Hlootoo's Art

queenlucythevaliant:

i. Foam is white and waves are grey; beyond
the sunrise leads my way.

Lucy stood on the deck of the Dawn Treader, squeezing saltwater out of
her golden hair and blinking it out of her eyes, and she could hardly breathe
for all the joy welling up in her chest. She was home again, and it had only
been three years in this time. When the others left her alone in Caspian’s
cabin, she collapsed on the floor—good Narnian timber—and let the air fill her
lungs, in and out and in and out. Rapture and bliss, she thought, glory
and delight. There were not words enough for all her joy.

The great uncharted sea stretched out
before her, glittering, untamed, and fathomless. She could never tire of staring
out into it, because Lucy was the sort of person who found glory, not terror, in
endlessness. In the mornings, she rolled out of bed while it was still dark and
waited for the sun to rise above the brightening sea. She thought of Reepicheep’s
greatest hope, of Aslan’s country, and felt an ache so deep she wondered if her
bones could shatter from it. Just beyond her reach, the sunrise was golden; golden,
she supposed, as Aslan’s country, which lie just as far and yet no farther
beyond grasping.

The storms came and seized the ship,
tossing it across the waves like a pebble, and Lucy was ordered to stay below
deck. Above the deck, the sky was a thunderous gray, interspersed with flashes
of lightning bright enough to blind. Yet Lucy slept well all those nights that
the storm raged and the ship shook. She stayed in her cabin wrapped in a
blanket when there was nothing else to do, read Caspian’s books, and looked out
her little porthole. Narnia was home and all was aright; she could rest easily
here, even like this.

ii. Shadows long before me lie, beneath
the ever-bending sky

Each time Lucy arrived on a new island
the boat swayed a little beneath her as she stepped out onto the shore. Each
time she planted her feet on new soil, a new exhilaration well up inside her. The
islands held peril more often than not, but Lucy braved it all with joy. She
accumulated months of travel, miles of glittering stars, blue seas, and rocky
shores. She stored them all up in the way her back ached from leaning over the
rails of the ship.

One island they did not land on. This
island was a mass of darkness, fear, and madness; an aberration. Lucy stood
queenly on the fighting top and her hands shook, trying to hold her bow steady
for all the good it would do in such a darkness. She knew that courage lived
down in the pit of her stomach but she could not summon it past her lungs. If you ever loved us, she whispered
through the darkness, send help now.

An albatross swept down beside her and breathed
courage in her ear. Her hands still shook, standing there in the dark, because courage
is about you do when your hands are shaking. Yet Lucy’s heart felt lighter. Faith
is about the prayers you whisper when all the lights go out.

The albatross pulled the ship free of the
darkness and beyond it the sky was blue, blue and unbreakable. The island behind
them was gone.

iii. Farewell to Narnia at last; I see
the Star above thy mast!

The Dawn Treader reached the beginning of the end of
the world early in the morning, just as the enormous sun began to sweep across
the ever-nearing horizon. And it was everything.

Lucy hated and adored that last sea in
equal measure. It humbled her; she was in awe of its majesty, its fathomless
expanse. Her dreamer’s heart wept for the beauty of the streaks of color across
the horizon, almost close enough to touch, for the reflections on the water
below and the way she could see down into its uttermost depths. She leaned
against the rails and stared with starved eyes at the beauty which, until now,
she never could have imagined. Everything was light-soaked here. The dawn blinded,
yet it did not hurt. Soon, the sea was light and lily-carpeted.

And yet her heart squeezed with sorrow as
she realized that she was nearing the end; that each sunrise and every glorious mile brought her closer to the moment when she would be sent
away from that world forever.

Lucy had always imagined that, when the
time came to leave Narnia for good, it would shatter some part of her. Aslan
had known this (of course he had), and so in a strange way when Lucy looked
back, she was aware that every moment of the voyage had been preparing her
heart to leave. She was ready.

Those last minutes in Narnia were so
beautifully familiar: she met Aslan on a hill, in a place where the sky
dripped brilliant blue down onto the land. She ran to him with abandon, kissed
him and embraced him and inhaled deeply, for she knew that she that she had
come to the end. He promised to meet her again in the other world, and to
Lucy’s own astonishment, she believed it with all her heart.  

Lucy Pevensie left Narnia behind for the
last time just as she had come into it: following a light and filled with joy.