ELYSIAN ▸ peter pevensie

━ [𝟬𝟯] the hurt cannot be much

Andy tugs her foot out of the fresh snow, with much indignation, and wrestles herself forward on the path, pulling her hood over her head as snowflakes begin to descend again. With the intermittent blizzards every evening for the past week, this gentle snowfall presents itself as nothing less than a joke, if not a warning.

On the horizon, the twin mountains stretch continuously towards the sky, guarding the path to the Witch's castle and serving as a visible reminder to every living creature within this line of sight that eternity is just a passing breath for anyone as powerful as Jadis. This winter could serve to be permanent.

Bloody bitch, Andy curses as she trips over a stray root and falls on her face.

The fortunate thing about having an overarching antagonistic, tyrannous, (self-proclaimed) all-powerful ruler is that there is always someone to blame even for the smallest inconveniences. In Jadis' case, every miniscule setback is often facilitated by this terrible weather which is, thankfully, all her fucking fault.

The recent disaster with transporting medicine and army rations through the woods has rendered Andy more irritable than usual; all those good supplies wasted because of a snowstorm that somehow miraculously abated after their logistics were scattered and bearings lost.

Andy pushes herself up on her arms as a faint rumble ripples through the ground and looks over her shoulder as a shadow darkens the fresh curtain of falling snow in the distance. Hooves slam, kicking up dirt, and the harsh tinkle of icicles fills the still forest air as the sleigh shears through the quiet evening.

Dread pools in the bottom of her stomach against her will as she resigns herself to lying in the snow when the sleigh pulls itself to a stop just beside her and Jadis leans out of its side to spare Andy a genuinely quizzical look over the thick fur arrangement draped across her shoulders.

(It is funny really, that this lady cannot bear this weather any better than her tortured subjects without multiple layers of fur pelts – shouldn't she be invulnerable to her own power? What a joke. Of course, Andy does not say any of this to her.)

"Andromeda!" Jadis says, a smile splitting the stoicness of her features the same way a hot knife would split butter, the same way a sword could split a body. "Whatever are you doing down there?" The amusement in her tone is meant to patronise, and Andy imagines it must bring Jadis great pleasure to see her sprawled on the ground on her stomach, shoulder-deep in freshly fallen snow that grips her with as much of a vise as quicksand. Let it be so, Andy decides and looks up at her, offering Jadis her best teeth-filled smile.

"Enjoying the fine weather," Andy responds. "Were you just leaving?"

Jadis' eye twitches. "Why the hurry? Do you have somewhere to be?" Something in her eye glints sharply, hungrily, making Andy's stomach turn in panic.

"Would such a creature as myself receive invitations of that sort?" She counters, pushing herself to her feet when she finally tugs her ankle loose from the snow and dusts the snow off the front of her clothes, pointedly ignoring Jadis' gaze as she does this leisurely and calmly.

There is nothing that angers Jadis more than a casual dismissal of a presence, especially by any being she considers lesser than herself – on that long list of people, Andy suspects she is somewhere at the top, extremely susceptible to petrification by her wand if Jadis wasn't so hopeful of one day winning Andy's favour. It is the scimitars on her back and the name of her father that keeps Jadis from acting on the pitiless desire to put a blade through Andy's body.

"No, I suppose not," Jadis says, looking her up and down as Andy maintains a mockingly respectful stance: hands clasped behind her back and chin tilted up to meet the Witch's eyes, lips twitching with a grin she refuses to let pass onto her expression out of a disliking for doing anything – even irritating the Witch – in excess. Jadis runs her cold, thin fingers along the length of her wand, clearly already entertaining the thought of adding Andy to the garden of statues she's constructed in the foyer of her massive castle.