#c: lipstick and nylons and invitations

[femdomliterature]

FemLit 0438 - For Her Amusement Only...

Of the various sub-plots and story-lines that run below the surface of any male chastity relationship, and one that can’t be denied, is the presence of some form of chastity humiliation...

Any man who initially desires and then acquiesces to male chastity is admitting to himself and more importantly, to his Keyholder, that he is in some way under-equipped or just ‘not enough’ to play role of legitimate manhood...

Now he may actually be of adequate size and virile in every other way…. just not inside his head, where it really counts. But when he allows his female Keyholder to click the lock shut on his chastity device, this newly chastised male can’t help but to revel in his implied humiliation.

Of course there are many other feelings associated with male chastity such as, intense sexual servitude, sacrifice, submission, slavery, etc. But chastity humiliation is right there along side with the rest of them.

His Keyholder may not be entirely aware of the heightened emotions swirling around inside the head of Her caged-up male. Her role is to keep his aroused male excitement at an excruciating high and agitated level.

And what better way than by mercilessly reminding him of his humiliating predicament…. one that he has chosen and that she has agreed to enthusiastically enforce.

With just a subtle shift in Her attitude, the constant pang and yearning between his legs serves as a catalyst for Her to humiliate him while amusing herself...

The number of ways to accomplish this are only limited by Her imagination.

For instance….

She can experience as many orgasms as She wants…. anytime, anywhere and with anyone of Her choosing.

His orgasms (if any) are at Her discretion, whim and for Her amusement.

She constantly reminds him that his dick is too small to ever enter HER.

She requires that he make up for his sexual inadequacy by doing all of the housework (dressed-up as a French maid if it so amuses her).

He can be ordered to place his hands behind his back to receive a hard slap to the face if he says or does anything to piss Her off (or maybe She's just having a bad day).

She conducts frequent, frustrating tease and denial sessions that are agony for him and fun for Her. An ice-pack is then applied to his dick so She can immediately get him back in his male chastity device.

When She invites girlfriends over for drinks, he serves them wearing only his chastity device, an anal plug, high heels and lipstick.

If one of Her girlfriends gets drunk enough, he is instructed to go to the bathroom, remove the anal plug and give himself an enema so her girlfriend can fuck him in the ass with a strap-on while the other girls cheer her on.

If he has earned an orgasm, She makes sure it is a humiliating one. With his hands handcuffed behind his back, he humps the kitchen floor until he cums. He should NEVER have to be directed to lick-up his mess afterwards.

He must use a strap-on dildo (with his chastity device locked in place) to satisfy Her need for penetrative sex. She can use a riding crop on his ass to keep him moving at the proper speed and cadence for HER pleasure.

When She wants the real thing, he ‘fluffs-up’ her lover before he places the condom on her boyfriend’s dick. He then scurries off to clean-up the kitchen while She has fun. That WILL definitely amuse HER and humiliate him now that he’s a chastity cuckold.

As noted earlier, his orgasms (if allowed) are always of the humiliating variety and primarily for Her amusement. Masturbating on Her’s or a girlfriend’s nylon encased leg while requiring him to lick-up his mess afterwards should do the trick.

Prior to embarking on a male chastity lifestyle, many women struggle with the silly old habit of being too damn nice.

This is NOT want he wants! A chastised male desperately needs to be cruelly controlled, indignantly directed, and un-mercilessly humiliated.

Allowing him to ‘top from the bottom’ will not allow Her to transform the relationship so it can realize its true potential.

At some point She must come to the realization that it’s all about the female Keyholder…. Her! It’s all about him accepting chastity humiliation in order for Her to fully experience her female power...

There is no form of power exchange that can provide such a humiliating experience for a man than male chastity...

[quecksilvereyes]

over a salt-white world;               frozen still there sets a dying sun

spilling all that has once lived from its light - tightly woven, gold studded

                                                                                                          choked.

my darling: there are two sisters, with their hands in each other’s chests with their teeth in each other’s flesh with their world tilted atop a razor’s edge.

on one side, a sister swallows her other whole with clawed hands and glass-shard-teeth; jewel-sharp.

see here; she’s grand, and terrible, too. see here – she’s taken the bones from within her land from within her flesh from within our teeth.

