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Ramandu comes up the steep hill to her mother’s grove the morning the Dawn Treader is set to leave for Narnia, before even the dawn, before even the sun berry.
He has never visited her here before. It was never a spoken thing, never something they discussed. He had planted this grove for her mother and once he sang it from the earth and crafted the bower he had respected her desire for solitude, and after she had passed he had left it to Liliandil’s care alone. She had never been sure if that was grief or kindness or indifference.
Her father had never been an easy man to understand.
She stands, glancing around her. She has packed some things - clothes, a few keepsakes. The loom her mother had woven on must remain behind, and that is an ache in Liliandil’s heart. The spindle as well. The shelves still hold several of her mother’s carvings, though she has wrapped several inbetween some spare clothes and Lucy (hopefully) still carries one with her in the far country to which she has gone. As much as Liliandil craves to know new places, see things that aren’t the bounds of this island she has mapped and run and paced a thousand times, she has found it surprisingly difficult to pack what she can and know she will likely never see what remains behind.
“My daughter,” Ramandu says, and he stands at the entrance, hands folded before him. “May I enter?”
“Of course, father,” she says, and gestures at a well worn bench. Perhaps he had sat there before. He moves to it and keeps his hands clasped before him, his eyes glancing around him, something sad in them.
Perhaps it had been grief that kept him from here after all.
“Is there something you needed me to do before I take my leave?”
She had assumed the goodbye would be below in his quarters, or perhaps even on the beach, an almost perfunctory thing. There has never been much openness between them.
“I will miss you,” he says quietly, and he is younger again today as he will be every day, slowly living his way back to starlight. “But I know I should have never kept you here. I was selfish.”
“There was no way off of this island.” Liliandil pauses in an adjustment of a carving, turns to look at him, not understanding.
“There is no escape for me,” her father says, and there is the age old weariness she remembers from her younger days woven into his words. “I have no proof, but I thought of asking Aslan to take you and your mother somewhere else. I never did. And I should have. You were neither of you under my burden, and perhaps he would have granted a kindness to me. Perhaps not, given the role you have played. How should I know?”
There is a long silence, here in the grove the star built for the castaway, here between the old man and the girl not quite as old as the years should have made her, here when for the last time the star’s daughter is a daughter.
“Would you have missed us?”
“I miss her every day.”
There is no lie in her father’s eyes, though that could be naivety. Perhaps she has never known him. Perhaps he has never known her. They sit in silence again, for a long moment, and then she takes one of the carvings off of the shelf and holds it in cupped hands before him.
“Perhaps we could sing to the birds by her grave, this last morning?”
He takes it from her, turns it over gently in his fingers as if remembering, something not a smile but pleased on his face.
“I would like that, my daughter.”
They sing the songs together this last time, hands stretched out to the distant horizons, and Liliandil feels the magic through her entire body and knows with a sudden clarity that it will never be this again.
When their hands fall to their sides there are tears on her cheeks, and then her father’s arms are around her for the first time in years that she can remember.
“The magic will always be with you,” he says as he holds her, “and your mother and I will always be with you too. Even if it is not as strong as it would be here.”
They stay there by the unmarked quiet last resting place of her mother for a lingering time, watching as the birds vanish again.
“You’ve lost at least two wrinkles today,” Liliandil says at last, and keeps the sound of her father’s soft laughing scoff in her heart with her until the end of her days.
The first sight of Narnia she has is from the ship’s bows. At first it is just a faint glimmer along the line of the sea, much as the islands had been before, but the closer they come the more solid and wider it grows until it becomes impossible to not see just how much space there is.
Galma had been full of people and an entire city, far more than she was used to, but it had still been after all an island. She had walked to the top of a castle tower and been able to see the sea on all sides. She had looked up to the stars and seen them almost as clearly as she had at home.
The coast spreads across the horizon like a long unfurling banner, and she is not sure if it is one of welcome or war quite yet.
Caspian touches her arm gently, for only a moment. She had not heard him arrive.
“They’ll love you,” he says, and there’s something in his words that is so sure and so sad at once. She almost asks but not you?
