❝yours truly, genevieve chen... sincerely yours, peter pevensie.❞
a heartbroken woman writes letters to her deceased fiancé... and a deceased king responds to the letters written by his grieving fiancée.
( post the last battle. )
This is my second letter of the day, and I am writing it at my parents' house. Dessert is being prepared right now and I've managed to slip away and write this to you. The atmosphere here is strange. There are seven people in this house right now, and yet it feels so empty. You and Lucy and Edmund are not here with us.
When was the last time all of us got together for a dinner? I can think of so many times where it was just you, me, and your siblings, and times when it was just us and our parents (Oh, do you remember when my parents met yours? That was certainly a day!), but I don't think all of us, including Briar, ever had a dinner together. I can't imagine how loud the house would have been if it was all ten of us, but I think I would have liked it very much.
Well, while Susan and your father are helping my father with desert, my mother has decided to give Briar and your mother a tour of the house. Briar was too kind to decline the offer and your mother, as she knows my mom's tendencies well, is accompanying them. I am in my childhood bedroom as I write this. Every time I come in here, I find that nothing has changed at all.
Except that everything has. I'm no longer a child. The girl in the framed photographs on the walls and the desks, with her head full of dreams and romance...she's still me, but I'm older and wiser now. My head is still full of dreams and romance, but now I know that happily-ever-afters do not exist outside of those stories. I think, if they did exist, we would have been the proof. I wish you were here with us, all of you.
Merry Christmas, Peter.
Yours truly, Genevieve Chen
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PETER PEVENSIE. ASLAN'S COUNTRY.
My dearest Genevieve,
Two letters in the same day? Why, my love, you're spoiling me.
All teasing aside, I wish we were there with you. Christmas here in Aslan's Country is similar to how it was in Narnia, and how it is on Earth. Lucy's decorated a tree with seashells and flowers. It's not exactly the same as decorating with ornaments and popcorn on strings, but it's quite lovely. She knows it's not like it was but she's making the best of it.
You know, now that I think about it, I don't think all of us ever had dinner together. Our rehearsal dinner the night before our wedding would have been the first. I'm imagining how that would've gone — oh, imagine the volume! I would have loved to see your mother and Polly meet. I don't know if they would have gotten along or if it would have been like oil and water, but I do know one thing: you'd be unable to tear your eyes and ears away from the conversations those two women would have.
Sometimes it feels as though we all grew up too fast. You and I both watched our fathers go off to war and we were lucky they returned, because so many children did not get that. My brother nearly died at the hands of a Witch. I led armies into war before I'd turned twenty. Not to mention that I spent fifteen years in Narnia, and when I returned to Earth, I was a boy again. Things always change, and no one is ever prepared for it.
I don't know if happily-ever-afters exist. But I think that if they do, they don't exist in the traditional sense. I don't know how to explain it in a way it'll make sense, but...maybe the happily-ever-after isn't in how it ends. Maybe it's in the happiness of the journey. I've never been happier in my life than the years I was with you.