                                                             on the other, a sister holds her other                                                                          deep within her bird-rib-cage                                                                                                    a flutter like;                                                                                                       a sob like;                                                                                                   an ache like;                                                                                            a table – broken.

                                                                                        the sun; gold-spun.

                                                         see here; she’s grand, and gentle, too.                                                                  see here – she’s taken her bones                                                                             from within the death of us                                                                                         and returned them;                                                                                                    smiling, still.

I leave home and I leave the world and I leave my sister and all that  drips frothing from the corners of my mouth. above a salt-still world,  there rises a dying sun. my sister is still, and wide eyed – crowned.

this crown is mine. I’ve torn her open for it. this world is – I’ve torn it open, see. it will always be winter, here. the sun will flicker, here.

                                                        this life is mine. i’ve defied a lion for it.                                                                                                that is to say:                                                                         to the radiant southern sun,                                                                                       dying in your skies                                                                 holding up the shards of a world;                                                                                                     crumbling.

in a blooming field, a lion devours a witch whole. in a blooming field, a girl-queen kisses her brother’s salty cheeks. above them, the sun is not yet waning.

with her teeth ground sharp and her flesh fouled, Charn’s last shards rot into spring. with her head held high, Narnia’s radiant southern sun lives on beyond her world.

over a salt-white world;               frozen still there sets a dying sun

spilling all that has once lived from its light - tightly woven, gold studded

                                                                                                          choked.

– on suns and world endings; on choices. on parallels; opposed. on that which is gentle. on that which is not.

based on this post.

[elrondsscribe]

We’re doing the thing today, bitches. We’re gonna talk about Susan and Emeth.

Like I said, The Last Battle is my favorite book in the Narnia series. But the downside of loving The Last Battle is that apparently NOBODY wants to talk about anything from it except for two things:

1) The non-Christian and/or “progressive” types only want to talk about how appallingly sexist Lewis’s treatment of Susan is, or 2) the Christian and/or conservative (American) types want to talk about how theologically problematic Emeth is.

First up, Susan.

To a degree, I get it. The fact that she’s not with the others in “the Real Narnia,” a pretty clear depiction of Heaven, coupled with the comments the others make about her - I get it. I mean, JK Rowling summed up the popular sentiment when she said that “Susan got kicked out of heaven for growing up and finding sex, and I have a big problem with that.”

With ‘all due respect’ to JKR, I think this is another of those lazy hot takes formed in bad faith from a fundamental, almost wilful misunderstanding of a given text, made primarily so that unimaginative pedants can feel smug about being better/smater than the thing they’re consuming (see Lindsay Ellis’s complaint about the live-action ‘Beauty and the Beast’ to see what I mean).

1. Susan got kicked out of Heaven.

As others have pointed out before, Susan’s ‘absence from heaven’ is a thing because - wouldn’t you know - she’s still alive. Her brothers and sister and cousin and the rest are, for all intents and purposes, dead. She wasn’t ‘kicked out of heaven,’ she’s just later than the others.

2. Susan was punished for ‘becoming a woman.’ 

No, she wasn’t. The thing with ‘lipstick, nylons, and invitations’ is, I would argue, a condemnation of materialism rather than ‘femininity/sexual female agency.’ And honestly, what does it say about how ‘progressive’ we are that we equate ‘feminity’ and ‘female agency’ with spending money on beauty products and fancy clothes, which (at least in the US) are marketed to us on the premise that we’re not enough as we are? What does it say about us that, when someone challenges this value system, we call them sexist? 

(We also say we’re anti-capitalism, but isn’t this exact kind of value system, finding personal worth in products, the very embodiment of the capitalist ideal?)

