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

[sundayfish]

So Charlie sits.

[deepest_magic]

"Elizabeth and I went to explore the abandoned house by the edge of town and in it we found a portal to another world where time runs differently. We were there a decade and a half. We grew up. Then it spat us out back into our previous bodies later the same day we left."

[queensidecastle]

"I believe them," volunteers Chris. "Bella has a magic notebook, there are pictures, it was very convincing. And I already knew magic existed; I have a useless and inexplicable magic chess set."

[sundayfish]

[deepest_magic]

Bella looks for a comparable set of pictures of her, over time, the way the knightings make a good sequence for James. She comes up with a series of photos of her on Queensday, hands the notebook to Charlie.

[sundayfish]

He looks them over. "Are these - photos -?"

[deepest_magic]

"Magic ones. I had a thing that took pictures and would transfer them to paper. I don't have any of my stuff except the notebook now."

[sundayfish]

"You've got a crown on."

[deepest_magic]

"We helped overthrow the witch who was ruling the country and we took over in her place."

[neverbeatme]

(James smiles, wistfully. They were such a good King and Queen of Narnia.)

[deepest_magic]

"...oh, and I go by Isabella now."

[sundayfish]

"Yeah?"

[deepest_magic]

"...if you want to call me Bells you can, just, introduce me as Isabella."

[neverbeatme]

James decides not to introduce any of her own name-related complications to this conversation at this time.

[deepest_magic]

"We couldn't get back," Isabella goes on, "so here we are, but I'm not really ten, anymore."

[sundayfish]

Nod.

[neverbeatme]

...Okay, that seems like it went pretty well. Good for Charlie.

[deepest_magic]

"Also we're married. Chris is probably going to move to Phoenix so we don't have to be apart most of the year."

[sundayfish]

"Erm."

[neverbeatme]

"It's kind of awkward being ten and eleven again," says James.

[deepest_magic]

"It really is. Dad, if you are concerned about the thing I think you are concerned about I don't expect it to come up for like four years minimum."

[sundayfish]

"All right."

[neverbeatme]

Awkwaaaaard.

[deepest_magic]

Yeeeeeep.

"...so, I think I will probably tell Renée too," says Isabella, "and I will probably attend at least a partial year of school to reacclimate in a relatively low-stakes way to having to act like a ten-year-old American, but now you know what's going on if I accidentally talk in a vaguely British accent or don't remember how to operate a microwave or something."

[sundayfish]

Nod.