It’s not any time for that. She doesn’t know him well enough yet to ask something like that even if she feels sure she heard something he didn’t mean her to.
“I didn’t mean to seem uncertain. It’s just going to be - so much bigger.”
He is silent for a long moment beside her, and then he gives her a small wry smile.
“Yes. Perhaps that’s why I went away so far and so long.”
She nods, slowly, and then touches his arm in return, just for a moment, as gently as he had, a brush of hands so light as to almost not hold any meaning - and yet it holds so much.
“Well, I think both of us might have to be a little bit brave again then.”
His laugh is unexpected and warm. It is not the bright shrill call of the birds before the rising sun, but it is still beautiful.
“My lady,” Caspian says, “I think you need only be yourself.”
She does turn and look at him at that.
“If even you won’t call me by my name, I’m not sure that’s true, my lord.”
There’s something not quite stricken but close in his gaze as he turns to look at her. She flounders for a moment, knowing she has caused something of pain but unsure how.
“It’s just Lily. For you.”
He’s silent for a long moment and she doesn’t know what he’s thinking, what he’s feeling, and then he nods and smiles again, still reserved in a way she hadn’t intended.
“Of course. My apologies, Lily.”
“How far out do you think we are?” she asks, and turns to grip the wood of the railing in front of her.
“Very close,” he says, but he stays a courteous distance from her as they watch the shoreline approach.
There are several tangles to be considered when planning a wedding that is also crowning a Queen of Narnia, particularly one who has only lived there for a few short months. What Liliandil would like to consider the most important is that she is terrified, but she knows that’s not what matters to the royal council.
The Telmarines want their coronation and wedding rituals acknowledged. The Narnians do as well, but after the years spent in hiding what those are differs depending on whom you ask. The meetings around all of this are long and tedious. She sits in on them, swallowing every other word she thinks she could say. Sometimes Caspian shifts a hand to squeeze hers quietly as he listens.
The clothes are tighter than she’s used to. Every time she comes back to her room in the castle she loosens them immediately and takes a breath. She’s spent her life running free in what everyone here would simply call shifts or night gowns. The weight is something she hadn’t ever expected.
She didn’t expect the handmaidens either, at least one always in her chambers if not more, asking what she needs, displaying gowns, laying out a dish for washing her hands, asking to help wash her hair, asking what she needs. It’s so far removed from her previous life she doesn’t know where to begin asking them to stop.
She sees Caspian at the morning table and he looks more tired every day. She feels almost as tired every day.
The negotiations continue until the day she stops them. She has sat and watched and been quiet because she knows so little of this all, but she is not a fool and she is not here to be a figurehead. So she learns, every day, takes note of those who speak and those who are silent, asks for books from the library at night to page through dull history.
And one night she asks Caspian to come to her room and hands him the list she has prepared.
“Our wedding need not be under their dictate,” she says. “This, I think, fulfills the most pressing concerns of both Narnians and Telmarines. I say we look through it, determine what it is that we would like and what we think is most needed for the unity of all, and then present the finished list to them, together. Not as up for any more debate. As a decision.”
He looks at her, somewhat taken aback, and then sits down and begins to read.
The next morning when the council convenes, Caspian places the completed list on the table in front of him.
“Liliandil and I have made our decisions on the wedding,” he says without preamble. “Now that that no longer needs to be discussed, I believe we have concerns over tax rates in the South?”
The silence in the room holds for a long, long moment, and then a Lord clears his throat, shoots a meaningful look at someone else, and begins an explanation of the variances in taxes on different goods.
It is dull, dull stuff.
It is somehow a breath of fresh air.
At some point they become almost certain there will be no child for them. After so many years it begins to seem like a foolish hope. Liliandil pores through histories of succession, devotes even more of her time than before to ensuring that Miraz the Younger is raised among Narnians, that he knows their history, their conquest, the role of his people in it. He’s a bright child, clever and charismatic. He will make a perfectly good king, but he has his father’s name and face and she fears for him and the stability of the throne should he ascend to it.
