cyphomandra

I pounced on a pinch hit for

genex fic exchange because it had so many fabulous prompts that I could do (Oxford Time Travel! Mara Jade in the Star Wars EU! Psmith) and ended up writing for Narnia, a series which was probably my gateway into reading past picture book level, and certainly my gateway into fantasy. I have loved all of the books except The Last Battle (which I will never love) for different reasons at different times, but never thought of writing fic for them, so it was both a challenge and a process of discovery at working out what I wanted to say.

Which was about Edmund and trains.

And All Points North (2631 words) by Cyphomandra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Edmund Pevensie, Susan Pevensie, Lucy Pevensie, Peter Pevensie, Eustace Scrubb, Jill Pole
Additional Tags: England - Freeform, Trains, Stealth Crossover, Public Transportation
Summary:

"And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?"

W.H. Auden, Night Mail.

My father is a life-long train enthusiast, so I was able to phone him up and ask the two questions that helped ground this for me - a), if I'm in 1948/9, is it British Rail yet? and b) can I still use the Flying Scotsman? The two small stations in this are ones closed by Beeching's Axe, and the one near Eustace's school is close to Summerhill, the subject of another book I loved reading as a child. Lucy's school is the one so prestigious that an offer of a teaching post there drives a student to murder in Josephine Tey's Miss Pym Disposes, and the stealth crossover character is Wodehouse' Psmith (another of Lirin's requests showing up as a prefect and having Edmund fail to treat his surname with the respect it deserves. The Flying Scotsman can be seen pulling into King's Cross at about the right time here.

sovay had posted recently about seeing the film of The Night Mail as part of a train film marathon, so that was still in my head when I was looking for titles/epigraphs, and she very kindly provided beta, along with

china_shop and Orannia.

sovay has also written a fabulously evocative piece of Calormene history and archeology off the back of my mention of the Assyrian lion hunt sculpted reliefs at the British Museum, and I strongly recommend it; Not a Tame Lion.