Summary: Ryan was just trying to find his old suit. He certainly wasn't expecting to end up in a snow-covered forest, being propositioned by a goat-like fairytale creature. (Narnia AU)
Ryan looked around at the white landscape, bemused. He wasn't sure how he'd managed to end up where he was—or for that matter, where that where actually was. It looked a bit like Jon's place.
OK, it didn't actually look anything like Jon's place. But it was covered in snow, and as a Las Vegas boy born and bred with very little experience of travelling, the only place Ryan had previously seen covered in snow was Jon's house in Chicago.
On the other hand, Jon's neighbourhood contained houses. This place only had acres and acres of uninhabited wood. And—a lamp-post.
There was a noise behind him, and he turned quickly.
His first thought was That's not even possible. Then,
“Why are you screaming?”
The person—creature—being in front of him waved a hand apologetically. “Sorry,” it said. “Sorry, but dude, you scared the shit out of me! We don't get visitors here since... yeah, probably not ever. Sorry. Wait.” The creature breathed in and out deeply a couple of times, then started to rifle through its shoulder bag frantically. “Had it here a moment ago,” it muttered distractedly.
While it swore over sixteen fucking pockets, why did I think that was a good idea?, Ryan took the opportunity to give it a closer look. It looked human enough from the waist up—quite good-looking, even, if rather hairier than anyone Ryan had ever met before. (The horns were a bit of an oddity, too.) From the waist down, however...
“So,” Ryan said in a carefully neutral voice, “goats, huh? Rural, your family?”
“Just a second,” the creature said; it was now apparently trying to fit its entire arm in one of the bag's pockets. Its face lit up in triumph as it finally managed to locate what it had been searching for, and it pulled its hand back out clutching a scrap of paper. “Finally, you fucker! Ahem.” It glanced at Ryan, embarrassed, then peered closely at the note, moving its lips and frowning.
“Greetings, stranger to this land,” it read out loud, rather haltingly. “I am Brendon, a faun of Narnia. Are you a son of Adam or possibly a daughter of Eve?”
“What?” Ryan stared at the self-proclaimed faun. “No. My mom's name is Jennifer. I'm pretty sure Dad wasn't called Adam, either.”
The faun stared back at him. There was a moment's pause, while incomprehension reigned on both sides of the conversation. The faun eventually seemed to come out of it, though, shaking its head briefly.
“Are you human?” it—or he, rather; Ryan felt that it was probably rude to keep referring to Brendon as an “it” after he had actually gone through the trouble of introducing himself—asked.
“Um,” said Ryan. “Yes. Of course.”
“Oh, yeah, thank you.” Brendon rolled his eyes. “Of course, because being human is what's normal and all those creepy fauns and centaurs and dryads and whatever can just go hide in the woods. You're really no better, are you? I thought your side of the doorway was supposed to be about free choice and an individualistic society where everyone could stand tall—well, fine, the dwarves would probably still have trouble with that part, but a lot of them seem pretty well off on this side anyway, despite the whole oppression thing. Assholes.”
“What the fuck are you?” Ryan asked.
Brendon gave him an odd look. “I'm a faun,” he said, speaking slowly and with great emphasis on the last word. Ryan shrugged at him, non-plussed. “Don't tell me you've never seen a faun before. What? You haven't? What kind of place is your side?”
“What kind of place is this, then?” snapped Ryan. “I thought centaurs and shit were supposed to be fairytales.”
There was another one of those mutual incomprehension moments, and once again the faun recovered quicker. “Yeah, so you're weird,” he said. “But that reminds me, I'm supposed to offer you hot chocolate and stuff. Come on, we can talk more about it once we're back home. I'm freezing my hooves off out here.”
“I don't like hot chocolate,” said Ryan.
Brendon threw his hands in the air. “You're a real fucking chore, you know that? Look, it's perfectly simple: you follow me to my home, we talk about Narnia and shit and have hot chocolate and whatever, and then I betray you to the Witch.”
He looked at Ryan's expression, then down at his note, and swore softly. “You'd think they'd write the DO NOT TELL THEM THIS PART before the sentence in question instead of after, wouldn't you?” he said conversationally, fishing a pen out of one of the many pockets on his shoulder bag and scribbling something on the paper. “So that didn't go all that well.”
“This betraying,” Ryan said carefully, “what would that mean for me, precisely?”
