i think all quiet on the western front and the lord of the rings are in direct conversation with each other, as in theyre the retelling of the same war with one saying here’s what happened, we all died, and it did not matter at all and another going hush little boy, of course we won, of course your friends came back

someone should remake lord of the rings as a grandfather telling a fantasy story to his grand child with flashbacks to world war one showing the dead boys and men the characters were based on. grandpa why didn’t they just fly. because they didn’t. they didn’t.

i’m fine

I will never get over how Tolkien & Lewis took the horrors of war and spun them into fantasy.

Shivering in the trenches dreaming of cozy hobbit holes, shaking as bombs pockmark a forest and imagining each shallow mud-filled crater contains a new world—that maybe there are still as many beautiful things in the universe as there are bombs—that maybe the world is bigger than this moment and this ugliness and one day this will be a peaceful forest again full of small ponds.

I mean look at these photos of the shell craters in Sanctuary Woods, near Ypres Belgium and tell me it’s not the Wood Between The Worlds:

…oh.

have you ever heard it? can you remember?

i. The gulls were crying. The gulls were always crying, in her memory. Whatever far off places Susan travelled after her family was gone, she always came back to the sea.

ii. The beach at Cair Paravel was the first place in Narnia where she really felt at home. She'd wade into the water with her eyes shut and feel she could be in England, on holiday with her mother and father. She'd open her eyes, and there would be waves cascading endlessly towards her.

iii. Before long, she knew every tidepool, every shoal.

iv. There weren't any bathing suits in Narnia, but no one seemed the least scandalized when Susan took to swimming in her underthings. There wasn't anything else for it, and she had to swim. She just had to.

v. She wasn't the only one of her siblings to love the sea, of course. Edmund loved sand and sailing and reading on the beach, and Peter liked to gaze out at the ocean and think. Lucy spent even more time at the beach than Susan did; she would rise before dawn and sit on the rocks as the sun rose over the waves. Susan was never sure whether her little sister was there to greet the sunrise, or to wait for Aslan.

vi. But for Susan, it was sense-memory. Water was water, wherever she was, and it always reminded her of home. She'd go out past the breakers, pull her limbs into a familiar breast stroke, and she'd feel like she was everywhere she loved all at once.

vii. Aslan came, and she was soaking wet to greet him. He laughed, in his lion-ish way, and didn't mind at all when Susan embraced him.

viii. Somehow, Aslan never got drenched from his journeys across the sea, but he was damp as though with mist. The scent of salt and brine clung to him, an overtone to that fierce, wild smell that was his own. Susan breathed in deep, those two scents she loved most in the world.

ix. In England, back at school, she'd go to the swimming pool and imagine she was in Narnia.

x. It wasn't the same, of course. The swimming pool at her school had no crying gulls, no smell of salt, no cascading waves. There was no Aslan coming towards her from the T-line at the other end of the pool. But if she submerged herself completely, Susan could imagine.

xi. She swam with her eyes shut too often, and her coach was growing irritated. It was affecting her times in practice, which would bleed over into competition if she wasn't careful. Somehow, Susan couldn't be bothered to care.

xii. One weekend, she and Lucy snuck away to visit the boys, and they all went down to the lake to reminisce about Narnia. When Lucy and Edmund spoke of their summer sailing the eastern sea, Susan was positively stiff with jealousy. Yet when they all dove into the water in the end, her heart pounded out a rhythm of home, home.

xiii. Six years after her last trip to Narnia, Susan hadn't touched a bow in four years. She still went swimming every week.

xiv. After the railway accident, she went to live by the sea. She missed her family, and she couldn't stand to live in the places they had lived. She wanted to forget.

xv. Susan had missed the salt air. She had missed the waves. There was a feeling of home by the sea that she couldn't quite place; a soothing echo of long ago dreams and fairytales.

xvi. But there were the gulls crying, "Can you remember?" and it broke her heart all over again.

Sailing back home on the stream of stars...

