"you know, when you said you could sing, i just assumed you'd be bloody terrible. ever the surprise, o'callaghan."
[book 3 | can be read as standalone]
✳︎
she's his cousin's exchange student with a secret, and he's, well, a king of narnia (not a hig...
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☆○o。 。o○☆
Alice O'Callaghan was wholly, completely unsure of what to think about Edmund Pevensie.
Even sitting there, leaning her back against the mast and stealing small glances at him, she simply didn't understand. She knew he didn't trust her, knew for a complete and utter fact that Caspian didn't trust her, and yet here he was.
Alice looked back down at the sea, watching the swirling liquid darkness as it moved and changed, never quite the same each time she looked. The stars above her were extinguished by a particularly insistent cloud, obliterating the gentle light from the moon.
She hadn't been prepared for Edmund's question.
The war.
Alice had told the truth. She really didn't know what to think about it, she had never really thought about it before. After all, it didn't have much significance to her as she went through her mundane, daily motions. Perhaps it was different, living in London, seeing the dark hulls of buildings, still charred and smoking from last night's air raid.
It had been a long time since the Blitz, Alice knew that, but the memories must still have been present for Edmund.
He was leaning effortlessly against the ship's edge, looking down at the ocean's surface with a grim set to his face. The cloud passed, and he was illuminated once again. Alice's hair was blowing into her face, and she turned to look back at the sea.
She wondered what went on inside his head.
Edmund seemed simultaneously utterly natural and completely uncomfortable. She didn't know how to place him. Alice leaned her head back onto the mast, looking up at the sky above, all its endless depths. As vast as the ocean.
Her argument with Caspian played over in her head once more, and she wondered if that was what had brought Edmund up onto the deck. If he had been awake, surely he had seen Caspian take her. He hadn't brought it up, but Alice wouldn't be surprised if he knew.
She was grateful for his company, regardless. The silence was less lonely.
"Alice." He said her name, his voice low and quiet, and she glanced over to him, finding his eyes on her. "Why aren't you surprised? By all of this?"
She broke his gaze. It was harder to lie to someone when looking right into their eyes.
"My mother," she replied, fighting the urge to let her anger tint her words, "She had some unfaltering belief in fairytales." She was one, after all. "I suppose this is just the same, really." Her voice broke, ever so slightly, on the last word, and Alice cursed herself for it.
She couldn't even lie convincingly.
Alice had always found it hardest to lie about her parents. There were too many bad memories, too much hurt, tinging her vision and all her thoughts in carmine, wine-red waves. Here, in Narnia, those memories were more present to her than ever, and though she loved the ocean, now she looked at it and saw something else.
