not what it seems

Dreams say what they mean, but they don't say it in daytime language.
-Gail Godwin

---

It's almost always the water.

(fire for Susan air for Peter earth for Edmund and ever water and the sea and the waves for Lucy)

It's almost always the water, and it's often Susan, but almost isn't always, and tonight--except it's not night, it's bright daylight--isn't one of those nights, as Lucy opens her eyes to green grass instead of sand, to flowers instead of shells.

She doesn't know what makes some nights different than others. When she's here, it doesn't matter. When she's awake, it's hard--it still hurts, really, in a way, to think on it, when she's awake.

(She won't leave, she thinks then. She won't. And she's determined not to, when she's awake, but when she's here, it's not possible to be so certain. Because she knows she will, in the end, just not how far off that end is.)

But tonight, for whatever reason, is one that's different, and Lucy picks several of the flowers--cornflowers, bright blue--absently, as she looks about.

She thinks--she thinks, though she's not certain, that she's in a field near the Professor's old house.

(It's just a dream. Except for "just", but still, don't forget the dream. Nothing's exactly as it seems. Well. Some things, anyway.)

It's England, more than Narnia. Maybe. It feels like home, and she's content to walk, until she comes to the end of the field and finds the path again.

Two ways to choose, two directions, and she doesn't know at all which way to go. It's all she can do to stand there and look, uncertainly, in a way.

(Is it Narnia and England, she thinks, or here and there, where she's asleep, or something she doesn't know about at all?)

"Send me a sign," she murmurs, to Aslan, if he's listening, or to Dream, for all she doesn't care to seek out the Endless, or to herself. "Tell me where to go."

No one does. Not yet, anyway.

And in the end--

In the end, you have to choose the path you'll walk yourself. Because you're the only one who can.

---

Normally, it's the sea, when she sleeps, and sometimes Susan.

But it wasn't tonight, and when Lucy wakes her face is wet, and she rises from bed to wash it and bathe, silently, before Caspian can see it.

(no subject)

Water and the sea and it's a relief, in a way.

It's almost reassuring.

That fact, Lucy thinks, as she watches the waves roll in, that this place is more reassuring than the waking world--that isn't reassuring at all.