Why I Am Happy

by William Stafford

Now has come, an easy time. I let it roll. There is a lake somewhere so blue and far nobody owns it. A wind comes by and a willow listens gracefully.

I hear all this, every summer. I laugh and cry for every turn of the world, its terribly cold, innocent spin. That lake stays blue and free; it goes on and on.

And I know where it is.

There was a park a few blocks away from Uncle Harold and Aunt Alberta’s home in Cambridge where Lucy would often wander that summer when she wanted to be alone. She’d tuck a book under her arm and call to Edmund, “I’m going!” and then she’d go find herself a tree.

Branches waved gently, like fingers against the sky. Lucy would settle herself on her favorite bench and try to read, but sometimes she just found herself gazing at those branches. When she was sure the park was empty, she’d succumb to her most fanciful impulse to get up and walk among them. Wake, she’d think, and imagine the faces that each kind of tree would have.

Lucy knew it was fancy, but it wasn’t delusion. She could tell the difference. After all, it had been truth that first set her on the path to Narnia, dismissed as both delusion and fancy.

At school she read Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. She painted Prospero with Coriakin’s coloring, high wiry brows and sun-wrinkled skin. She gave him long fingers, an imaginative touch—Coriakin’s had been rather short and stubby—and heard the poetry in her own voice. She read aloud to her friends sometimes, just picked up wherever she was and read while Marjorie and Josephine curled up under blankets with mugs of hot tea.

“It sounds better when you read it,” Marjorie mused. “Even if it is musty old Shakespeare.”

There were glimpses of gold in puddles on the pavement, and Lucy found herself glancing up as though she expected to find Aslan in her periphery. He wasn't there, of course, but the sunset shot light into the street and made it shine. Aslan wasn't in the chapel at school either, but the bells pealed golden every hour. He wasn't stalking beneath her dormitory window, but there were fresh footprints in the snow.

Lucy was sure that if only she could remember the spell for making hidden things visible, she'd find her whole world cloaked in tawny, velvet gold. Aslan in the kitchen, Aslan in the sky at dawn. Aslan in the faces of her friends, who laughed when Lucy said fanciful things but who listened rapt when she read aloud.

"I swear, you and your read-alouds, Lucy Pevensie," laughed Josephine as the cover fell shut. "Why, it's almost as though you believe in all the stories! You're not theatrical, just credulous." So Lucy leaned back and taught her friend how to tell if someone was lying, or delusional, or if they had a marvelous truth to tell.

On lonely weekends, Lucy begged Professor Digory to take her with him to Oxford to see the great stone halls and the towering cathedral and she loved the way the angels’ sloping wings looked against the sky. Wake, she whispered as she passed by graves and monuments to those long dead, and imagined that she might see Aslan pacing behind them, ready to breathe them back to life.

Kasamatsu Shiro “Into the Woods” color woodcut 1955

no but just thinking about the pevensies’ relationship with war is enough to make me froth at the mouth. cause like!!

war shook their fathers hand, dragged him out by the collar, made their mothers face grow thin and their family stain and crack under its weight, made them grow up underneath its shadow. it hands them weapons and pushes them into a conflict they have not enough time to even grasp and makes them stain their child hands red.

and THEN! one day down the road, susan wakes up and looks at peter with his sword and armour, and wonders at which point he became what they fled, at which point the shadow turned out to be her brother’s outstretched arms above her head in a desperate attempt to keep them safe. when did it happen, she will wonder, and she won’t be able to answer because every day it gets harder to think of a “before”.

and the worst part will be that it’s a stain that won’t wash out, even when lucy puts flowers into peter’s hair when he comes home battered and bruised, even when he smiles at her across the breakfast table. out damned spot, she will think, and it won’t help.

because he will ride out to war again and the nightmares of him in a field of carnage and gore will return and she won’t even be able to say they’re just dreams because her brother is out at war and she can’t even remember a time where he wasn’t at home amidst the fight.

and eventually, she won’t even think it strange to call this tall man from her nightmares, bloodied, bent out of shape, buckling under the weight of the dead, her world balanced on his shaking shoulders, family.

