Room 203 -- 24 Hours Later

[kitchen_maid]

Amy is sitting in the floor of the room she shared with Anne Shirley up until yesterday.

She's wrapped in a beautiful autumn-colored quilt, and she's resting her head up against her bed. She cannot quite seem to get warm.

She's too tired and too numb to cry, so she just sits, and stares at nothing.

She's been here since Anne left.

Comments

[kitchen_maid]

"You've been slipping him walnuts while I haven't been looking, haven't you?" Amy asks, grinning back.

"If I think of anything I want for Christmas, you'll be the first to know," she says. "What about you? Is there anything you want?"

[the_seafarer]

He shakes his head.

"I have everything I want," he tells her, smiling. "You, and Lucy, and my friends, and employment.

"And maybe a few walnuts. But he'd like me anyway."

[kitchen_maid]

"Of course," she says. "You're very likable."

Besides, it'd be very hard for Caspian to spoil Mr. Pemberty more than Amy already does.

She wrinkles her nose at him. "Those are things it is very hard to wrap and put under a tree."

Better watch out, Caspian. Left to her own devices, she has been known to give you kitchy 80's toys.

[the_seafarer]

"I'm sure you'll think of something," he says with a laugh. "And we'll all have a marvelous time, presents or no. When my nurse first told me the stories of Old Narnia, after all, I thought the worst thing the Witch did was give Narnia eternal winter without Christmas."

[kitchen_maid]

"Peter mentioned that," she says. "She sounded like a rather horrid person all around, but that does seem rather especially cruel."

She looks at him. "How did you celebrate Christmas in Narnia?"

She may be looking for ideas for the party. Or she may just be enjoying listening to her brother talk.

[the_seafarer]

"How did I? Or how did the court?"

He settles back against the bed, thinking.

"There was always a large party, and a ball. Cair Paravel glittered for all the twelve days with candles and wreathes and silver and gold dwarf-made decorations. The dwarves and the fauns would go out into the snow and start to dance, and drag everyone out with them and there was hot spiced cider and mulled wine and all kinds of marvelous foods, although Father Christmas never came directly to us the way he had to Lucy and the others."

His smile grows reminiscent.

"But my wife and Rilian and I--we liked to sit together on Christmas Eve by a fire, and tease each other about our presents, and just enjoy the happiness around us."

[kitchen_maid]

"That last part sounds lovely," Amy says. "It all does, really, though I must confess that I am very much looking forward to having a Christmas that does not involve any sort of official royal duties. Or a Court Ball."

She looks thoughtful for a moment. "But I think I'll miss the Christmas Eve service. In the cathedral."

[the_seafarer]

"Oh, it was all good fun," Caspian assures her, "but I loved best spending time with my own small family, so that we might enjoy together the merriment of the season."

He smiles down at her.

"What was the service like?"

[kitchen_maid]

"Long," she says, smiling, "but very beautiful. Late, so the whole cathedral was ablaze with candles, and full of the smell of pine trees and incense. And the choir would sing hymns and carols and they'd fill the room and echo off the stones. And it'd be cold, because there's no efficient way to heat a cathedral in the winter, after all, and so you'd sit very close to the people next to you. And the archbishop would read the gospel, which was somehow new and marvelous and exciting every year. And then we'd greet everyone on the way out, from the archbishop all the way down to the smallest choirboy."

Amy, personally, had far perferred talking to the choirboys.

"And we'd then go home, and take off our crowns and our jewels and crawl into bed to wait for morning, which was the one time in the whole season we didn't have to be somewhere doing something royal."

[the_seafarer]

Caspian nods.

"No one ever disturbed us on Christmas morning, unless they absolutely had to. Well, I'm afraid it'll be different, this year, but we'll enjoy it nonetheless."

After all, Caspian hasn't had a family to celebrate Christmas with in ten years.

[kitchen_maid]

"We're going to have a simply lovely Christmas," Amy says, firmly. "New place, new friends, new family, new traditions. And they're all going to be perfectly marvelous."

[the_seafarer]

"Aye, they will," Caspian agrees, and stands to pour himself some tea.

[kitchen_maid]

Amy looks up at him from the spot in the floor that she still hasn't quite moved from. And she still looks tired and it's far to easy to tell she's been crying.

But her smile is real and bright, and she looks happy, or at least much happier than she did when he got here.

"I might even go so far as to say it will be merry," she says.

[the_seafarer]

He only smiles at her, and sits back down to pull her close to him.

"I can hardly wait," he says, and drops a kiss onto her hair.