“It doesn’t feel like justice,” Susan says, voice thin and pale as her face, staring at the blood in the snow where they’d been forced to put down a last wolf pack, stubborn to the end, loyal to their Witch-Queen; Edmund rubs his blade clean in the snow and does not look at her, only saying, “There is no justice, only us.”

This, then, is how it begins - with the prayers of Narnians over the Golden Age, all their hopes and dreams and desperate cries to be protected, to be blessed, to be loved - on and on, long past the vanishing point of Kings and Queens, down into the realm of folklore, the realm of myth.

It’s Ed who notices first, upon their return; an Edmund whose Judgements have become pronouncements, their weight as natural laws, inexorable, infallible - then it’s Peter, the Warrior, cutting down armies with a single sweep of his sword, and Lucy, the Life-Bringer, her sweet piping voice singing the forests back to life, the meadows back to bloom; and Susan - Susan who waits, and waits, and nearly despairs, until her lips brush Caspian’s and Love blooms and bursts once more, and Narnia welcomes her gods home for the final time.