eventually, susan will wake and not think it odd to call war her brother.

insp.

war knocks on your door with ironed clothes and clipped greetings, jaws closed around your father’s throat like a noose before he can even try to invite it in. your mother doesn’t tell you much, but you’ve heard the news on the wireless, heard the words your father sent you away for, heard them from your perch atop the stairs, nails digging into your older brother’s shoulder and silent tears begging for your other siblings not to wake.

war shakes your father’s hand and drags him out before he can let go. your mother’s shaking fingers brush down her skirts with care. she asks you to help her with the chores, her smile too wide and eyes too wet. you pretend not to hear her at the kitchen table late at night, trying her hardest not to let you hear her grief. she joins the factory, irons her work clothes with a sigh, and comes home to scrub her hands until the skin is raw. 

war pushes down on your family like lead. your siblings drag their feet, their shoulders curved forward and down in slouches that make your chest ache. you brush down your dress and tell them to straighten up, to take steps with purpose. it doesn’t work often, your voice far different than that of your mother or father. you don’t know how to make them listen. the binding of the book in your lap creaks under your curling hands, your brother rolls his eyes and stomps up the stairs like a wild animal, his shoes a tripping hazard for all that dare come after him. your sister—curled up in that armchair nobody else dares touch in your younger brother’s presence anymore—cries into the bear your father presented her with on her sixth birthday. your older brother stumbles after you all like a shadow with a cracking voice, failing as much as you when it comes to commanding order. he makes your mother tea, carries the laundry, tries his hardest to fix the sink. he yells when things go wrong, as desperate as you to help. it doesn’t make a difference.

war draws shadows under your mother’s eyes as she brushes her thumbs over your cheeks and tells you to be a big girl. your younger brother doesn’t listen and your sister cries. you don’t know how to do this, how to hold yourself like the woman sending you into the unknown to keep war’s blood-stained grip away. you brush down your clothes, straighten your brothers’ jackets even as one flinches under your touch and the other almost crumbles between your shaking fingers. you hold your sister and pray for war to walk away.

war hands you weapons amidst melting snow, your older brother’s hands stain red, your sister sobs into the fur of a lion you can’t help but curse just a little, and your younger brother’s bruised face won’t look at you straight on.

your bow creaks under your curling hands. war greets you with a smile.

consider this:

susan detests war. she is gentle, kind, wishes above all else for people to be safe and happy. she knows how to defend herself and others, but never wishes to be in a place where it becomes necessary to use those skills. she stays behind in times of war, and she is glad she does not need to fight. fighting makes her skin crawl. but there is another reason, one whispered quietly and noted down for history in vague phrases and reverent words. 

queen susan’s voice, often soft, stern when needed, has power in more ways than state affairs. speaking of war tastes like rot and ash. standing on a battlefield tears at her insides until she spits blood into the mud. death is inevitable in war, and she loathes the noise and taste of death more than anything. it makes her throat itch.

there is a story of a quiet night, where the cair lay still and peaceful until a scream of utter grief shatters it. queen susan is found on her knees next to her fireplace, rocking back and forth as she wails. her tears shine silver where they drip down her face, her hands are curled tightly into the white-and-green fabric of her nightgown. she doesn’t stop, not even when her siblings curl up around her and plead with her to tell them what is wrong. there is blood on her lips when she goes quiet all at once, just as the first rays of sunlight stretch into the sky. she falls limp into her eldest brother’s arms and sleeps. soon, a bird brings news of sudden, violent death from the northern borders. queen susan’s voice is broken and quiet for the days to come.

keeping away from war does not stop her from keening, but it’s easier this way, safer for her and their troops. the guards learn to know the difference in her cries. she learns how to keep her throat from tearing every time. her voice is that of honey and herbs, and her silver tears shine gold from time to time. 

it’s not hard to guess why she detests war.

