Ch. 1: Something I Don't Want To Lose

I'm planning on spending the next several blogs on one story- a story about Susan Penvensie, just around the time of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, just around the time when she was lost. It's largely centered around a dream I had and a quote I read when The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe came out on film about how C.S. Lewis "punished Susan for discovering her sexuality". I'm not making any effort to imitate C.S. Lewis's wonderful voice or style, I'm just writing in my own style from Susan's head.

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The cream spills on the table, salted by her eyes, stirred in with breadcrumbs. I can half imagine it will come to life. If it came to life, it would be a cat, a pale, rough-tongued creature. It would weave around my shoulder and turn grey. Grow wings. Deform. Thrall me. My own loneliness burns a rough tongue along the raw flesh inside my chest. I am not sorry she is crying. I do not tell her I'll miss her. Can you count the tears I poured into the ocean like cream? Hell, but I'm lonely. The weight of responsibility, even the weight of sanity, has been dropped onto me.

The ocean liner contains me like a sardine or like tinned ham, and they say I've got a brilliant career ahead of me. A brilliant career like a firecracker into the silt and slag of life. I can hardly wait. I can hardly wait to be over these waters, not so tossed by thoughts that I can't sleep at night. Sometimes I'm not even sure they think I'm worth convincing anymore. I like to remember Narnia, when it was real. I like to wish. But they must not think I'm worth convincing anymore; they won't even talk to me about it. Hell, but I'm glad to be going. I didn't cry.

Or to come ashore in America and find Mrs. Walton waiting for me, effusive and stylish, and the way she calls me 'darling' and promises me the most lovely time I've ever imagined distracts or comforts me. Or the way you can almost see money dripping around her ankles and heels if you're not too busy being delighted and charming and sophisticated, and exchanging sparring glances with her son Donald. Which I am.

He enfolds me even more thoroughly than Mrs. Walton; I am sophisticated and I am delighted to be here, eluding Donald for amusement. Letting him fold me up under his chin while we dance, letting him whisper that he loves the smell of my hair, and then disappearing into some other man's arms before he can think past that. Letting him take me masterfully by the arm and walk with me under the green new leaves along the streets, buy me ices, pay me compliments, and spending the whole time being just faintly amused by something he can't put his finger on. Playing little games of tag in the sitting rooms and parlors where we spend our time: moving to the piano just after he catches me on a sofa, feeling a sudden need for conversation with someone across the room just as he's cornered me with someone else. Getting tired just when there's no other escape for me and leaving him to go to bed, and yet letting him kiss my hand when I come down for breakfast, and not taking my hand back until necessity requires it. Maybe he'll end up lonelier than I.