“You know, the usual,” Brendon said vaguely, still engrossed in his note. “A bit of torture, some questioning, death by stoning.” He looked up and grinned. “Pretty painless way to go, I'm told. At least compared to some of the alternatives.”
“You call dying by having stones inexpertly thrown at you the painless alternative?” asked Ryan, who had now moved into some state of shock, where everything felt rather detached and fluffy.
“Not that kind of stoning,” Brendon replied, now stowing both pen and paper back in his bag. “The one where she turns you into a stone statue. I really think it's one of the best options, if you're given a choice. Do you think we could maybe skip the whole hot chocolate bit and move straight to the betraying? I'm out of milk anyway.”
“Or I could escape,” Ryan suggested, but without much hope.
Sure enough, Brendon laughed at this (quite loudly). “Even the trees are on my side, OK,” he informed. “You would get about five yards. You're free to try, of course.”
“Look,” Ryan tried desperately, “I never asked for any of this. I was just trying to find my old pastel suit.”
“The pink one?” Brendon asked, then clapped a hand over his mouth.
Ryan blinked twice. “You know my pink suit?” he asked. Brendon looked suddenly guilty, and the mystery of why Ryan's forage into his closet had needed to extend past the two first rows of clothes now started to clear. “What have you done with my pink suit?”
“OK, so first of all, that suit was fucking ugly,” Brendon said quickly. “And secondly, you hadn't used it for probably six months. And I needed fabric for my rag rugs.”
“You cut up my suit?”
“My friends love my rag rugs,” Brendon said defensively.
“Alex bought that suit for me!”
Brendon rolled his eyes. “Well, Alex is an idiot,” he said. “Oh, fuck.”
Now Ryan was beyond perplexed. “You know Alex?” he said. Brendon replied with a long mutter in which the words not know as such were barely recognisable. “Wait, you've been spying on me?”
“So what if I watch your side now and again?” Brendon asked. “Nothing interesting has happened here since the White Witch took over. The snow put an instant stop to the nude dancing, which was practically the best point of being a faun, and the last decent party was before Aslan left for the Far Isles. Even the wine production dried up eventually, what with—you know—the lack of grapes these days. And we haven't had a single Christmas yet, which suggests that the month Whitey chose to literally freeze this country in was fucking November. Life on this side sucks. Practically the only entertainment I get these days is peeking through the doorway.”
“You keep talking about doorways,” Ryan said.
“Not doorways. The doorway. The one between your side and mine.”
“And sides. You keep talking about sides, too.”
“I guess you could call them worlds,” Brendon said thoughtfully. “Like, you live in one world, and I live here, in Narnia, and that's another world. But there are holes—doorways. Like your closet.” He sighed. “Aslan tried to explain it to me once, something about quantum relativity—flux—something. To be honest, I stopped listening around quantum. We were both pretty pissed, too. The Beavers do this fucking unbelievable pine cone liqueur... Speaking of which, grab him, Piney, please.”
Ryan had been edging slowly away, deciding that to at least attempt escape couldn't possibly do any harm, but now two great branches of a pine tree came down like arms and picked him up, none too gently.
“That's really cute,” Brendon said. “I did mention the whole you would get about five yards, right?”
“I had to try,” said Ryan.
“And it's adorable. Feel any better?”
“Not really.”
“Well, at least now you've got it out of your system.” Brendon scratched behind one of his horns, lazily. “Don't fight against your destiny, man.”
“But my destiny is being tortured and then turned into a statue.”
“Still your destiny.” Brendon shrugged. “Shame your band doesn't have more members, though. All right, and stop making those faces. I watch you sometimes. So what?”
The cold had turned Brendon's ears and cheeks red, Ryan noticed.
“Why would it be better if we had more members?” he asked. “Ow.”
“It's your own fault for trying to run away,” Brendon said, but gestured at the pine tree, which loosened its grip somewhat. “Well, there's this legend Aslan told me once, about how the White Witch would be defeated. These humans are supposed to come from another world—four of them, who play in a band together. And they'll undermine the White Witch's regime by playing rebellious songs about summer in underground venues, and then there'll be a revolution.” He frowned. “That, or something called a flame thrower, apparently. We have a few of the dwarves working on that one. But anyway, I know for a fact it's only you and Jon and Spencer in your band, so you don't fit the legend. Shame, right?”
“We just convinced Alex to join for second guitar,” said Ryan.
