the golden age

[deepest_magic]

When the party has died down, Isabella, for one, is well and truly exhausted. She explores the palace until she finds a room with a bed in it, and into this bed she flops, still in her clothes and holding her staff and carrying the cordial in her pocket. She sleeps late, because the party kept her up so late and she hadn't really slept the night before; but around noon, she stirs, and gets up, and goes looking for James and wherever her backpack may have got to. The backpack she finds in the great hall where the principal mass of the party was; some enterprising creature took both bags from the battlefield at Beruna up to the castle for them, and she only wishes she knew who it was. She takes her bag to her room and carries James's with her and continues looking for her friend.

Comments

[deepest_magic]

Isabella wraps up tight in her cloak.

[jackfrostbite]

Silence.

[deepest_magic]

Even if she came up with a clever diversion now it would have taken suspiciously long to come to mind.

[jackfrostbite]

"I don't want to kill you," he murmurs.

[deepest_magic]

"I don't want you to kill me either."

[jackfrostbite]

"I noticed that."

[deepest_magic]

"So we're agreed on you not killing me then, yes?"

[jackfrostbite]

"I don't..." He trails off and doesn't finish the thought.

[deepest_magic]

"...don't what?" she asks after a reasonable pause.

[jackfrostbite]

"It doesn't matter, never mind."

[deepest_magic]

Isabella's not so sure of that, but, well.

[jackfrostbite]

"Aslan's creature," he murmurs, wincing audibly over the name but not as badly as he did the last few times he said it.

[deepest_magic]

"You keep saying that."

[jackfrostbite]

"Yes."

[deepest_magic]

"Why?"

[jackfrostbite]

"Because you are. Because..."

[deepest_magic]

"Because I like his name?"

[jackfrostbite]

"I don't think it's the curse, that makes it hurt to hear it," he says, not quite answering. "I think that part is all me..."

[deepest_magic]

"Even for people who like it it's different person to person."

[jackfrostbite]

"When Narnia belonged to Jadis, I had a place here. I - 'chose' to be hers much the way a trapped creature chooses not to chew off its own leg quite yet, but there was a place for me, and I took it. But this is Aslan's world now, and Aslan's king and queen rule in Narnia, and I... I do not think I have any hope left."

[deepest_magic]

"You took the muzzle off."

[jackfrostbite]

"It hurt me to hurt him."

[deepest_magic]

"And you saw us there, but you didn't tell the Witch. And he spared you, which I think was at least intended as a mercy. Is it only his name, whatever happens when you hear it -?"

[jackfrostbite]

"It's not always exactly the same. But it's always... a great terror. Like looking over the edge of a cliff into a black void, and knowing that if you fall, you will fall forever."

[deepest_magic]

"I get the sensation that I'm going to be very busy forever."