Think about it: Lewis wants to tell us that Susan’s value and worth is not in how well she ‘dolls up,’ or how many nice dresses she wears, or her romantic status, or even in her social status, but in her identity as a queen of Narnia which no one can take away from her. And this gets read as sexism?? I don’t get it.

3. The fact that Susan isn’t there now means that she won’t ever be.

There’s a little refrain in (at least Protestant) Christianity that goes something along the lines of “your Christian status isn’t something you can lose.” The Narnia version of this is “once a king or queen in Narnia, always a king or queen.” Susan hasn’t stopped being a queen of Narnia just because she doesn’t talk about it anymore, and her place in Aslan’s Country/The Real England&Narnia is permanent. It’s just that, as I said, she hasn’t died and arrived in The Real England yet.

4. Lewis hated/didn’t care about Susan.

Now here’s the ‘tea’: Lewis as an author essentially gave Susan his own story. He was brought up religious, like most any middle-class 20th C British child would be, and as a young adult he became a rational atheist. Part of that process involved scorning fairy tales/myths/stories in general as ‘factually false escapism for children,’ which mirrors Susan’s leaving Narnia (’those funny games we used to play when we were children’) behind in favor of the ‘real world.’ And of course, as we know, it was JRR Tolkien who brought Lewis back to stories-as-truth later in life.

All of which to say: if you want to call that bit of autobiography hatred or lack of concern (or misogyny because he gave it to one of his female characters), I cannot stop you . . . but I can disagree as hard as I can.

Next up, Emeth.

So, CS Lewis was a Christian. I think we know that.

He was a Christian who did some thinks about Christianity. I think we know that too.

He was a Christian who communicated his Christian-thinks, in large part, through stories that he wrote. We definitely know that.

What everybody maybe doesn’t know (that perhaps only the dedicated, degree-decorated Lewis scholars actually get) is just how many of those Christian-thinks are different from the ‘pop culture’ version of American Protestantism that tends to float around when (in particular American) readers talk about Emeth.

For the non-Christians, particularly the atheists, who might come across this post: buckle in for some Christian theology.

There has emerged from some sectors of Narnia readers a certain criticism of the presence of Emeth in Aslan’s Country/the Real Narnia/Heaven: that it opens the ‘doors of salvation’ wider than is biblically permissible. Obviously there’s a lot to unpack here, but I’m going to stick with ‘salvation.’

The extremely-simplified American-evangelical-Protestant understanding of salvation, the one so famous in pop culture, goes like this: 1. You’re/I’m a sinful bad human, which means you/I deserve God’s eternal wrath. 2. Jesus died to fend off God’s wrath. 3. To get out from under God’s wrath, you have to ‘put your faith in Jesus’ as your ‘Savior.’ And that’s the ONLY way. And if you don’t, you go to Hell and suffer God’s wrath forever. And ever and ever.

The way that that kind of ‘salvation’ would work in Narnia would look like this: Only people who directly know, believe in, and love Aslan can get into Aslan’s Country/the Real Narnia/Heaven. Anybody else would be in that crowd that disappeared into the darkness at the destruction of Shadow-Narnia (chapter 14).

Now this obviously clashes with the inclusion of Emeth. And what Aslan says to Emeth - essentially, that “all who seek truth and goodness find me, whether he knows my name or not” sort of clashes with the understanding of salvation that I just outlined, which is why it makes so many American evangelical Protestant Christian readers so uncomfy.

Some critics go so far as to accuse Lewis of universalism, and as a universalist myself I think they’re wrong (again, not all creatures end up in Aslan’s country). What I would say is that Lewis’s understanding of salvation is one that connects to his belief in myths as reflections of truth. I’m not a Lewis scholar, but I’d hazard the guess that, if you asked him, he’d probably say that myths and legends and fairy/folk tales can tell us truths without being Scripture, including ‘Jesus-truth,’ and that goodness is not found only in the Ten Commandments (I think he called it ‘the Tao’).

And that would be the case with Emeth: a man who spent his life seeking goodness and truth, and ultimately finding it, in Aslan.

