Until We Meet Again

Chapter One

Sierra's POV
I started to climb down from the tree where I had been sitting. It had been too long. 1,400 years since I'd seen Peter, Susan, Edmund, or Lucy. I had also been feeling awful lately, but I chalked it down to the heat. I missed the way Narnia used to be, with the Dryads dancing in the summer, and the fauns playing their pipes. Even after this long, I still missed Peter. The day they had disappeared, right before they left, he'd kissed me. I still didn't know why. For the last 1,400 years, I had been traveling all around Narnia, singing the Ballad, and sharing the story and our rules for hiding from the Telmarines. My head started spinning, and I fell out of the tree, smacking my head on one of the walls of the ruins. Yeah. The ruins of Cair Paravel. I'd lived here, driving anyone who saw me insane, so everyone was afraid of the woods, except for Narnians. Before I blacked out, I heard familiar voices, and I smiled. They're back.

Peter's POV
We had been in the train station, waiting to head back to school, when we had been pulled back into Narnia. Now, we were in the ruins Edmund had spotted from the beach. Edmund suddenly knelt down, picking something small and gold up.

"It's a knight. From my chess set!" Lucy looked confused.
"Which one?" He looked at her, an exasperated look on his face.
"Well, I didn't exactly have a solid gold chess set in Finchley." Lucy smirked, then looked up, and gasped.
"Impossible!" She took off, and I rolled my eyes.
"Lucy! Not again." We took off after her, and she just stood in one spot. There were chunks of stone that may have been thrones at one time. We followed her, and she finally spoke.

"Don't you see?!" I was quite confused at this point, and she moved us around as she spoke.
"I see walls. And columns there. And a glass roof. And tapestries." I sucked in a breath.
"Cair Paravel." We walked around, and Lucy was chomping into an apple. Then, she and Susan disappeared around a corner, and Edmund knelt down again.

"Catapults. Cair Paravel was attacked! This couldn't have happened on its own." I nodded, looking off into the distance. Where was Sierra? Was she even still alive? Then, we heard a scream.

"Peter! Edmund! Help! Hurry!" We dashed around, and saw Susan kneeling over someone in a dark blue tunic, black leggings, and armor. I knelt over them, recognizing the blond braid in a moment.

"Sierra!" I croaked, laying her head on my lap. Susan felt her forehead, sighing.
"What? What's wrong?" She winced.
"She's got a pretty bad fever, and a cut on her head. We either need something wet or Lucy's cordial." Edmund took off, coming back a couple minutes later with both of our jackets soaked from the creek. We laid them on her arms and forehead, and within minutes, she was awake. She smiled weakly, grasping Susan's hand. After another hour, she had most of her strength back.

"So, what happened? We figured out where we are. What happened, and how long has it been?" She sliced and apple with her knife, and took a bite. Then, she told us the story.
"It was about two days after you disappeared. The Telmarines. They attacked, with numbers far greater than we were expecting. They crushed us. I wasn't allowed to fight, and so I've been waiting for the day when you'd come back. It's been fourteen hundred years since you disappeared. I did add to the Ballad while you were gone, though. Only what had to do with Narnians. Not Telmarines." Susan smiled.
"Would you sing it? The whole thing?" She shook her head.
"Not right now. I have something to show you." She led us to a stone wall, and then changed into an elephant, and moved the stone, revealing a wooden door. She changed back, opening the door and leading us down. The armory and treasury. Every piece of armor in there was shining and clean, and not a speck of dirt or dust was in there. I looked at Sierra, who smiled.

"When you're stuck in the same place for 1,400 years, you come up with really random stuff to do. Including cleaning armour twice a day. Your things are in the larger chests." There were stone statues of each of us, and we went to our respective chests, opening them and removing specific items.

"Oh. My horn. I must've left it on my saddle the day we went back." Sierra nodded.
"Yes. It disappeared, though. We had a couple of the black dwarves betray us about 1,200 years ago, and they stole it and other valuables." I looked at her. She didn't look a day older. She had dark circles under her eyes, probably from nights with no sleep. Her eyes darted every which way, trying to keep an eye on everything at the same time. She looked outside.

"It's getting late. We should get some sleep. We leave at dawn. It's time to take back Narnia." We built a fire, and against my better judgement, I fell asleep along with the others.