Forget-Me-Not

[Lucy Pevensie]

**Explanation/Stuff That Will Make It Actually Make Sense**

Okay, so this is what happens when (a) I'm hooked on Narnia, particularly the Wood, (b) there's a lot of depressing stuff going on at the Wood, and (c) I can't get to sleep. I originally wrote this as a dream sequence for Lu, but turns out it makes an interesting story on it's own too. Though takes a bit of explaining... like the whole rose thing. The rose is actually the same one that Vardin gave her in this thread ("Palace Shores"). I came up with the idea a long while back that she had it in a vase for a long time, but it was starting to wilt, ironically enough, the morning of the day Vardin showed up to tell her he was on Jadis' side ("The Depths of My Deception"), so she folded it in tissue paper and pressed it in her diary.

The interpretation of it is rather interesting, but for the sake of not influencing your own, I won't share my thoughts. I am rather interested to hear yours though, so feel free to reply with what you think!

Looking for a way to actually bring this all (the flower stuff, not the sorta creepy, depressing everything-else-in-this-story stuff) into a thread, but as that hasn't happened yet, I have to explain it here. So there you have it. That seemingly offhand little rose from sooooo long ago is actually playing a rather pivotal part, at least in Lucy's mind. Plot devices, my dear Watson, plot devices... ;D


DISCLAIMER: I have read the books, and I do know that this completely flies in the face of certain events in "The Last Battle" (not naming which ones, as I don't know if everyone here has read that book). Like I said, this is just a dream sequence that got a series of edits to make it more like a stand-alone story.

P.S.-because-I-just-noticed-it-doesn't-make-much-sense-on-its-own: The first few lines...I sort of pulled that from something in one of Vardin's posts a while back in "Palace Shores": 'He had half a mind to let her live for ever, just because she was such a rare sort of person.' Except the idea is not forever, but just a bit longer than is normal for that time period. With all due respect to Indi/Vardin, of course; I don't mean to assume anything about your characters (especially the exceedingly confusing ones XD). Again, dream sequence.

[Lucy Pevensie]

**The Story**

FORGET-ME-NOT

“This is getting ridiculous. I’ve never seen anyone reach this age before. And no signs of serious illness…I just don’t understand.” The man shook his head with a sigh, his companion, deep in thought, merely nodded. The two gentlemen stood in silence a moment; their white uniforms making them almost blend right in with the soft blue, sterile-looking hallway around them. Everything seemed to be made specifically to look as uncomfortable and hospital-like as possible, from the white tile floor and overdone fluorescent lighting to the numbered uniform wood doors that stood sentry along it, each the same distance apart, each facing another door.

One of the doors near the two men opened and a woman in a similar uniform stepped out, closing it behind her. In sync, the two men turned. The woman, not needing any further pressing, sighed and said dismally, “Same as always. She seems to be doing well, though still goes on about how she ‘knows he’s coming back for her’ and that ‘he promised he would.’ Almost makes you feel sorry for the old maid really.”

The first man shook his head again, leading his companion and the nurse back down the hall. “It’s no wonder really. Been here well over ten years. I hear the only family she has left are a few nieces and nephews all the way in America, and they really couldn’t care less about her. She’s got no one and nothing left, not even her mind.” His voice trailed off as the trio turned a corner and went about their daily jobs.

Back in the room, just as sterile and stoic as the hallway, sat an old woman in a wheelchair pulled right up to the window where she could look outside. Wisps of grey hair fell down just below her shoulders, framing her wrinkled face and chocolate-brown eyes, ever-looking out at the sky, watching and waiting. The woman hardly moved - what reason did she have to move? - looking more like a statue than a real person, so when her gaze dropped slowly from the window to her lap it seemed quite a startling change. Resting on her lap, held gingerly between her frail fingers, was a thin piece of tissue paper folded in half. The workers at the retirement home had tried a number of times to persuade her to set it aside, but she refused to let it out of her sight and wasn’t fond of letting it go at all either. Decades of age showed in the yellow around the edges of the paper, and time had all but fused it together entirely to the point where it would be impossible to open without tearing to shreds.

Her little treasure was not so much the paper itself, however, but what it held. Nearly as thin as any regular sheet of paper itself, folded within was the dried-out remains was a pressed rose. It still held the beautiful crushed-cherry red of its glory days, though its petals had long since lost their velvet luster when the life of the little flower had faded to nothing. It seemed such a symbolic thing: once small and innocent before the weight of the world and then some came to bear on it, weight that it was not meant to and could not hold up against forever. But even now, decades later, when it seemed all was finished, it held on to the strands of faith, hoping that perhaps that innocent life was still waiting for it just around the corner.

Running a single thin finger over the fragile flower, the old woman smiled and looked back up to the window, reassured. She watched the as the sky grew darker until the stars began to peak out of the gloom, not bothering to go to her cold, unforgiving bed. She always stayed right here, where she could watch the world, marvel at the sunrise, listen to the songbirds, and wait. She would wait as long as it took. As was her tradition, she searched the sky for the first star, her face crinkling along well-worn lines as she smiled. Closing her eyes, she made her wish. Not long after, she was fast asleep.

The next day, the sun rose, the songbirds sang, and the world went about its ways. But Lucy Pevensie was not there to watch, or listen, or wait. She just sat, still as a statue, a faint smile on her face and a pressed rose in her hands.