[Fic] "Daughter of Eve, Daughter of Lilith" -- Chronicles of Narnia

[edenfalling]

Today is NFE reveal day! I wrote two stories this year: one assignment and one pinch hit. I will talk about each in a separate post. :)

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Daughter of Eve, Daughter of Lilith (3338 words) by Elizabeth Culmer
Fandom: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Susan Pevensie, Edmund Pevensie, Jadis | The White Witch
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence

Summary: When Susan finished counting to one hundred, she paused before leaving the long, low corner room the Professor had decided would belong to "the children" for however long the evacuation lasted.

On the one hand, she had a distinct feeling that Peter might have taken it into his head to try hiding inside the suit of armor in the picture room (he had remarked several times that people must have been shorter in the past, since it was almost his size) and wanted to make sure his sense of responsibility won over his sense of adventure.

On the other hand, she was worried that either Lucy might have returned to that dratted wardrobe, or that Edmund might have decided to hide there to be spiteful. Susan wanted that incident to disappear only slightly less fervently than she wanted the war to end and to know her home and parents were safe, and either of those possibilities would just reawaken the entire mess.

She bit her lip and glanced toward the hall that led to the picture room.

Then she turned decisively toward the stairs that led up to the attic.

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I wrote this story for WingedFlight in response to a prompt about Jadis and/or the Lady of the Green Kirtle teaching magic to other women, particularly ones from our world like Susan, Lucy, and Jill. Because I am me, I immediately started wondering what circumstances could lead to either witch making that offer, and any of the girls (including Polly) being in a position where accepting the offer seemed like a reasonable idea.

Lewis repeatedly describes his witches as having a sort of relentless practicality, which I think fits Polly and Susan better than Jill, and MUCH better than Lucy. The problem is, Polly and Jadis get off on such a mutually antagonistic footing I really couldn't think of a good way to move past that. So I started thinking, how to get Susan to meet Jadis before she hears about the evils of the White Witch?

The simplest answer is to have Susan enter the wardrobe before the house tour when all four siblings finally fall into Narnia. And after that, it was mostly a question of logistics. I ended up choosing to have her interrupt Edmund's first meeting because I had vague notions of bringing in one of WingedFlight's other prompts (about Edmund in a dark spy story, potentially working with an underground network to overthrow Jadis) later on, but that would have turned into a novel, I think, and I have not been in a mental/emotional place to contemplate writing anything very long and complicated this year. Alas! So I left off with Jadis seeing a potential use for Susan, and Susan accepting a bargain under adverse terms.

I am not quite sure what will happen once Susan begins learning magic, but I suspect it won't go either the way Jadis intends or the way Susan hopes. :D