Now of course, something could be said for the fact that Emeth finds ultimate truth in the foreign, Narnian Person of Aslan, and that the Calormene head deity is literally the Narniaverse’s version of Satan, but ah well . . .

[lasaraleen]

Narnia v Harry Potter

I’m going to compare these two serieses for a couple reasons. One of them is because I see people comparing them a lot, with their other-worldly aspects and the other is because of something J. K. Rowling once said about Susan being disregarded for “finding sex.”

J. K. Rowling is a very talented writer and I could never have created the rich world she did, however I’d like to point out a few things wrong with her books in this post, so you were forewarned.

C. S. Lewis started his 7 book series in the late 40s and finished them in the later 50s. In this time there was not a loud cry for female representation, however in the first book a little girl finds Narnia, followed by her family. Both Lucy and Susan are considered smart and never disregarded for being girls or being girly, which they both are. Polly and Digory chronologically come first, and with them, Polly is very smart and not used for Digory’s character development, at least not any more than he for she. This pattern continues throughout the series, the only female character that could have been just used for male character development is Ramuda’s daughter (Lilliandil in the movie, we call her Noor), and many minor male characters played similar roles in the story.

We all know there are 7 Harry Potter books. They all revolve around a male character. Multiple female characters are used to further Harry’s story. Many. Cho Chang is used after Cedric’s death, Ginny is used to make Harry Grow Up And Protect Her, Luna is used to show that Harry is both a Good Person and to move along his story. Hermione is used so many times I’m not sure I can narrow it down to a single incident. The first one was probably when they fought a troll in the bathroom, though.

Unlike in Harry Potter, there is a nearly equal amount of male and female characters in the Narnia books. For instance, the main characters in LWW are the two girls and two boys. As far as I’ve seen, female characters are not used at all in that book to further male character development. Almost all the girls in Harry Potter are used to further his character development. Also, it’s been pointed out that the female characters are treated poorly, particularly the woc. For instance, Cho Chang isn’t even a Chinese name! As an adult writing an incredibly popular children’s series, Rowling should have done a little research and at least named one of the few woc properly. She also shames the twins for being interested in looks and divination. Not all girls are photo copies of Hermione, and it’s stupid to empower only one type of girl.

Moving on to Lewis again, all of his characters have both flaws and good points. Female and male, and if there’s a female character, she has development of her own and isn’t a love interest, even if she falls in love later. Aravis, for instance, is a rather self-centered brat at first but she changes over time and is always considered brave and “true as steel”. She becomes such an amazing friend and person, as does Cor, after his development, that eventually Cor and her find themselves in love. Harry, on the other hand, seems to be about the only one developing. Sure, the other characters grow, but all his relationships are only really about him. (Ginny, Hermione, Luna, Cho Chang, etc,.)

now, on the subject of Susan: Susan, throughout the series, is never. Never. Made fun of for being too girly. It’s also very obvious that she’s respected by everyone who meets her. Corin literally fought someone who said something nasty about her. People mainly, including Rowling, say that Lewis was sexist because of one comment: “All she’s interested in nowadays is nylons, lipstick and party invitations.” This comment was made by Jill. On Jill: Interesting character, Jill. Brave, smart, albeit forgetful (ironically ). As far as we know, Jill never had much of an interest in looks. She was more like Aravis than Lasaraleen. Remember what Lewis said about them? Something along the lines of both of them liking different things and both thinking the other silly for it. “For what you see and hear depends a great deal on where you are standing; it also depends on what kind of person you are.” (C. S. Lewis) Jill was a person who wasn’t interested in her looks, while Susan was. That’s the kind of people they were. And another thing about Jill, she didn’t know Susan very well. Susan struggled with faith throughout the entire series. In Prince Caspian, she was the last to see Aslan for a reason. And if Susan has distanced herself from Narnia, Jill probably wouldn’t be a part of her life and wouldn’t have seen the young woman who struggled with faith her entire life.

