YES! IT FINALLY HAPPENED! THE REWRITE IS COMPLETE! *sweeps all my reviewers into a hug and hands them cookies*. Oh wonderful people who never gave up hope, I am so sorry this took so long. But now, it is done, completely, and I'll update often. Like, once a week, hopefully less but I am having a friend beta and she is as busy as me. The dust of my old life has settled and I can pursue my career and my fanfics habit at the same time! YIPPEE!! *throws confetti* And, I'm just barely squeezing this in before the Prince Caspian movie. Am I good or am I GOOD?

Disclaimer: I don't own Narnia, Aslan, Peter, Susan, Edmund, Lucy, Tumnus, Orieus, or pretty much anyone you could recognize from the books/movie. Though if you see William Moseley you think you send him over to my place?

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He couldn't shut off his mind, even when they were supposed to be sleeping. This was Narnia, he was in Narnia, but it had fallen. Invaders had come, as they always do. What had happened? How did it come to this? How did his kingdom, his glorious kingdom, fall into ruin, its very people in hiding due to the Sons of Adam, his ancient brothers?

The others had noticed Peter's growing fatigue but made little comment. What was there to say to each other when the same thought was on all their minds? They'd left good people in charge. How could their country have come to this?

"Something troubles your majesties?" Trumpkin the dwarf asked, looking over the somber children. They trudged along silently to be sure, but they did trudge, rather then a brisk campaign march that would let them cover more ground.

"Just caught up in old memories, Trumpkin," Peter replied, putting an arm around his sister Lucy as she sniffed. "Simply memories."

"I know," Susan said, her first words since breakfast. "It's nearly noon, let's break for lunch and Trumpkin can tell us one of his legends, something about what happened after us, perhaps?"

"I'm not sure, Queen Susan," Trumpkin began but the other children, however, were nodding in agreement so the dwarf relented; their meager food was brought forth and all seated themselves as comfortably as they could. "There really aren't that many stories after your majesties departed. According to some legends, for many years, a centaur General-."

"Oreius?" Susan broke in, her eyes shining.

"Yes, Queen Susan, the centaur General Oreius, along with a faun-."

"Tumnus?" Lucy questioned in a near broken whisper.

"Tumnus was his name, Queen Lucy; legend says that together they ruled Narnia with the help of a special council."

The little clearing was quickly filled with different voices of outrage.

"Special council?!"

"Where was Astrid?!"

"What about my son!?"

And over it all,

"What about the High Queen?!"

Trumpkin turned wide eyes on Peter, his confusion evident.

"The High Queen, you majesty? What High Queen? As far as I know the only higher royalty Narnia has ever had is yourself, the High King." His gaze swept the four startled children. "I take it the legends were wrong then when they spoke of only you four. You took husbands and wives? What were they like?"

Edmund leaned back against a tree, his eyes rising up to the clouds,

"Astrid was the smartest, prettiest, most snarky wood nymph I ever had the pleasure of meeting. She once single handedly saved the woods of Archenland from a devastating fire. We met when I was thirty, I proposed three months later but it took me another year to convince her to marry me. And marry me she did, and we stayed married for twelve years."

Lucy dug into her pocket, tears streaming down her cheeks as her small hand revealed an elegant gold ring, too big and yet too small for her child fingers,

"My oldest and dearest friend, Tumnus, swept my heart away when I was only seventeen but by the time I got him to marry me I was twenty five. We wanted to start a family and I'm fairly sure I was pregnant when Narnia was snatched away from me." She began to cry harder. "Those were fifteen of the happiest years of my life."

"I was twenty two when General Oreius became my husband," Susan added, one arm going around Lucy and her other hand falling to her stomach. "Though the world scoffed and whispered at a Queen marrying someone only half man, Narnia understood our love and celebrated when I bore him our first son, then again three years later when I gave birth to our daughter. Twenty three years for us."

Peter remained silent, though all had turned to him in expectance. He seemed to be staring off into space, his fingers unconsciously tracing where his own wedding band should have been. Trumpkin opened his mouth to speak but a hand motion from Edmund ceased him quickly. The others had just turned back to their lunch when Peter's quiet voice broke in.

"I never realized…I was married to Kat for twenty years when we disappeared. Twenty years of marriage, and I knew her for eight years before that." He began to smile slightly.

"I imagine it would take an extraordinary woman to be a High Queen," Trumpkin commented quietly.

"Extraordinary doesn't even begin to cover her, my friend," the High King replied. He ran a hand through his hair as he steadied himself with a deep breath. "Katerina was intelligent, kind, courageous, and, most importantly, the starkest and most aggravating person I had ever met. There were times I wanted to banish her from the country and a couple times I almost did." Trumpkin was staring in surprise as Peter's siblings smiled in memory. "Kat started out working on one of my special councils but she quickly rose to the rank of spymaster…"

And thus ends Chapter 1. I'm thinking I'll flip between Narnia past and present, like this one was present and the next will be past, you know; keep the story moving since there's so much to do. If there's an especially long one I'll probably split it, I don't know, I'm just glad to be done! Well, not glad, this was fun to write. Especially when I spent the better part of the day figuring out years and ages. I was POURING over the internet and my books, my roommate was laughing her butt off, she's terribly mean to me.

Anyway, REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW!!!....please?

Sailor Ppearl