called_lioness | (no subject)

Entry tags:

lucy pevensie,
yuna

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She slept late--well, that's half true. She woke when Caspian did, because he tripped over Lavender getting out of bed and knocked half the nightstand over.

It involved a minor fire (his pants), a slight burn to the fingers (hers), and entirely too much excitement before tea was had (for either), in Lucy's opinion. And no chocolate at all, thank you. Which isn't something that she's going to stop thinking about in the next few days, Lucy thinks, and is vaguely irritated by this.

But she's the blessing of not needing to rise so early as he, so she'd taken the chance to go back to bed, after fires were put out and burns tended to.

And she's not precisely grumpy, but Lucy finds she could use some peaceful moments after a morning starting like that, and so she's found herself a mug of tea and gone out to walk by the lake. Corella will likely be taken for a ride, later, but for the moment it's nice to stretch her legs.

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"Of course." It's immediate, as she smiles.

She flashes Lucy a smile, then closes her eyes, drawing a deep breath and trying to clear her mind.

Several quick steps take her into a clear area, and then the dance begins.

The physical motions have become second nature by now, in just a few short days; it's the mental effort that's tricky right now.

She's tired, tired already, and she's seen a lot. Feels like she's carrying the weight of the world. Feels like she wants to shrug it all off--

(I shan't mind)

--and fly.

Light spills out around her feet, spreading in circles in the grass and leaping up into the air. She lets out the breath and watches the sky. "This," she says, dreamily, "is Valefor."

There's a flash, a star in the afternoon sky, and a speck detaches, dropping towards them.

"Oh, Yuna."

The dance was beautiful, but this--it's not that Valefor is more beautiful than the dance that brought her (him? it?) here, but--the dance was beautiful, but the bird takes her breath away as she looks at the gorgeous wings.

"Like a phoenix," she murmurs, but no phoenix she's seen has so many claws.

Like Tash, her mind provides, but she's seen Tash's statues, and the god's eyes were ever cold and hard and cruel. These eyes are like--she thinks of the albatross that flew them away from the island where dreams became flesh, and thinks that's the closest she can come to matching something like Valefor.

"Oh, thank you for showing me this," she says, voice half-whispered like she's in a church, and staring in awe and admiration as the bird--the Aeon--drops toward them.

"She's the first one," Yuna says. She's swaying just slightly, but she's nowhere near collapse, as she was when she showed Gren.

"I've learned two, now. There are three more--and then the Final Aeon."

Valefor lands lightly, the ponderous flapping of her wings ruffling their hair, and Yuna reaches up to brush her fingers along the feathers of her cheek. She smiles mischievously, and slants a look at Lucy. "She's my favorite," she whispers.

She has to ask, when Yuna sways, "Do you need to sit down?" but Yuna seems unworried, so Lucy glances back at the bird.

"I can see why. She beautiful. Do you--how does it work?"

"It passes," Yuna murmurs.

"The fayth are spirits of those who have given their lives to protect Spira. The spirits are anchored in statues within the temples--I pray there."

She goes on stroking the aeon, scratching beneath the feathers gently. "If the fayth judge me worthy, they share their dream with me. Making that dream a reality is my gift. It's what makes me a summoner--to let spirits cross between life and death." Hedging near to, without quite getting into, the sending.

"The aeon isn't the fayth--the fayth is in the temple, and I'm here. The dream is within me, now. But without the fayth, the aeon couldn't live."

"Is it hard? To have that gift, I mean?"

And she's looking at Valefor with her brow furrowed as she tries to make it make sense before asking, "How long do they stay in the statues?"

"Sometimes," she says quietly.

She's about to say she doesn't know, but then she realizes she does; it's inside her now. Part of her. She closes her eyes, and doesn't see Valefor arch her neck forward, butting her forehead gently against Yuna's.

"One thousand years, so far," Yuna says, her voice tired and not quite her own. "Since Sin entered the world. Since the war."

"Oh." It's a little sad, and a little awed again, as Lucy watches them.

"I'm sorry."

"It's what they've chosen," Yuna says, and she's a little sad, too. "To give the world hope."

It's a greater sacrifice than her own, really--Yuna is giving her life, but they've given their deaths, pent in the temples instead of dwelling among their loved ones in the Farplane.

It's not right, she thinks, but she doesn't say that, because it doesn't matter what she thinks.

"A noble choice," is what she says instead, and she bows, a little, to the Aeon, because the fayth dreaming it deserves respect. "As is yours."

Kweh, Valefor says, arching her neck proudly, and with a brief nod from Yuna she launches herself into the air with a mighty flex of her leathery wings.

"It's my duty," Yuna says, head bowed. "It's--what has to be done."

"It's... the world." But there are otherworlds, she knows now. And it seems a little unfair, that this is hers.

"You chose the duty. You could have let someone else do it, but you didn't. It matters," Lucy says finally, and maybe it's lame, but she thinks it's true.

"And aye. It's the world. It's always the world," and Lucy feels tired as she thinks on other people and their worlds and their duties.

"And you'll bring calm to it, with your choice and duty." It's not really a question.

It's true, and maybe it's terribly arrogant--but in all honesty, Yuna doesn't trust anyone else to do it.

She's the daughter of the great summoner.

"I will," she says, emotion threatening to break through. "I will."

"Thank you, for believing in me," she says quietly.

"You're welcome. Thank you for showing me what you can do. It wasn't hard to believe after that."

Also, it's rather hard, after seeing Yuna's face, to imagine her being able to live with herself if she failed.

"What was it like in Narnia, when the winter ended?" she asks. It's tentative, almost gently, said.

She has to think for several moments before answering. In part because it was a long time ago, and in part because it's another thing that's hard to put into words.

"She wasn't dead yet," Lucy says slowly, "the Witch. But he'd come to Narnia again, and he brought the spring. And--" She can't explain Father Christmas to someone who doesn't know Christmas at all, so she skips it. "And it was slow, at first. The things you'd notice, like more birds were out. And then you could hear the water starting to run as the snow melted, and the grass shot up far faster than it should, and the flowers bloomed. By the time we made it to Aslan's camp, it was like--like it had never not been spring, almost. And people were out, and it was the first time in Narnia, when we saw them at the camp, that we'd seen faces that didn't look at least cautious, or a little frightened. It was like the whole land woke up at once."

She can almost see it; maybe because she wants to so badly.

"It sounds wonderful."

"It was," she says softly. "And then the Witch came to the camp, and it wasn't, for a bit. But it--in the end, it was very near perfect, I think. Or at least--I can't imagine better."

"Was it spring for one hundred years next?" she asks, thoughtfully. "Or did it go back to normal?"

"No," she laughs. "Though that might have been nice, I suppose. But it was just--life. Like it should be. All the seasons. And it's not like it stayed perfect, you know, for every year after that. We were at war at times, especially with the South, and there would be, oh, storms, or the giants attacked, or a thousand other things. And there were the little daily things, too. But--it was like it should be. And especially when Aslan was there, it all seemed rather wonderful."

She nods, beaming. "What did you do, after? You said you were there for fifteen years?"

She laughs, a little. "When I was there, I was queen. When we left, I learned to be a little girl in London again. We grew up in Narnia, but the grown-up bodies stayed behind when we left. Just the memories came with us." Most of them, at least. "And then I grew up again."

"Oh, my." That raises Yuna's eyebrows. "You said we?"

She said it before, too, Yuna realizes.

"My two brothers, Peter and Edmund, and my sister Susan and I," she explains.