Lewis wasn’t sexist, especially not in his Narnian works. However, Narnia WAS written in the 40s-50s and that’s why it doesn’t match up to our more modern ideals. We’ve come further than that now! But Rowling, on the other hand, was a single mother near the turn of the 21st century when she started writing Harry Potter. Why is it that that’s so and yet sexism managed to seep into her writing?

[quecksilvereyes]

- be gentle, darling. stay alive in this England.

for @highqueen, happy birthday!

[quecksilvereyes]

And yet here I am aching; yearning for a world in a wardrobe a train station a cave

Longing to go back home.

[quecksilvereyes]

children

Here’s the thing, dear about the children:

We sent them away                                            for protection                                            for peace                                            for their lives and the light in their eyes We sent them away tear drowned and porcelain skinned; powerless

The tags are yellowing now half burnt – torn and your children don’t slouch anymore

Helen, my love. The children came back different with canine teeth and eyes like glass with silk voices and shaking hands

Your children came back wild didn’t they?

                                                                                                      I know mine did.

Your children came back freezing and homesick; bloody.

Didn’t they?

Your youngest sleeps with a dagger under her pillow. Your eldest spends days on end in the kitchen, sleepless, restless. Your youngest boy can barely stomach sugar – or even your hands in his hair. Your eldest girl is all smiles and dresses and careful hands, can you recognise her, still?

Helen, who are these people pretending to be your children?

Helen, do you still know               their eyes               their smiles               their night terrors?

Here’s the thing, my dear; about the children. They came back wild and unknown.

– are you still a mother, my love, if you cannot reach your children? are they still yours, just as they were when you tucked them in your arms and sang them to sleep? my dear. my darling. you sent them away to be protected, folded in between meadows and rivers and forests, so how is it you find daggers in every corner? how is it you find your youngest nestled into the branches of a blooming cherry tree? my dearest, do you still know them, with their tags and their suitcases and their eyes like steel?

[quecksilvereyes]

darling

my darling girl,               my love,                              how deep will you dig?

until your nails are bloodied               and splintered; too until the soil clings                              to your nylons                              to your petticoats                              to your good Sunday shoes?

and what then?

there’s a lion’s cub curled about the roots of this cherry tree; a boy               with his teeth all bared               his world all star-drowned under the periwinkles; there’s a brother               unmoved and unchanging               draped in a new suit sprawled underneath these fields.

my dearest girl,               has this world ended yet?                              have you seen the stars rain down                              have you seen the heavens break the oceans rise?

have you dug yourself               out from underneath your Language               and the Lion’s teeth?

have you dragged a life               from the world’s end               all bloodied;                              and soil-stained?

Are you alive in this England, radiant as the sun; gentle, still?

__________________________

this is a birthday gift for @radiantsusans i hope you’ll enjoy it, eta! happy birthday!!!!

[quecksilvereyes]

I know this cracking marble floor I’ve heard this sighing wind I knew this husk when it was vibrant and alive

[quecksilvereyes]

Putting the Gentle Queen Back Into Her Own Narrative: A Suggestion in Ten Parts

                                                                                 I. I survived.

I survived Narnia, I survived the war, I survived being twelve and twenty-seven all at once. I survived. I didn’t mount a train I knew was never going to take me back home.

I said good-bye to my siblings, who, by then, hated me.

Or maybe didn’t hate me, maybe they were just annoyed with me, maybe – maybe I’d just lied to them too much.

Maybe I just told them that our memories weren’t real one too many times. Maybe I looked at Lucy and couldn’t see anything but a lion in the way she looked at me, maybe I looked at Edmund and couldn’t distinguish his eyes from the eyes I remember.

Maybe I looked at Peter.

At his trembling hands. Maybe I couldn’t bring myself to hug any of them.

Maybe I couldn’t bring myself to say good-bye.

                                                                                  II. Maybe – maybe, sometimes, I didn’t recognise my parents the way I should have. Maybe sometimes, I woke up in this damp, cold, sunless world, and couldn’t remember who I was. Maybe sometimes: I looked at my baby sister, and I looked at my baby brother and I saw; nothing. Maybe sometimes they fled into a world I couldn’t follow them into, maybe sometimes I couldn’t remember it at all.

