steel against steel. Susan knows those sounds: they’re a part of battle, a part of war, and as a Queen of Narnia, they’re a part of her blood.
She runs, and Edmund and Trumpkin run after her. A million awful scenarios run through her mind, overshadowed by the most likely possibility: that they were followed from Beruna, tracked by Miraz’s people.
There is Lucy, there is Lucy’s voice. Susan bursts upon the ridge, the others close behind, Edmund clutching his naked blade.
And of all the scenarios she envisioned, she never even came close to picturing this one.
Peter, wide-eyed and held at the point of his own sword by a dark-haired man - a human! - and beyond the both of them…
Animals! Not like the bear that attacked Lucy… wolves and wild cats, even a badger, with real intelligence sparkling in their eyes. Fauns, their powerful leg muscles bunched in the tension of the moment. Dwarves, red and black, their bearded faces creased in suspicion.
She catches her breath at the sight of the minotaur, and her brother’s name springs from her lips in alarm.
But her heart sings when she sees the centaur, standing tall, his face strong and impassive.
The silence weighs on them all, but she knows that Trumpkin can vouch for them. And Peter’s sword, she thinks, speaks for itself.
“You’re just… not exactly what I expected,” says the young man, still holding Peter’s sword. He glances towards Susan and the others - and then in the blink of the eye looks back, as though truly seeing her for the first time, this young man who would be king, who would bring war to the country she loves so dearly that it hurts her heart.
He stares at her, and the heat rises to her face as it never has in England.
Caspian.
The name had meant nothing to her when Trumpkin had first told his tale. It was Telmarine and, after all the history the dwarf had imparted, instinctively hateful.
But it has its own sound now, like steel against steel, part of Narnia, part of her blood.
Rating: G
Drabble Challenge #2 Prompt: War
Summary: Their first meeting.
Author's note: gwemegil wrote one, so of course I had to do the same. This is not a proper (100-word) drabble, but it needed more fleshing out, and this is what happened.
Waking up to find Peter gone is far less disconcerting than realizing that Lucy is missing as well. Peter might be relieving himself, or patrolling the outskirts of their small camp, but Lucy’s wanderings have an unfortunate habit of being much more meaningful.
And she’s been left with a younger brother and a curmudgeonly dwarf to look after. This would improve no one’s mood.
But she doesn’t actually start worrying until she hears the shouts, men’s voices, and the song of steel against steel. Susan knows those sounds: they’re a part of battle, a part of war, and as a Queen of Narnia, they’re a part of her blood.
She runs, and Edmund and Trumpkin run after her. A million awful scenarios run through her mind, overshadowed by the most likely possibility: that they were followed from Beruna, tracked by Miraz’s people.
There is Lucy, there is Lucy’s voice. Susan bursts upon the ridge, the others close behind, Edmund clutching his naked blade.
And of all the scenarios she envisioned, she never even came close to picturing this one.
Peter, wide-eyed and held at the point of his own sword by a dark-haired man - a human! - and beyond the both of them…
Animals! Not like the bear that attacked Lucy… wolves and wild cats, even a badger, with real intelligence sparkling in their eyes. Fauns, their powerful leg muscles bunched in the tension of the moment. Dwarves, red and black, their bearded faces creased in suspicion.
She catches her breath at the sight of the minotaur, and her brother’s name springs from her lips in alarm.
But her heart sings when she sees the centaur, standing tall, his face strong and impassive.
The silence weighs on them all, but she knows that Trumpkin can vouch for them. And Peter’s sword, she thinks, speaks for itself.
“You’re just… not exactly what I expected,” says the young man, still holding Peter’s sword. He glances towards Susan and the others - and then in the blink of the eye looks back, as though truly seeing her for the first time, this young man who would be king, who would bring war to the country she loves so dearly that it hurts her heart.
He stares at her, and the heat rises to her face as it never has in England.
Caspian.
The name had meant nothing to her when Trumpkin had first told his tale. It was Telmarine and, after all the history the dwarf had imparted, instinctively hateful.
But it has its own sound now, like steel against steel, part of Narnia, part of her blood.