“My father could have a child,” she says to Caspian one night in bed, her head against his chest. “I don’t understand. I know I’m not entirely human, but I must be enough of one.”
“We must trust that Aslan knows what he’s doing,” Caspian says, his arms around her. “Perhaps Miraz is meant to succeed me. We’ve raised him as our own for years, since - “ and he pauses for a moment, grips her a little tighter. He still dislikes to think of his aunt’s plot against them. “Perhaps he can be a king who unites in a way that even I cannot.”
“Everything is still so fragile,” she says. “I worry for him. I do not know it is a burden he should bear, or even could. I would spare him that.”
“He’s almost a man grown, now, and he’s thought of more as our son than he is anything else.”
“He is our son, in every way that matters. I just don’t know if old grievances can be forgiven for him in the way that they were for you.”
“Well,” Caspian says mildly, “quite a few people have not exactly forgiven me either.”
She sighs a little, presses her lips to his chest.
“True enough. Perhaps I am over thinking.”
“We have years yet to make things as peaceful as we can. Whatever happens, we will do whatever we can.”
She has never wanted her mother near to her again more than she does when she has a child. She has never known anything with more certainty than she does her own mortality when she looks at the face of her newborn child and sees in him starlight that has left her.
She has never known more joy than when Caspian and Miraz take turns holding him, seeing the delight on their faces.
“You will join the council soon,” she tells Miraz one day, as Rillian takes toddling steps between them. “You will be a boon at that table.”
He laughs, gives her a look.
“Please, Aunt. You know I’d rather do almost anything else than sit with the lords and ladies of the Council.” He pauses, and his soft smile is genuine as always. “I’m quite glad to be out from under the worry of heir to the throne, you know. I don’t envy him at all.”
“I think I find it difficult to want that for either of you.” He tips his head for a moment, acknowledgement, and then looks back to her, just a touch wryer now.
“Quite fair. But at least now you know the heir will always have me to look after him.”
She laughs a little, reaches for them both.
“Yes. Yes, I know he will always have a brother in you. And you in him.”
Caspian is growing older. She knows that, can see the silver in his hair, the lines in his face. She is growing older too, though the lines are not carved on her skin as clearly as on his. She supposes she has her father to thank for that. The space in the stars where he will eventually return is still empty. She thinks it very likely that she will leave this world before he returns to the sky no matter the length of her life.
She still goes riding with her sons - not on their hunting trips, she has never favored those. But there are trips of merriment and joy, trips to visit the dryads, trips like this one into the forest to seek the flowers and blossoms, the bounty of the green months. Miraz and Rillian play at fighting over who will bring her the most beautiful may day crown as they do every year.
As she does every year she takes both of their flower crowns and places them on her head together. This year, though, she is more tired than before.
“I’ll sleep for a little while, I think,” she says, “while you continue the maying.”
She lies down on the blankets laid out as they depart, listens to the departing voices, and opens her eyes to a woman.
There is magic in her, magic that Liliandil has felt before, a long time ago when she and her father kept watch over a knife on a table.
“Shall I ask what you are here for?”
The woman’s body shimmers for a moment, tilts her head.
“For you, of course,” she says after a moment, and Liliandil sits up. She finds it difficult, more so than it should be. Magic, she knows, working against the bones of her soul. If she was young perhaps she could have worked against it, before she left the island and bore a child.
“And what have I done to you?”
“To me?” The woman glances around, looks into the trees. There is no one nearby and Liliandil does not have the power to stop her. She knows that. “Nothing at all. But I’m afraid you’ve enemies.”
The change of the woman’s shape and the sudden bite almost don’t register. She doesn’t even notice she cried out until her sons are with her.
She must tell them - she must tell Rillian - her lips have seized with her body, a paralysis she can feel seeping into her heart and lungs.
She must tell him what the woman said. She must tell him it wasn’t simply a serpent. She must -
Miraz holds her as Rillian returns from his immediate desperate chase, both of them frantic eyed.
She grips their hands. Until the last breath she takes she tries to shape the words of warning she would give them, give her husband, give the country she chose to love.
They never pass her lips.