Maybe sometimes I did, truly, forget.

                                                                                  III. Maybe: I remembered. Maybe I remembered a lion and I remembered the sun and I remembered the winter and I remembered the Talking Beasts and I remembered Tumnus and I remembered everything. Maybe sometimes I thought they were only dreams. Maybe sometimes I thought they work the way memories do; where, if you just tell yourself something long enough, your brain will create a memory for you. Did you notice? Tell a story often enough and it will change, and your memory will change to accommodate it. Or maybe that’s just me.

Maybe I just talked myself into it long enough. Maybe, when I was twelve, or twenty-seven, or maybe really just twelve years old, I looked into the mirror, at my curled hair, at the gap between my teeth; I looked at myself, and I saw: nothing. I couldn’t see the woman I thought – I knew – I’d grown into. I couldn’t see the way my hair curls naturally, couldn’t watch the way my eyes would glow. Maybe I didn’t see myself or even a girl, maybe I just saw a child; starving.

                                                                                  III. a) Maybe sometimes I had phantom pains in limbs that I suddenly could feel again. Maybe sometimes I imagined I’d lost them – and, conversely, imagined I never did.

                                                                                   IV. I survived.

I am the only one of us still standing, I am the only one of us who sits on this bench, who watches as they are all lowered into the ground in their best Sunday dress. Maybe I’m the only one who can see that none of them would have wanted to be buried like this. Maybe I look at my baby sister, the way she’s crammed into a dress with that collar she’d pull from her throat, groaning. And I see a lion cub curled up in the coffin, pressed against the satin, against the blood-red of it all. Maybe I wish there was a cherry tree to bury her under.

Maybe I look at my baby brother and miss the way his eyes would look, his suit is crinkled, his legs – his arms – all gangly things he’d not yet grown into. Maybe I wish there was a forest to carry him into, dryads in whose care to let him be buried.

Maybe I look at my eldest brother. Maybe I look at this boy I’d known all my life, with his blond hair and his hands; still. Still and unmoving, not a wrinkle in his suit, not a smile on his face. Maybe I look at this boy and I see; a beard, and I see; a tremor and I see; a smile and I see; a crown.

Maybe I just wanted to see them. Maybe I just wish that I had had a say in any of this, maybe I just wish that I could have picked the coffins, that I could have picked the clothes, that I could have picked the burial.

But I am twenty-one, see (or, perhaps, thirty-six, heaving). I am grieving.

                                                                                  V. There wasn’t a day I didn’t cry. There wasn’t a moment I didn’t hear the phantom memories of my siblings tumbling across the floor.

So Aunt Alberta did everything.

She wouldn’t let my cousin be buried with all the rest of them, see, and I wondered if she looked at her sister and felt the way I did when I looked at mine.

But the burial was the first time I didn’t cry since the telegram told me of bodies dispersed along train tracks. I put on lipstick, and nylons, and dresses, and petticoats, and a girdle and I smiled.

                                                                                  VI. My life is built on the back of survival. I went overseas because I couldn’t stand the dampness anymore. Perhaps that makes me a coward. Perhaps it makes me not a friend, perhaps it makes me unworthy in the lion’s eyes, perhaps it makes me a traitor the way my nine year old baby brother was when a woman fed him sweets and enchantments.

Maybe I betrayed them all by living; by surviving. Maybe, when I die, I won’t see them again. Maybe when I die I will – and the lion will stand there, and it will tell me to turn around, will tell me that there is no place in this country for Queens who grew up, for Queens who adapted, for Queens who survived.

                                                                                  VII. Perhaps then, finally, I can look at the lion and tell it what I think of its inaction in the face of genocide, its inaction in the face of its people starving and dying away. Maybe then I can tell it that a nine year old boy who misses his parents like the food he’s starving for, who hasn’t had sweets in a year didn’t deserve to be called a traitor because he was upset and hurt and a Witch spelled him.

