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[called_lioness]

It's easier, now, in a way. Or something like it.

When she closes her eyes, she doesn't think of it as sleeping any more.

It's more like being totally, completely awake.

---

The beach again. No Susan, yet.

But she knows (she knows without questioning how) that Susan will show up in time.

It takes her a moment to realize she's sitting on the sand, and the water's soaking her and rushing around her skirts, and the knowledge makes her laugh as another wave hits her. She turns around, a little, to face the land, and her body serves as a shelter as, without thinking, her hands start to play with the wet sand.

She knows she could never make a castle like this with just her fingers and sand and water.

She does anyway, and as she hears the silent-sound (and somehow she hears it anyway, and that too makes her smile) of footsteps, she's adding the last tiny window, and thinking she can (almost) see a girl through it, sleeping on a bed.

Probably it's just almost, anyway.

Comments

[sai_delgado]

"I'd not have brought thee here else," Susan says softly.

There's a moment's quiet, while she runs her hand over the soft green of the ground beside her.

"I've been lucky. I've loved two men in life, and been loved by both in return."

[called_lioness]

Lucy doesn't nod, just listens to the other girl and the sound of water running and is silent.

She lets her fingers trace at bark and waits for her to go on.

[sai_delgado]

"Thee are a Queen," she says, turning now to Lucy-- and oh, but the look in the fog-gray eyes is clear and near-compelling. "And Caspian is a king."

"Roland were his da's son, and a gunslinger, and 'Bert were a gunslinger, and I-- well." She laughs, a high rippling sound of amusement. "No lady, naught but a drover's daughter from the edge of nowhere, and one who were to be a gilly-girl at that."

"It didn't matter, though -- it were all as ka would have it, and I'd not regret a moment. They loved me, and I loved them, and that's what was most important, oh Lucy, do ye not see it?"

[called_lioness]

"I know here," she says wryly, tapping her temple, "that it's true. And I know here," putting her hand over her heart, before letting it rest over her stomach. "It's here that worries and twists and always has."

She shrugs, a little, and looks up through the green toward the sky above.

"I love him. I know he loves me. But--but there's always the wonder. Do you see? If she's right and I'm not enough, and what if his wife was. Not because it's true or likely. Just because...it's there, anyway. Fear rarely stopped me, but it's still there. And--and if it were true, if he deserved someone better really truly, I'd want him to find her. I don't really think it's true. But it doesn't make me feel better," looking down again, "or stop wondering a little. Or stop feeling like I'm loving someone else's husband," with a quiet laugh, "even if he's to be mine soon, too."

[sai_delgado]

"Thee silly," she says, soft and warm and gentle. Susan reaches out to take Lucy's hand in her own, squeezing it tightly. "The Lion himself said it, do'ee not ken?"

(it is always right to love)

"It's like with Deborah, I wot." Susan shrugs, and a gentle breeze tousles the golden hair, whispering between trees and over the noise of the little stream.

"I met her, did'ee kennit? Caspian introduced us, before. She's very dear."

[called_lioness]

"I know." She smiles as she says it and shrugs and means she knows to every statement made, playing with the chain at her neck as she does so. "Knowing, Su, and fearing, still. It's just harder there. You see that, too? It's harder to tell what's shadows and what's real, sometimes. And..." Lucy stops and looks at Susan, shruggin a little back with a faint smile. "I know," again. "I liked her, when I met her. Quite a bit. Jealous as could be, on a level, too, but she was quite nice."

[sai_delgado]

"Everything's harder there, oh aye," she replies, and oh, but it's soft and knowing.

(no peace but the clearing - no secrets between souls)

"Here it doesn't matter." And here, perhaps especially here in this clearing-- for a moment there's something about her, just for a moment, as fog-gray eyes are somehow shadowed--

(bird and bear and hare and fish - I remember, I do)

--something less dream and more memory, more Susan and less the Girl in the Window who in some ways could be and is the mirror of Lucy's own self.

She glances up, catching the other girl's gaze.

"Mayhap if thee talked with her...?"

[called_lioness]

A few dozen universes apart, the name can be different and the essential still the same, really.

(And there's that question again, when she sees the shadow in the grey eyes; she knows where she is, but she isn't at all sure what she's walking towards, and she has to wonder.)

"Mayhap," she allows when the grey eyes meet green. "I don't know. But mayhap. Not...yet. There's too far to walk yet."

But there's time, too, and neither needs to say it by now.

"I thank thee for showing me this place," she adds, softly, after a moment.

[sai_delgado]

"Thee're welcome, say true," Susan answers, just as softly.

And then she smiles, and stands once more with the native grace of a rider.

"Shall we go on, then?"

(there are other worlds than these)?

With a sweet, half-wistful smile, she holds out her hand to Lucy.

[called_lioness]

"Aye. At least a while longer. I sleep hard of late, and the dream won't be over for a while yet," with a half-smile as she takes the hand and stands.

[sai_delgado]

"Then come with me, an'ye would," she says, "and we'll walk on together, say true."

With that, Susan draws Lucy gently onward through the screen of the willows and away from the stream. Together, the two of them move across the sweet-smelling grass of the Drop and back down the gentle slope to the seashore.

Their silver footprints are still there, and it's easy to pick where they left off before.

[called_lioness]

She looks back, and for all the waves continue to crash, she can see the footprints back into the distance.

It's farther than she'd thought.

And they'll go farther yet.

It's not intimidating at all, really, for all there's that edge that's a little bit sharper at moments, a little more real--a little more This can't be possible, this isn't the way it works, if she listens to it, and a little harder not to, a little more like the waking world.

For now, though, there's just the waves, and Susan's hand in hers, until there's that moment when she murmurs for them to stop and lets the hand go as she sits on the beach and closes her eyes

---

and opens her eyes, slowly, to the familiar ceiling and room.

It's a moment as Lucy says, "It's only a dream," softly, hoping Caspian won't hear in his sleep, and tries the way the words taste in her mouth, grimacing a bit.

Lying never sat with her well.