It's been months now.

I've gotten accepted, gotten packed and unpacked. Moved into a new world, with new friends, new experiences. It's been a journey through the wardrobe in every sense but the most literal.

And another birthday has distanced the broken dream from me.

Summer rolled into fall, descending gently into winter. Snow and ice, covering my new world in magical misery. College.

It has a white witch – the professor that teaches the intro biology course. My very own helpful Beavers have assisted my journey – thank Aslan for guidance counselors and advisors.

The semester has rolled over, winter break proving to be just that – a victory in the battle against the ice and snow.

But there is one thing that has not changed, since I was first compelled to try to take a journey of my own.

There is a closet in my dorm room.

There are three, actually.

One hides drawers, shelves cluttered with odd-ends of toothpaste and pillowcases, forks liberated from the dining hall and a rarely-used blow-dryer.

The second is a sink-closet, adjoining my room with the one next to it. The door is somewhat slimmer than the rest, and the only one with a lock.

It's the last door, the true closet, which holds my attention.

I've seen it bare and have been all over it – climbing to reach the shelves, poking and twisting ever farther back to hang up that just-cleaned sweatshirt, reaching for that particular pair of jeans.

So – I know those walls well. Have even hit my head on them once or twice. They're off-white, and somehow harder than the sheetrocked walls at home, but much thinner. The barriers between the worlds seem worn. Almost as if . . .

And it always surprises me, every time I open the door, how deep the closet really is. Outward appearances are startlingly deceiving.

But I don't push my way through the hanging clothes. I have no need to, now.

Perhaps it's because I feel I've already embarked on my quest, set my feet on destiny's path. A cynic would say I've lost my innocence, my naïve belief in magick and fairytales.

I don't think so.

A sense of triumph fills me, each time I glance secretively at the door. Perhaps it's because, now, I have no need to open it, push my way to the back and pop out into a realm of beauty and magick. In a way, I already have. I don't need to see to know, to feel in my heart that Narnia is no farther away that my own closet, the distance between only as thin as a narrow wooden door.

I have found the true key to entering Narnia, and like all others, had to do it on my own. And what I have learned is this: Believing is seeing, never the other way around.

It took time, and wisdom I would have hesitated to credit myself with a year ago. Perhaps that which once barred my entrance - age - shall now show me the way. All I truly know is this - the battle unfought is the only battle ever lost. One need not battle thyself, for in the end, all that holds us to this earth, and to each other. We will make our own Narnia of Earth.