(it doesn’t happen in england, not like this. she cries a few tears before the war news come on the wireless, but that’s all there is to it. she becomes a master in overwriting the memories of what death sounds like. until one night she screams herself awake and cannot stop. her hands tug at her hair, her tears leave silver trails on her skin. she tastes blood, ash, metal and oil, and knows what news she will get before the phone rings.)

Yeah, I’ll just sit here and cry over this. So beautiful.

narnia has actually way too many completely devastating concepts in it that are not explored At All

We talk a lot about how in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the Pevensie children live full adult lives as kings and queens of narnia before stumbling out of the wardrobe by accident and being children again after like 15+ years. But I’ve never seen the same level of analysis devoted to how in Prince Caspian they return to Narnia and discover that over 1,000 years have passed in Narnia since their last visit.

Imagine undergoing the grief of losing an entire life you lived in another world, being forced back into the body of a child and to grow up all over again without the ability to even talk about what happened in the decades you lost. Every person you knew and loved, vanished, leaving no indication they were ever real and no guide for how to move on.

But returning to that world where you were a King or Queen and discovering that centuries have passed without you and that the people you lost are not only dead, but mostly aren’t even remembered? That’s almost worse.

That series is really something for “worldbuilding threads picked up and never touched again” too like

I LOVE the whole concept of Bism. Like Lewis really just said oh yeah there’s a whole world under Narnia where people live and jewels are alive too actually you wear dead ones in your jewellery and then no one ever spoke about it again, not even the fandom

in your dreams, your older brother wears a crown of crimson red and speaks of death like a lover, letting it spill past stained teeth and over his tongue with reverence. there is a smile on his face, too wide, too full of glee. your hands are wet and the hem of your dress is soaked and your brother’s hair is turning dark. his sword looks larger than your memory serves, and you never recall the shape his armour ought to be beneath the blood. he holds out a rust-coloured hand and laughs as though the audience he means to present you to is not the dead piled up beneath his feet.

you wake with screams trapped behind cracking lips and silver tears staining your cheeks. you wake early enough to watch the same red you fear spill across his blue skies as you clasp desperate hands until your knuckles turn white and your nails leave marks.

your sister, bright and hopeful, braids your hair with fast fingers. the flowers she pins among your curls won’t wilt until she asks them to and her hands are warm and steady in yours. your younger brother, restless and as pale as you, dips bread into soup like it has offended him but brushes a hand over your tense shoulders with gentleness he always says was taught by you. his voice is calm where his legs are not.

they wait the same as you, with your shoulders straight despite the taste of blood at the back of your throat. the fourth seat remains empty another day, and your voice is called for more often than it ought to if things were right.

you wait for him to come home, victorious, whole, with blood-free teeth and tongue. your siblings wait the same, your sister singing louder and your brother standing taller to fill the empty space.

in your dreams, your older brother wears a crown of crimson red and speaks of death like a lover and of war like home.

when you wake, you pray.

by Nikolai Shahmantsir

So a couple Christmases ago, I got an emergency whistle in my stocking. It was supposed to be deafeningly loud, so obviously not the sort of thing you blow on Christmas morning just to see what it sounds like. And let me tell you, pretty much that whole morning, I was dying to blow that whistle. Out of curiosity, and because I wasn’t supposed to. The next time I had the house to myself, it was one of the first things I did.

All of this to say, when Susan rode around with her horn strapped to her saddle, I wonder how often she was intrusively tempted to just pick it up and blow it? Was is hard to run around Narnia with a horn she was only supposed to blow when she was definitely, seriously, for-real in danger?

And more to the point, what about Caspian? Did he ride away from Dr. Cornelius with a little voice in the back of his head going blow the horn dude c'mon just blow it find out what it sounds like c'mon dude?

#narnia#susan was very fortunate to have a horn-justifying emergency within a couple of days#caspian demonstrated great restraint for a 13 year old 

“LUCY IN THE TREE, I’M GONNA BLOW MY NEW HORN”

and the help that magically arrived was their big brother who was probably in hearing range of a shout anyway