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Jul. 12th, 2007 08:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
once_a_queenYou may have been in a room in which there was a window that looked out on a lovely bay of the sea or a green valley that wound away among mountains. And in the wall of that room opposite to the window there may have been a lookingglass. And as you turned away from the window you suddenly caught sight of that sea or that valley, all over again, in the looking glass. And the sea in the mirror, or the valley in the mirror, were in one sense just the same as the real ones: yet at the same time they were somehow different deeper, more wonderful, more like places in a story: in a story you have never heard but very much want to know. The difference between the old Narnia and the new Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more. I can't describe it any better than that: if ever you get there you will know what I mean.
It was the strangest thing, dying. For Susan Pevensie Evans, it was slipping from a dream of Narnia into the actual place. She didn’t recall much, actually, aside from the sound of wings and then the heat of an unsullied sun on her wrinkled skin.
When she’d gone to sleep that night, the date was July 15, 2007. She was a grandmother of seventy-nine years. And now, with every step on the green grass of the home of her heart, each of those seventy-nine years was rolling away, along with the aches and pains, the hurts and sorrows gathered within that time.
Further up and further in.
They would be here. Her family. Her beloved family.
And they went through winding valley after winding valley and up the steep sides of hills and, faster than ever, down the other side, following the river and sometimes crossing it and skimming across mountainlakes as if they were living speed boats, till at last at the far end of one long lake which looked as blue as a turquoise, they saw a smooth green hill. Its sides were as steep as the sides of a pyramid and round the very top of it ran a green wall: but above the wall rose the branches of trees whose leaves looked like silver and their fruit like gold.
Lucy, Edmund, Peter, Mother, Father, Caspian, Eustace, Tirian, Rillian, Jill, and oh, she hoped, her son Edward Peter Evans, who’d been lost in a helicopter crash over a Cambodian jungle. They would be there, and she would be with them, to wait in turn for her loved ones to join her.
It still seemed to be early, and the morning freshness was in the air. She felt as if Aslan had breathed his warm, sweet breath upon her, and she was running now, running up the hills to the place where she belonged, the place she’d earned from a long life led well.
They charged straight at the foot of the hill and then found themselves running up it almost as water from a broken wave runs up a rock out at the point of some bay. Though the slope was nearly as steep as the roof of a house and the grass was smooth as a bowling green, no one slipped. Only when they had reached the very top did they slow up; that was because they found themselves facing great golden gates. And for a moment none of them was bold enough to try if the gates would open. They all felt just as they had felt about the fruit "Dare we? Is it right? Can it be meant for us?"
But while she was standing thus a great horn, wonderfully loud and sweet, blew from somewhere inside that walled garden and the gates swung open. She slowed, beaming, and she appeared both old and young at once, her inner beauty shining forth as once her outer beauty had done.
It was the strangest thing, dying. For Susan Pevensie Evans, it was slipping from a dream of Narnia into the actual place. She didn’t recall much, actually, aside from the sound of wings and then the heat of an unsullied sun on her wrinkled skin.
When she’d gone to sleep that night, the date was July 15, 2007. She was a grandmother of seventy-nine years. And now, with every step on the green grass of the home of her heart, each of those seventy-nine years was rolling away, along with the aches and pains, the hurts and sorrows gathered within that time.
Further up and further in.
They would be here. Her family. Her beloved family.
And they went through winding valley after winding valley and up the steep sides of hills and, faster than ever, down the other side, following the river and sometimes crossing it and skimming across mountainlakes as if they were living speed boats, till at last at the far end of one long lake which looked as blue as a turquoise, they saw a smooth green hill. Its sides were as steep as the sides of a pyramid and round the very top of it ran a green wall: but above the wall rose the branches of trees whose leaves looked like silver and their fruit like gold.
Lucy, Edmund, Peter, Mother, Father, Caspian, Eustace, Tirian, Rillian, Jill, and oh, she hoped, her son Edward Peter Evans, who’d been lost in a helicopter crash over a Cambodian jungle. They would be there, and she would be with them, to wait in turn for her loved ones to join her.
It still seemed to be early, and the morning freshness was in the air. She felt as if Aslan had breathed his warm, sweet breath upon her, and she was running now, running up the hills to the place where she belonged, the place she’d earned from a long life led well.
They charged straight at the foot of the hill and then found themselves running up it almost as water from a broken wave runs up a rock out at the point of some bay. Though the slope was nearly as steep as the roof of a house and the grass was smooth as a bowling green, no one slipped. Only when they had reached the very top did they slow up; that was because they found themselves facing great golden gates. And for a moment none of them was bold enough to try if the gates would open. They all felt just as they had felt about the fruit "Dare we? Is it right? Can it be meant for us?"
But while she was standing thus a great horn, wonderfully loud and sweet, blew from somewhere inside that walled garden and the gates swung open. She slowed, beaming, and she appeared both old and young at once, her inner beauty shining forth as once her outer beauty had done.
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Date: 2007-07-14 04:26 am (UTC)Just that, as arms fold around her immediately.
It took you long enough, she'd have teased in another life, or complained when things were at their worst.
But not here.
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Date: 2007-07-14 04:48 am (UTC)They are tears of joy.
"I was hoping you'd be waiting for me. I missed you the last time."
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Date: 2007-07-14 04:53 am (UTC)Lucy's laughing, as she strokes dark hair.
Lucy always laughs here.
"That was life. This is better. There's no missing here."
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Date: 2007-07-14 05:00 am (UTC)Then she spins her sister in a happy twirl.
"I thought it would hurt. I thought I might not find it. But I'm here!"
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Date: 2007-07-14 05:04 am (UTC)Someone's rather grinning.
(Someone is, really, always and ever a mischief.)
"And aye, Su. You are, and I've one less to wait for and one more to have joy in."
The waiting is joy here too, is the lovely bit.
"We've been waiting for you."
In a way. That's the part that's beautiful here; that the waiting isn't quite waiting, because time isn't quite time, and every moment is now and good and joy and right.
And you know it, in your veins.
And so she says, We've been waiting, but what she means is, now the joy is doubled. Or it would be if there was something past this, the perfect happiness where all of it is new and perfect and you wait without ever needing to want.
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Date: 2007-07-14 05:14 am (UTC)The joy is there.
She never knew she could feel like this.
"It's always Christmas, but never winter," she giggles.
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Date: 2007-07-14 05:22 am (UTC)"Oh, daughter of Eve, we've so much to show you."
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Date: 2007-07-14 05:30 am (UTC)"It's like it was- but more. Isn't it? It's everything good and perfect."
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Date: 2007-07-14 05:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-15 03:15 am (UTC)"Show me everything. Oh, Lu, I've missed you so. All of you. And I knew- I knew I would be with you again."
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Date: 2007-07-29 03:24 am (UTC)And then there are people to meet and to remeet and to find that you knew ever if you only glanced at them in the street. There are old loves and old enemies and realizing that most of those fights were a bit silly, really, even if they seemed important at the time. There are Calormenes and Germans and Italians and Duffers and Centaurs and Men and Stars and Angels and enough time (or not time at all, really, not a lack of time, just being away from ideas that hold you in and deny you chances) to see and to know, truly know, everyone.
And there's always and forever further up and in to go.