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sometimes susan used to get up in the dead of night and run her hands over the angles of her body. straight, with narrow hips. only the curve of her neck was the same. she would touch it secretly during school and her lips would smile. at night she saw that her body had swum backwards to girlhood in an instant. it would take years to get back to being beautiful.

queen susan the beautiful. her golden hair streaming down over her shoulders as suitors kneeled before her and kissed her pale hands. her hands have now grown as soft and useless as they had always been as a child. these hands seem to have forgotten that they once held a great bow. they have forgotten the touch of the lips of men. they have forgotten what it was to be nimble and queenly. now she would paint the nails in hope they will recover their past glory. at night soft lotion would be rubbed on them. they tended to lie light and feminine in her lap or covering her mouth as she smiled in a manner not befitting a grownup woman.

at night she imagined she heard the merpeople were singing to her. she would go to the window and look up at the unfamiliar (yet familiar) constellations and know it was all wrong. she was all wrong. she with the awkward breasts pushing up underneath her school clothes and a beautiful face. her beauty had somehow been diminished. it was young and fumbling now. only beginning to take on how she knew she would look. the queen with the skin that had looked so white against the skin of rabadash. with men who would worship her and drink in every word that fell from her pink lips.

only a year since she had returned. from narnia, her siblings said. from a daydream, she insisted. that secret ache in her heart that caused her to bite her lips at night felt less the day she bought a tube of bright red lipstick and powder for her complexion. her golden hair would be loose and lovely, smelling sweet. she did not feel right in putting it up for she had no barrettes made of pearl to hold it back.

the day she learned she was going to america she went to the hairdresser and cut all that lovely golden hair off. it indicated freedom from dreams that she could not remember. from her body that refused to curve itself as it had used to.

mother was shocked. lucy exclaimed and touched susan's hair. susan smiled and her lips did curve.