Disclaimer: I don't own these characters. I don't own the poem from which I quote. I do, however, own a salad that's about to be demolished, and some chocolate pudding that I forgot about until now.

Author's Note: This is the first chapter of a four-chapter story. It's not much, but it came to me and I wanted to write about it. I haven't done a chaptered short story in a while, either. Each chapter is inspired by a quatrain of a poem that I read and loved - still love, actually. Please read, and please review.

"Love, if I weep it will not matter,

And if you laugh I shall not care;

Foolish am I to think about it,

But it is good to feel you there."

- "The Dream", Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edmund always wondered if thunderstorms were God's way of saying, "Go inside, spend time with your families." Of course, Edmund always hated thinking that because it meant he'd have to spend time with Peter and doing that was a royal pain in the pincushion.

But that kind of thought - that timbre - was scarce now. Even recollections of the way he'd once felt toward his brother were as hazy as the nimbus clouds racing across the night. He could see the sky from his open balcony, even from his bed although he'd had to move his bed. He'd had some help from some fauns, who insisted on not letting the young King do much of anything for himself when it came to such physical matters, to which Edmund replied, "If I thought it would work, I'd order you to let me help!" As Edmund found out five seconds later, desperately holding up his corner of the massive bed, it did indeed work.

Edmund smiled as he recalled the memory, rolling his left arm around in its socket as a phantom soreness rushed back into it. It had been a scant four years since then, four glorious, long years since his stupid stubborn self did...well, things.

He frowned as he flung himself off of his bed, his royal pajamas sticking suddenly to him, the tassels at the cuffs slashing at the air. (Mrs. Beaver had insisted on making him a pair of pajamas and he couldn't very well tell her no, not after...everything.) He hadn't meant to get on this thread again. He'd told himself - Aslan had told him! - that it did no good.

And yet here he stood on his balcony, right at the edge, his hands on the iron railing, thinking about the storm. A few droplets of rain speckled onto his face every now and then, but for the most part the balcony a floor above him kept him from getting drenched.

He'd thought it rather awkward, in the beginning, that he and his siblings were so far apart from one another in the castle. Edmund was just a floor below Peter, but to get to him he had to walk all the way to the other side of the castle to find the stairs. Susan and Lucy's rooms did much the same thing a floor and two floors, respectively, above Peter's. It wasn't until he'd asked Oreius one day about it that he learned it was "in case the worst should happen." Edmund hadn't understood and the stalwart centaur had continued: "In case we are overrun."

He needn't have said any more. Edmund realized that if the castle were to be taken over, invaded somehow in the night, the first of them to be captured or killed would be Edmund himself. By the time they would have gotten to Peter, however, Edmund would have to have raised enough noise for Peter to at least be alerted, if not armed and primed for a rescue.

Edmund thought that was rather fitting. He remembered smiling at Oreius after he had said that, remembered Oreius looking at him with a small smile of his own. Edmund liked to think it was a proud one. But of course, he didn't know.

The rain was picking up now and the lightning matched its intensity with its frequency. The thunder had been mostly silent, but Edmund's ears could make out a few distant thumps. It would be good for the crops. Many of the farmers Edmund had met with that week said that the unusually dry season thus far was dangerously close to ruining the tender wheat and most of the oats. The barley was fine and the rye would last, but the wheat needed help. Edmund wondered if God was listening and decided to reward His people with a little much-needed return on their faith.

Edmund smiled.

A knock came at his door.

"Enter," he called over his shoulder, wishing for not the last time that his voice would just permanently break already so he wouldn't be embarrassed every time he opened his mouth. Edmund heard the door open and quickly shut, padded feet - human feet, in...socks, perhaps? - slide one, two; one, two, across the hard stone floor. Edmund had never asked for any rugs to be laid down anywhere, to cover anything up. It was good for him to wake up in the morning and have his feet remember the cold dungeon he'd found himself in four years ago.

