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Snow flurried in swirling eddies, caught up in tiny bursts of clashing winds as serf crashed over low, round boulders and a chill laced the usually mild air of Ramandu's Island.
Caspian sat with his back to a rolling green hill, hands tucked between his knees against the temperamental coastal weather that never seemed to know its own heart as beds of overgrown flowers bobbed and bowed at his feet, blooming one day in ever-spring only to strike the frost and wilt the next, weighed down by a clinging white blanket.
A cruel contradiction.
Life in death, death in life.
Such a thing as a happy ending only seemed to exist in the old tales—and perhaps not even then, though he had foolishly dreamed it could be so this time.
It had been more than a month now since he bade his friends their final farewell on the deck of the Dawn Treader, and still their image stuck in his mind as vividly as the dying flowers shivering before his eyes.
That day before it had all ended; when he had still been happy.
Lucy's smile shining through tangled sea-spray curls as her delicate pink fingers reached up to brush them back, Edmund's sharp yet almost melodic laughter as he leaned so easily against the ship's rail like he'd been born for adventure, Eustace's tiny smirk tugging hesitantly at the corners of his mouth, as if not yet quite sure about this feral thing called joy, treading carefully into its territory as if over thin ice.
Why should he ever have been given such a beautiful thing if it would only slip beyond the edge of the world, lost amidst a sea of lilies like gathering snow?
Flowers wilting even as they bloomed; too late; beginning just as the world around them ended.
Friendships born never to grow old.
He didn't hear the soft footsteps over snow-dusted grass until a willowy shadow fell over his lap and he glanced up into the fluttering glass-like blue robes and soft eyes of the Star's daughter, as if she wore the sea within as well as without.
"My apologies, if I am disturbing your Majesty," she murmured in a voice as clear and lemony-tart as starlight. "The Lord Drinian said I should check on you."
Caspian scoffed, forcing a wry smile at his friend's persistent meddling.
Only an hour ago, Drinian had taken him aside and forced their eyes to meet, so alike in face and figure that they might have been brothers, save for Caspian's despondent air in sharp contrast to Drinian's force.
"You can't just sulk all winter," he'd said, gripping Caspian's shoulders as if trying to wake him. "Talk to somebody. Socialize. If you won't talk to me then talk to her."
Caspian had followed his glance to the Star's daughter, conversing with a handful of the older sailors over old sea legends and myths. "I don't even know her."
"Well, you were perfectly bold upon your first meeting, now you're just being stubborn."
"I'm allowed to be stubborn, I'm the King."
Drinian shot him a look that said they both knew quite the opposite to be true, and Caspian sighed and hung his head.
"Just… give me a little time, okay? I'm alright, really, I just… need… time."
Now Caspian glanced up the hill beyond the woman's fluttering skirts, where Drinian stood at a distance, leaning with his arms crossed against the nearest pillar of the colonnade. He raised his fingers in a subtle wave and Caspian rolled his eyes.
"It seems he and I have rather different concepts of time."
"If you would rather be left alone," said the woman, "it is perfectly understandable."
Caspian shook his head. "It's alright. He's right. As usual." He forced another smile as she lowered herself beside him, yellow hair brushing the white-specked hill as she drew her knees up to her chest.
Clear blue eyes watched his, but Caspian could not tear his gaze from the quivering flowers of the same color struggling under their heavy white load.
"I should stop sulking… but… it just doesn't seem fair."
"Of what do you speak?"
"It's… I've made the best friends of my life, besides that meddling oaf over there, and now… now I'll never see them again. I— I don't know how I'm meant to make the return journey without them. It will be miserable to sleep in my own cabin again. I gave it up to Lucy, but it wasn't so much of a sacrifice, really. I'd much rather bunk below in those musty hammocks with Edmund and Eustace than go back to that room alone." He sighed, breath quivering slightly with the release of speaking it all aloud. "I'm sorry, it really is childish, I should've known they'd leave sooner or later. I mean, I did know, I just…."
The woman shook her head. "Loneliness is a difficult burden to bear. Made even more so once one has known camaraderie. But… I think it is easier, if you only believe…"
She trailed off and Caspian met her eyes dejectedly.
"Believe what?"
She watched him for a moment, as if sorting out how to speak her thoughts, and then glanced over her shoulder and motioned to the whole of the island. "This is the isle of Aslan's Table. Your party knew the stone knife upon sight. Surely your Majesty must know that the Great Lion sets no journey on its course without a destination. Surely you must know that in the end, all sorrow will be washed away on golden shores. You will see your friends again, even if it is in another life, as surely as flowers bloom again in spring."
Caspian's eyes flicked to the wilting flowers and back again to the woman's young face, blinking as he truly took her in for the first time since that first morning at the table, when his friends had been seated at his side, when he had worried over nothing but what mysteries must live within her graceful figure. Now she seemed to have read his mind through shining blue eyes reflecting snow like stars. "There is some magic about you, Lady."
She smiled. "Only that of observation. It seems to me that the King of Narnia wears his heart on his sleeve."
Caspian smiled back in spite of himself, ducking his gaze sheepishly to the snow-laden blossoms. "I suppose I do not know where else to put it."
The flowers shivered, and Caspian turned the woman's words over in his mind as a comfortable silence descended between them, softened by the crash of frothing waves below, Drinian's gaze still resting heavy on his back though he ignored it now.
Tiny snow drifts still bowed delicate stems, still fading before they had ever seen a summer sun. But something struck him almost lovely about them, too, in spite of the chill, in spite of the struggle.
In the end, even winter would be fleeting. The sun still shone in the cold, even when its warmth seemed not to touch the world of white. And perhaps it would hold its own sort of beauty, an icy glimmer that tasted of starlight, before its time came.
Before the flowers returned, never to fade, beyond the grip of the cold; beyond the end of the world.