Eleventh Prompt: Shopping

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Lucy didn't know if she was excited.
Susan had moved out two months ago.
And now she wanted to go shopping with her.

Of course, it was nice to see her again, but... it wouldn't be easy.

Susan forgot Narnia.
Well, not exactly.
Susan forgot that Narnia was real.
And that was almost worse.

Lucy stared out of the window of the train that would bring her to her sister into the middle of London.

Every time she or her brothers tried to talk to Su about Narnia she would laugh and say:„Right, I forgot that you still play this game from our childhood!“, or something like that.

It wasn't easy, no.

Lucy got off the train and looked around at the train station.

„Lucy!“, someone called.

Lucy turned around to see her smiling sister running up to her.
„Susan!“

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It was a nice time and Lucy almost forgot that Susan forgot Narnia.

They were everywhere, both of them got new clothes, they bought snacks, decorations, things for painting and drawing and whatsoever.

And then, of course, they went into a bookstore.
Both of them loved reading.

Lucy stopped in front of a book which had a lion on the cover.

„It looks like Aslan“, she said, lost in thoughts.

„Well, doesn't every lion look the same?“, Susan asked. „Aslan couldn't have looked so special, so every lion looks like him, right?“

She didn't mean it in a mean way.
Lucy knew that.
She forgot. She didn't know.

But Lucy's heart grew heavy.
How could Susan forget Aslan?
How could she forget how He looked?
How did she even forget Him?
Or that He was real?
How?

Susan turned around to Lucy, waiting for an answer.

„Right“, Lucy whispered quickly.

But everything inside her screamed NO.

Why did Susan have to forget?
It wasn't fair.
Why couldn't Aslan come, breathe on her just like in their second time in Narnia and make her remember?

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Susan was shopping again, this time with a friend called Amelia. The two walked into the same bookstore, past the same bookshelf and Susan noticed that the book with the lion on the cover was gone.

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One year later Susan was shopping again.
Alone this time.
Because Lucy was dead.

She walked into the same bookstore and walked past the same bookshelf.
And the book with the lion on the cover was there again.

Memories flooded over her and tears swelled up in her eyes.

Susan reached for the book.

She wasn't interested in what it was about, but she bought it because it reminded her of Lucy and of the childish game she always played.

A childish game that wasn't actually that childish at all.

Susan wanted to go back in time to when she first told her siblings that it was childish.
Because it wasn't.

As she came home she put the book on a shelf in her bedroom.

She forgot about it for a long time.

But a few months later she remembered it.

Susan picked it up and looked at the lion.

It looked different than normal lions, but maybe it was just some painting of an artist.

Another book lied under it. It was Lucy's Bible, that Susan had kept.

A few reading marks were on a few pages and slowly Susan opened it there.

Why had Lucy put reading marks there?

Susan looked back to the lion.

Aslan.
His sacrifice for Edmund.
His redemption.
Lucy's Bible.

And eventually, Susan sat on her couch that day, reading Lucy's Bible, and connected the dots that Lucy had connected so many years before.