Fearless • P. Pevensie

What Becomes // Between The Gap

A thought piece of the Pevensies, taking place between the events of LWW and Caspian, told from the point of view of their mother, Helen.

Inspired by an old Narnia tumblr textpost !!!

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Oh, who are they now, Helen?

You watch your children return from the country as stronger, more civilized individuals. Each of them have grown, you come to realize. Not outgrown their clothes, but outgrown their need for you, Helen. While their old school clothes still fit all but your youngest son, who's just hit the growth spurt you reckon he should at about this age, there seems to be something wrong. They occupy spaces now that they never had before. Broader shoulders on your sons, and better posture in your daughters. They all move as if completely unaffected by their sometimes tight and restrictive clothing. Tight Sunday gowns and stuffy button-ups fail to limit their always-moving forms and expressions.

Your youngest daughter dances with fairies and hums quietly to hymns that you'll never know. Her feet like to find wet grass in the earliest hours of dawn. The morning dew acting as glistening starlight as she dances around the cosmos of your garden. She dances with the grace of a ballerina, somehow barely making contact with the ground. You think to yourself, at times, that she seems to have a sort of magic to her steps. You've scolded her for this unladylike behavior, but she looks at you as if you are the one who does not understand. She cries, still. Though not how a child ought to. No longer are they the wet, slobbering tantrums that someone not yet of age should have. Her cries are silent, and sparse. Only when times are truly hard does your youngest begin to cry anymore. Her face is nearly unbearable to see when she cries, for her eyes dim from the spark that she otherwise seems to carry with her wherever she goes. And her frown could make even the cruelest man second guess himself. Even when her siblings wear faces of horror and sorrow, hearing some tragic story from the war through the newspaper, your youngest still tries her best to stay positive through all of it.

Your other daughter talks to you more now than she did before the country, unlike all of her other siblings. Though, the conversation isn't quite what you'd wanted. Instead of begging for new dresses or asking to stay over at friends' houses as you did when you were her age, she now finds a quiet resolve. Peace in fleeting moments unlike anything you've seen before. She asks you of novels you've read, asks for your input on whether or not they're worth her time. And time, it seems, has utterly transfixed her. She never stops moving. Not even in the brief moments where sleep finds her. Always hustling, especially when she reads or writes. She can pop into the kitchen and read the daily newspaper before you'd ever have even picked it up. And her writings, you've found of the brief segments you'd managed to read, have turned intricately formal. Using old words, and expressing opinions you rather think young girls should not yet have. She expresses views on politics, scoffing with her youngest brother over them. She's written ideas of laws that very well may never even reach parliament, though if proposed by a male politician much her senior, would be passed without question. And her posture. Oh, her posture. You'd seen war heroes come home with less pride in their stance. She carries herself much like royalty. Even more than your other children, who have all seemed to have adopted some level of prideful strides. But she doesn't seem to hold the belief that she's better than anyone, as she deems those as intellectually gifted as her equals. And she treats everyone she finds ignorant as though they are unworthy of her time, even men much older than herself. Through your scolding she's attempted to reconcile this behavior. Though It's as if it is simply an old habit that she's yet to break. You'd even thought once or twice that Her Majesty the Queen of England herself would do well to take a lesson in regality from your eldest daughter.

And your youngest son, he's quiet. Oh, is he quiet. You think that he's hardly said two sentences to you since he's gotten back from the country. Whereas boys his age should be arrogant or devilish, he seems to have grown up in the countryside. He no longer quarrels with his older brother. Not over anything that really matters, anyway. And it is not the same childish bickering that once plagued your house's walls before they'd gone. He finds himself reading, most often. Or playing chess against himself. His siblings haven't offered to play, but you've got a sneaking suspicion that he much prefers it that way. You're also inclined to believe that he'd win, too. Even against his intellectually gifted older sister. He's begun to fill out his clothes and outgrow them. Though, even when you give him hand-me-downs that do technically fit, it seems he fills the space a bit too well. He writes, too. Much more than even your eldest daughter does. He writes of anything his mind can think of. Much of this writing you know you'll never be allowed to see. He writes stories, you've gathered. Recounting great battles and mythological beasts, as if writing them from his memory. He's gotten into a fight or two with neighbour boys by now. They don't quite like the assuredness of his pace, how high he carries himself. Three of them had attempted to knock him down a peg just a few short weeks ago. All three left that day with bruises on their eyes and jaws. Your son, however, had never been touched.