“I used to have a brother with eyes blue as the sea,” Susan says, as the waves come in closer and closer to where they sit in the sands.

“Mine all had eyes like the sea in a storm,” Maglor says, his own closed as if to see in memory, a faint smile on his lips.

Sometimes she thinks she can see these brothers he speaks of in his face, or in his gestures, a certain turn of phrase; she wonders if he ever senses Peter in her boldness, or Edmund in her sly jokes, Lucy in her laughter, and she prays it's so, though she's too afraid to ask, too afraid no one sees them now but her, alone in the depths of her memories.