the summer i was ten again

[deepest_magic]

Isabella falls from her horse first, caught by a low branch she didn't see. She's a better rider than that, she ought to have - ow - she reaches for Jamie, grabs her hand, but while they clasp hands Isabella's got too much momentum and Jamie falls too -

Something snags Isabella's cloak, something snags her bag, she's got a heap of pine needles prickling her face and can't see. She flails a leg but only loses her shoe for her trouble, and the other slips off when she twists, trying to find 'up' before her horse steps on her - when did it get this dim, the sun was only just setting a moment ago - she can't see anything - "Jamie -"

The next time she inhales it's not the smell of pine needles, it's old fur. Not the hay-sweet shallow pile of having somehow planted her nose in her horse's flank; like a coat. Smell jogs memory. Coats - and wood, not the pines but old treated planks -

She's lost Jamie's hand somewhere along the line. She was wearing gloves against the cold and her hand's bare on fur, on wood.

She feels dizzy and small and something's gone wrong with her clothes and she can't hear the horse breathing or feel the wind anymore.

She fumbles around in the dark, looking for Jamie, the horse, a tree, anything.

She finds a shoulder, too small and skinny to be Jamie's, and then with her other hand she finds a door and blinding light and tumbles out of the wardrobe onto the floor.

Comments

[neverbeatme]

She scrunches her eyes shut and covers her face with her hands.

[deepest_magic]

"J-jamie?"

[neverbeatme]

"Argh," says James. (Deep breaths, come on, this isn't helping, it's just she's too mad to talk.)

[deepest_magic]

Isabella tries to get up to storm back into the wardrobe, just in case.

She falls over before she's got both feet under her and that, that's just the last straw, and she bursts into tears.

[neverbeatme]

James manages to calm herself down enough to uncurl and go over and hug Isabella.

"King and Queen of Narnia," she murmurs.

[deepest_magic]

"Oh thank -" Aslan, she almost says. She doesn't particularly feel like thanking Aslan right now. Maybe she will again when she's had more time to think. "Oh good." Squeeze.

[neverbeatme]

Hug. Hug hug hug.

"I am so angry," she says under her breath. "I shouldn't be, it's not doing either of us any good, but ugh."

[deepest_magic]

"I'll get there," mutters Isabella. "When I'm done c-crying. I'm ten! I'm ten and I can barely walk and you're eleven and - and we have accents now! And I have parents and you have an aunt and what are we supposed to do?"

[neverbeatme]

"We could try going back through..."

She looks doubtfully at the wardrobe.

"It might be awkward to explain, if we were suddenly ten and eleven again, but it might still be better than trying to be children out here."

[deepest_magic]

"Yeah. They had child monarchs once and they can do it again." Isabella lurches to her feet with considerable effort and tries the door. Coats. "Awkward that my sex drive isn't due back until I'm like thirteen -" She plows through coats, wobbling.

[neverbeatme]

James follows after.

The back of the wardrobe: is the back of a wardrobe. James kicks it. It thunks.

[deepest_magic]

Isabella flattens her hands against it, pat pat pat - nothing.

She shuffles out of the wardrobe again, peeps between furniture and wall.

She goes stock-still, then reaches for and pulls out a slender notebook with a familiar cover.

[neverbeatme]

"...okay," says James. "That's... that's better than it could be."

[deepest_magic]

"Maybe there's other things," says Isabella, shoving the wardrobe for another look behind it. She peeps under it, too. Nothing.

[neverbeatme]

James attempts to shove the wardrobe too, to get better light to look behind it with. It's very reluctant to move, perhaps because she is currently a not very athletic eleven-year-old. She scowls at it.

[deepest_magic]

It occurs to Isabella to check the interior of her notebook. She plops down on the floor, flips through it, sighs relief; dog-ears a blank page, closes the book, opens it again to the dog-ear; "It works."

[neverbeatme]

"Good. Ugh." She glares at the wardrobe, but doesn't kick it again.

[deepest_magic]

"I'm going to - look more places. Coat pockets and stuff." Isabella goes back in the wardrobe and checks the pockets and hangers of each coat.

[neverbeatme]

James checks the rest of the room. She helps Isabella budge the wardrobe to look behind it. She looks in her own pockets.

She sighs.

[deepest_magic]

Isabella's pockets are likewise empty.

"Okay, so, notebook and that's it. And we're kids. And it can't have been that long since we went in, this end, there's not enough dust..."

[neverbeatme]

"Yeah. So. I guess we just... go back," says James. "I don't even know if I want to tell Chris. I could, if you showed her the notebook, I'm pretty sure she'd believe us..."

[deepest_magic]

"...I didn't even live here. Most of the time. I lived in Arizona."

[neverbeatme]

"Okay, point in favour of telling Chris: it'll be really easy to convince her to move to Arizona if she knows why."

[deepest_magic]

"I could probably convince my parents if I had to but Charlie's definitely not moving if I remember him as well as I think. And Renée might move but not to here or anything. So that's still a gap every year, but we can live with that, I guess."

[neverbeatme]

"Yeah."