"Ed?" a voice called.

Edmund frowned. The voice was timid, unusually timid, unusually soft and unusually here at this time of the night?

"Yes, Peter?" Edmund replied. He kept his face to the storm - whatever Peter wanted could be answered rather quickly, he figured. Peter was so busy lately that if he ever came to see Edmund it was to ask him about some feature on some map that he couldn't remember or what color hunting outfit was best for his outing the next day or something else trivial and quickly, always quickly answered.

So when Peter didn't say anything else and Edmund got impatient enough to turn back to the torches and candlelight of his room, he received quite a surprise.

Peter was shaking, quite visibly shaking, almost as if he were cold despite the easily warm night. He was staring very determinedly at his feet but his head was squarely on his shoulders - too much crown wearing for all of them to disregard posture at any time, after all - so Edmund could see that he was crying.

Wait, crying?

"Peter? What's the matter?" Edmund asked. In three quick strides he was off the balcony railing where he'd eventually found himself sitting and rushed over to stand in front of his brother. He wasn't sure what to do with his hands or his feet or any of himself, really, except to get closer. So he just stood there and waited.

Eventually, Peter replied, "The storm."

He needn't have said any more. With as stifled a gasp as he could, Edmund remembered an eight-year-old Peter screaming as they were walking from somewhere, walking to somewhere. The details were fuzzy, but Edmund could remember a screaming Peter and terrified shrieks every time the thunder clapped above them and not really knowing what to do except to tell his brother to run faster to wherever it was they were going.

And then the words came out of his mouth before he even knew what they meant, before he even knew they were the right thing to say:

"Come on."

Edmund put his right arm firmly about his brother's midsection and guided him to his bed. Peter was shaking even worse now. Edmund could smell the sweat breaking out of him, parching the skin underneath Peter's pajamas.

They got to Edmund's nightstand and Edmund heaved the blankets off his bed with his free left hand. He always liked to be completely cocooned at night, no matter how warm it was, and he was thankful of that because Peter was positively icy underneath his grip. Peter ambled awkwardly onto the bed, curling himself into as tight a ball as he could almost as soon as he left Edmund's grip. Edmund went around the bed to get in on the other side.

He wished he hadn't.

A rumble of thunder slammed into the air, into Peter who let out one long, banshee-like wail.

Edmund never moved faster. He was in the bed and had his arms around his brother and the blankets tucking Peter and him in so tightly. It was almost like they were wombmates, twins.

Peter's wail ended just as Edmund got his arms around his sobbing brother.

"I'm sorry, Eddy," Peter whispered between thunderclaps. "I usually go to Susan. But you were closer."

Edmund smiled despite himself.

"Shh. It's okay, Pete. Just try to sleep, okay? Just...try to sleep," Edmund whispered. "I'm here."

The storm lasted for about an hour and a half and neither boy managed to sleep until the rain became a dance of tiptoeing needles instead of tangoing elms. In the near-silence, Edmund just caught wind of distant bells ringing - not tolling, but ringing, almost celebrating something.

"D'you hear that, Pete? It sounds so...familiar," Edmund whispered.

He received a light snore in response.

Edmund smiled and shut his eyes, resting his head as comfortably as he could on Peter's shoulder and neck. He tried to remember what the bells reminded him of, but he couldn't put it together until after sleep took him over.

And in the dream, a dream he wouldn't remember come morning, a sandy-haired boy screamed and shrieked, almost in pain. The even younger black-haired boy next to him put a rain-slicked arm around his shoulders and told him to run with him, run home, he could make it, he could do it. And so they ran in the Sunday afternoon storm, ran from the church doors all the way to their house where their mother was waiting with warm towels and tight blanket hugs.

Author's Note: If you're a medieval scholar, you might know the connection bells traditionally have with storms, especially in Anglo-Saxon England. If not, well: there's a connection. :) I'm not going to show my hand quite yet, though. But please review!