Title: a fair day
Day/Theme: 22. Pant
Series: Chronicles of Narnia
Character/Pairing: Susan Pevensie, her siblings
Rating: PG13



She's panting when she pushes her head up out of the water, dragging in breaths, her hair slicked to her shoulders. The air is warm, the water biting-cold; it's a lake with clear air and trees dipping to stroke the water in leafy hands, as close as she can get to touching Narnia now.

Edmund hugs himself and gives her a look, a 'are you stark raving mad?' look. She smiles, dips lower again, splashes. She always was the best swimmer.

"Aren't you coming in?" She called. Lucy, sprawled on the picnic blanket, giggles and shakes her head furiously. Peter glances up from a sandwich and raises his eyebrows at her, quiet amusement in his face.

"You've got to be kidding me."

"Not at all." She's going to have to get out soon--the cold is seeping through her bones--but for now she backstrokes, graceful in the water, her hair fanning out around her. It's--freeing.

The sky is so beautiful like this, almost like--

Susan shakes herself and goes under, spluttering when she comes up. Maybe she'll get out now after all.

The gravel is rough on her feet, stones turning awkwardly; she picks her way with mincing care toward towards her siblings, accepts a blanket and a thermos and thanks Lucy with a smile. "It's beautiful," Lucy says, her voice as wistful as Susan's thoughts were a moment ago.

"A good break from the city," Susan says, her voice too bright, and Peter gives her a sidelong look.

But Lucy brightens, glad for the distraction. "Yes," she says happily. "It's so much nicer than St. Finbar's."

The tea warms her, gently filling her with honeyed heat, and she sighs with relief. Edmund joins them on the picnic blanket and they jostle, bickering companionably over the nicest patch of sunshine--as though the sunshine was patchy at all--and Susan and Lucy exchange sisterly eyerolls, Lucy tucking herself against Susan's side as she bites lightly on the cap of her own thermos.

"It really is beautiful," she says quietly, her voice full of longing, and Susan knows that the distraction had been unsuccessful, and that she had known it could not have worked.

Narnia, however long lost, is not something so easily dismissed.

They watch the sky, listening to their brothers laugh, and let the afternoon while away in memory.

Tags: edmund pevensie, lucy pevensie, peter pevensie, susan pevensie