There was a long and rather awkward pause.
“Well, thank you so very much,” said Brendon eventually.
“You're welcome,” Ryan tried. Judging from the scowl on Brendon's face, this was not the right answer.
“You've put me in a bit of a position here, you realise that, right? No? OK, you don't. But you have.” Brendon sighed, deeply. “You can put him down, Piney. Thanks. So, the thing is: I can't interfere with legend, obviously. They always find a way to circle round and bite you in the ass if you try. Which means I'm going to have to let you go. Which means I'm going to be stamped a traitor and get killed by the Witch. And this sucks.”
“Couldn't you just go into hiding somewhere?” Ryan asked.
“You remember how I said that even the trees were on my side?” Brendon asked, and when Ryan nodded, continued, “What I really meant was her side, of course. Piney's pretty cool, though. Right?” he added suddenly.
The pine tree rustled its needles in what was possibly an affirmative gesture. “Right, so he probably won't sell me out. But he's one of the few.” Brendon sighed.
“You wouldn't need a groupie, would you?” he asked piteously.
Ryan blinked. “A groupie?”
“Roadie,” said Brendon quickly. The cold had started to attack his neck as well, it seemed. “I meant a roadie.”
“I was hoping I could just go back home,” Ryan said. Brendon glared at him.
“Yeah, so that's not going to happen,” he said. “Now that you've started this whole legend business, you damn well have to finish it. So what we should do, right, is lay some plans for how we're going to get the rest of the band here. And all the instruments—fuck, that's going to be a bitch. Lucky you're vain, isn't it? If you'd had a smaller closet this never would have worked. OK, so next we have to look over your repertoire. We should concentrate on summer songs and general rallying tunes. A couple of ballads, sure, but nothing very depressing. Hey, maybe I could be your manager! That could work, right?” He looked anxiously at Ryan. “Hate to mooch off you, of course, but the alternative is the stoning I mentioned before. And I'm afraid I wouldn't last long as a statue. My horns would probably break off and shit. Hey, dude, you all right?”
Ryan was feeling pretty much overwhelmed at this point, and also rather cold.
“I think I would actually take that drink now,” he said faintly, shoving his hands into his armpits. Brendon looked at him, concerned.
“Is your nose supposed to look like that?” he asked.
“Like what?” Ryan asked, through chattering teeth.
“Sort of white. Um.” Brendon bit his lip. “So you're not really made for cold weather, are you?”
“I'm from Las Vegas,” Ryan replied, feeling that this ought to answer the question. The cold was really seeping into his bones, now that the first shock of finding oneself part of a legend to free a wintry country from oppression was wearing off, and he shut his eyes and clenched his jaw, trying to will away the cold by sheer strength of character. He was vaguely aware of Brendon moving closer, and then a hairy arm was laid around his shoulder and a pocket-flask was thrust under his nose.
“Hope gin is OK,” came Brendon's voice close to his ear. “Junipers thrive a lot better than vines in this climate, so we've all more or less converted.”
Ryan thought about pointing out that gin was quite possibly the most disgusting spirit in the world, but then decided that alcohol was, after all, alcohol and accepted relatively gratefully.
“So now that we've established that I'm not, in fact, going to be turning you over to the witch, how about coming back to my place and getting warmed up?” Brendon continued. “You really ought to dry those pants, too. And I started the fire before I left, so it ought to be nice and hot by now.”
Some small part of Ryan's brain tried to point out that a half-goat had just poured alcohol into him, and now wanted to take him home and take off his pants. The rest insisted rather stronger that it didn't actually care, and besides, at least it was a pretty half-goat.
“Sure,” he agreed—and it could just have been the gin, of course, but he felt like the blinding smile he received in reply went a long way towards warming him up.
The squirrel who resided in the pine tree and who had been following the entire exchange watched as Brendon the faun, still supporting the strange human, started on his way home, and it clapped its little paws excitedly. Most of them had never thought it would be possible—and yet here it was, the day they had all been hoping and waiting for. A day of legend, certainly. The squirrel dried a happy tear from its eye and rushed off to spread the good news to all those who had been praying for this occurrence.
Brendon seemed to finally have found a date.
*
Hey! Please don't be surprised if I don't post for a while...
I've got mock-exams coming up meaning I have to do a lot of revision. I also have a bunch of homework to do.
I'll try and post at least once a week but if I don't, I'm sorry. School's my top priority right now x