The One Archer

He doesn't say it directly to anybody, he has to chew it over, has to test it and try it, and see if it holds true. He and the Professor have many lively discussions about what Narnia actually is, what it's for, what other worlds would mean for science or philosophy or theology. But every time he goes back to the Bible and reads it, he finds echoes of Narnia, echoes of the Lion's voice, and the truth settles into him, becomes something solid and certain deep down inside.

Peter... sees the possibility almost as quickly. He's not so sure of it though, is a bit shy of something so incredible, doesn't want to get it wrong. He wants it to be true. He thinks about it a lot. But he doesn’t say any of it aloud, until he says to Aslan, at the end of his last trip to Narnia. It gets decided then, in there somewhere. He doesn't understand how or why, but he will believe anyway.

Lucy, now, Lucy always knew in a way that was beyond words, unconsciously, deep inside somewhere she never stopped to examine. She stands in Eustace's room, with Aslan’s words ringing in her ears, and it's like a light bulb has come on, or a bucket of cold water has been dumped over her head. Oh. Oh, that's what he meant, oh, now I understand.

And Susan, dear Susan, she suspects, she wonders, but no. Impossible. Too strange, too illogical. Waves it away like a nagging fly. But she figures it out years later, not too late, no sir, not too late at all. Maybe it's a book, maybe it's a song, maybe it's retelling the Easter story to a little girl curled up in her lap. Maybe it's an old poem pulled from the wreckage of a train. She pauses, startled, before the tears come tumbling down, and she murmurs the name she hasn't spoken in what feels like a lifetime, murmus it like a prayer: Aslan.

Younger folk are getting really good at spotting AI slop, to the consternation of marketing execs.