                                                                                  VIII. Perhaps I will not say anything at all. Perhaps I will look at this lion and I will not recognise it, the way I go to the zoo and every time I see a lion I feel the urge to bow.

Perhaps my siblings will still hate me, will still be annoyed, will still be upset. Perhaps I’ve lied to them one too many times.

                                                                                  IX. I exist in this world. I have a life and I refuse to end it after fifteen years in another world, after nine years in this one. I’ve not lived yet.

                                                                                  X. I will live.

I just wish I’d hugged my siblings good-bye.

for @lucypcvensie bc it’s your birthday!

[quecksilvereyes]

watch out! run.

there is a wolf with your scent in its nose a witch; your brother in her clutches

adam’s flesh and adam’s bone: the world thaws underneath your feet

now, come on come on.

take your childhood, boy take your english clothes, girls take your life, king that you will be queens that you will be

and run.

[quecksilvereyes]

Favourite peevensie and why?

i can never decide, honestly.

susan: i love her. i love that she deals with grief differently, i love that she has a different panic response, that she’s the pacifist who stays home to keep everything together, that she’s feminine and lovely and gentle but never weak, that she’s the only one still standing, that she’s the only who has made a life for herself in england

edmund: i will defend edmund until i die, istg. baby boy! he only tries his best! when the telmarines see him *as a child*, they shit their collective pants because they can feel the competence radiating off of him! i love him! the just! the JUST i cry

lucy: lucy is so opposite susan and i love her so much, she’s such a stubborn little idiot, always with her head straight through the wall, the world is black and white and so distinctly separated to lucy, she sees narnia wherever she goes and is always the first one to run straight back home, she’s the baby and she’s also fucking terrifying on a battle field, the movies did her knife skills so fucking dirty. also one day i will write a fanfic in which aslan doesnt come back. instead theres lucy, tiny little lucy with her big eyes and her trust

peter: i will not shut up about pete being atlas! ever! he holds up the entire world, he’s the figurehead, the symbol, he watched his brother die, put on a brave face for his little siblings when he wasn’t allowed to come back home, he grew out of the violent, controlling child he was, emulating so much toxic masculinity and constantly picking on Edmund, he grew so much and he learned so much, and you will take my ‘peter is autistic and has ptsd that makes his hands shake except when in battle so edmund always writes for him’ from my cold dead hands

honorable mention goes to eustace, whomst i love, but who very rudely has to deal with his awful parents and so isn’t a pevensie

[quecksilvereyes]

To the clear northern skies; High King Peter, the Magnificent with all the world atop his shoulders and all of Narnia’s storms all that she has seen in his eyes

tell me, my little one, have you seen the man who is the pillar of our world?

[quecksilvereyes]

- What if, one day, as you’re waiting for your train, you look up and meet yourself? What would you do?

- I’d come home.

[quecksilvereyes]

concepts: the case against the Lion

Here’s a concept:                                                                                                  (Here’s a question:) I am alive.

Lion;              you great, terrible thing              all teeth and claws and;                               breath as foul as rotten meat                                                         (chunks of ice, of glass all frozen,                                                          stuck to the roof of your maw.)

 I am alive. in my world in this, my, country:              made of fog and rain and grey faces, tired still                             (made of lead and iron and bricks, all red as blood                                          dripping from your teeth)

Lion;

when I was twelve years old and trembling, frozen hair all curled teeth too small; too big cheeks flushed red              from all her cold

I stepped into this, your, world and–                                                        what did you see? A child? A girl, her hair heated and curled and dying? A warrior, with little trembling hands, bow steady as magic? A Queen? A doll?

what am I, Lion? to you – this world?

                                                                   Am I                                                                             a monarch?                                                                             a ruler?                                                                             teeth and arrows and horn?                                                                             a girl?                                                                             a woman?                                                                             a statue, hollowed and unmoving                                                                             and crumbling away?                                                                             a story?                                                                             a song?

