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I resent the day you stopped accompanying me to the wardrobe at night, back when you still had hope and still remembered what it meant to live in our true home.
What has changed? What happened that you’ve abandoned me now?
When I look out the window in the afternoons before tea, do you ever wonder what I’m thinking? When you do, I do wonder. Have you forgotten my existence? Or maybe you’re filled with bitterness and despair? If that’s the case, I’m only one step behind you.
I remember so many things—a whole life they’re forcing me to set aside, as if it never happened. What madness are they pushing us to live in? Maybe that’s it, maybe it’s that madness that’s changed you, but I need to know—are you escaping it, or have you surrendered to it?
The other day, when we went to the river behind the mansion, you told me Susan was right—that this world was just as wonderful as the...the...*sigh "the fantasy that is Narnia." How could you say something like that? I don’t think I can ever forgive you. Never. Not ever! You were my last companion, the only one I trusted. You were—you are—everything to me. How could you? How dare you?
And yet, I’m still hoping that one of these nights you’ll come back to the wardrobe with me. I keep praying, preying to Aslan, to let me fall asleep on your lap again, your back against the wooden wall, you being ready to take the jolt of the fall when the wall disappears and gives us entry to our true home, to our true world. With you surrendering to sleep before me, your hand on my hair and your legs braced to support me.
Have you forgotten the feeling of every step through its forests? Or the quivering of the horses beneath us on every adventure? Or the rise and fall of the tides on our journeys across the seas of our kingdom? Or the sand on the shores of our dreamlike islands?
All of that was ours, Peter—ours to discover, ours to enjoy, ours to get lost in, together, you and I. How could anyone leave that behind to live in what this world is? How could anyone choose to forget?