Am I a lullaby, Lion? am I salvation, am I the world at your paws? Who am I? What am I for?

Lion; you terrible thing          you grand, terrible thing          your teeth at my throat                           at my hands                           at my head

here I am:

the ground is ripped open my breath a cloud of mist from my mouth                                                                            all the way down to my chest my lashes wet              my cheeks blotched                            my siblings; my cousin, cold in this English soil

And I;              alive in this England.              in this, my world: amongst open caskets and open graves and doors                            firmly shut.

 Lion; here I am          heaving          silent still.

[quecksilvereyes]

survive.

This is survival; blood dripping from your lips, your cheeks aching, your throat screaming, this is survival, my love. It’s ugly and heaving and screaming and dirt under your fingernails.

A run in your nylons.

Come now. Paint it.

Wipe away every trace of it, place teardrops on your lashes, clean your hands until the sink is stained with it all. Make yourself presentable.

This is survival.

Sometimes, the world stands still, choking you. Sometimes, it moves so fast that you can barely breathe, sometimes it just turns as it always has. Despite everything. Despite witches and lions and wardrobes and tables made of crumbling stone, and despite train stations and brothers and a sister; spitting light. Despite warm spring mornings and worlds beyond this; stuck still and heaving amongst falling stars and splintering heavens; its shards all stuck in your hands, see?

Can you feel the ache of your hands, the way they’re cut open and bleeding, seeping with all this red, all this iron like the smell that clings to – clung to, she’s dead, my love, she’s died and will never smell like anything ever again – Lucy, and her copper hair, the dryad and the dwarf swaying all about her? Does it hurt, my love? Does it ache? My Queen, how deep are your wounds? can you use your hands again, bleeding and seeping and clawing your way out of this survival burning in your cheeks? The world keeps on turning around you, as it always has, despite it all.

It pays no mind to this iron dripping from you, pooling at your seams. It pays no mind to these voices all pulling at you, peering through your every crack, fumbling at all your scars, peeling all this make up from you until you’re blotched red and rubbed raw; and still.

Like this, they cast you in stone.

Pretty, crying, heaving thing, you hollow Queen, they drape you in flowers and cloth smooth as water, pour water all over you until all the English has seeped from your hair; until it’s left curling and standing on edge.

*

Why are you crying?

Why are you crying?

Why are you screaming?

Why do you claw at us?

What are you doing?

Stand still!

 My Queen, my love, light of my life, you gentle thing, why don’t you stay where you are and stand still?

Let us dress you, and pose you, and drape you all over this crumbling, dying land. We will make you Gentle again, ever smiling just for us. Come on, my love.

Be a friend of Narnia.

Don’t you want to see your siblings again, don’t you yearn for the way your brother would hug you, for his trembling hands?

Don’t you want to remember them as they were, not pale and cold and unmoving, buried in this English soil, in this English way – is this what they wanted?

Is this what you want?

 Susan.

Susan.

Susan!

Do you want this?

Do you want this world and this England, do you want nylons and lipstick and invitations and petticoats?

Susan, do you want these boys?

These boys with their hands, their mouths all over you, your skin blotched red and black, bruised blue and purple, is this what befits a Queen?

 *

This is survival. Drag yourself through it.

Raise your head and your world and all your words at the world’s mirrors, at all its eyes on you, at all those hands reaching for you.

You’re a Queen. Use it. Survive your worlds. Survive them all.

 And then; live.

 Curl your hair and twirl your skirts and dance into the new decade, dance into the new millennium.

Susan, my love, you will stand at the edge of this world and watch it sprint towards all this newness. Susan, my love, you will be married, and she will be lovely, with her arms around you, her lips a mark of red smeared on your cheeks.

Your children; drunk on euphoria as this last millennium ends – they raise their glasses: to the new year, and to you, my love.

To Susan Pevensie, mother and wife, wonderful woman, survivor.

They’ve never known the Queen nestled within you. They’ve never known worlds beyond this one. And you, amidst it all; glowing still.

Isn’t that lovely?

 You’ve survived.