The guard gritted his teeth. How he wished she would stop. She had been wailing and crying for hours now.

Ever since she had remembered who she was, she had been lying on her side on her bunk and bawling. It wasn't even the screams of someone demanding attention, that he could deal with; it was the slow quiet moan of someone in deep mourning. Highly disconcerting, it touched a nerve of everyone who heard it.

He knocked on the bars.

"Stop that wailing!"

It faltered for a moment. A couple of sniffs escaped from her.

"I'm mourning. Am I not allowed to mourn the destruction of my world and the loss of my dear sister's mind?" she said coldly.

"Of course you are. Just do it a little quieter," he said. She sniffed again and then returned to her whimpering.

She was in that state for some days. Never eating, only drinking enough water to survive. And always with the sobbing; it was incessant. The guard rota gradually became shorter and shorter. They could not stand to listen to her for a long length of time, it upset something deep inside of them.

On the seventh day of her grief, the captain of the guards came down to the cells and peered through the bars at her. Her tear-stained face turned towards him and her red eyes stared at him dolefully. He raised an eyebrow and turned to the guard.

"She looks ill," he said accusingly.

"She hasn't been eating," the guard informed him. The captain's mustachios twitched as he regarded her again.

"I'm sending a maid down to clean her up. The Emperor wants to speak to her," he said.

The girl he sent carefully sat her upright and wiped her face and hands clean. Her raven hair was carefully brushed and tied off her face. After being pulled to her feet, a clean dress was pulled over her head. So unresponsive was she, so grief-addled, that she barely noticed any of this and certainly not the captain returning to the cell.

"Acceptable," he agreed and then steered her out. Her addled mind barely registered the splendour of the passages and corridors she was frogmarched through. Had she been in her usual state of mind, she would have gaped at the magnificence and babbled a thousand curious questions. It was far greater than any building she had been in before and more beautiful than any created by an architect of her homeworld.

Eventually she was guided into a hall unlike any other. Now she stopped; now she gaped. The ceiling seemed impossibly high and far away and the pillars that held it looked far too delicate to hold such a weight. She was prodded in the back and she walked forward obediently, still staring at the ceiling. She tore her gaze from above and focused on where they were heading to.

They were close; a hundred yards or so away. It was a raised platform of marble with a beautiful throne. However, the figure on the throne made her cry out in horror and prostrate herself on the floor.

"Princess Caelia, last of the Royal House of Charn, you have been brought here to answer for the crimes committed in the land of your birth," the captain who had lead her there proclaimed.

She trembled and pressed her forehead into the cool marble floor.

"His Imperial Majesty, Lord and Master of the Outlands, shall listen to your tale and decide your fate," he continued.

"Is that necessary? The poor thing has never known kindness and you are being very blunt with her," a cool voice said. That voice, it terrified her beyond belief for the simple reason that she had never heard such kindness in a voice before. In fact, it was right, she had never known any true kindness.

"I didn't mean it! I was trying to help; I was trying to stop her; I didn't want anyone to get hurt!" she whimpered. Fresh tears welled in her eyes and another sob rose up. "Please, please, believe me, I didn't mean for any of it to happen."

The figure on the throne rose and walked slowly down the steps towards her. "But it did happen, my child," the cool voice said and she cowered away from it.

She saw the bottom of the shining white robe near her and crease as the figure bent down. She could not bring herself to look up. She did not dare.

"Come my child, you cannot scrabble on the floor forever. I am not angry with you, I merely want to know what happened," the voice said. A hand reached out to her. She took it and allowed herself to be helped to her feet, although she still averted her eyes. His other hand closed over hers and she raised her eyes to them clasped together so.

She had been trembling like a leaf in the wind but at His touch she had stopped. His presence calmed her and, even though she was still frightened, she trusted Him.

"Come, my child. Walk with me and tell me your tale," He said.

He led her back through the corridors and hallways of splendour and out into magnificent gardens. Together they walked under sweet-smelling bowyers and through walkways until they arrived in a small courtyard with a pond in the centre.

She left His side and ventured to the edge, watching as the goldfish swam towards her and opened and shut their little mouths in expectation. This place reminded her of a garden of her home. She had often played with her sister there, back in the days when they did play. She knelt by the water and trailed her fingers in it.

"Caelia," He said behind her. "I want to know what happened."

There was an edge to His voice now and she twitched as she caught it. Her hands ran over the hot earth and she scooped up a handful. She lifted it and let it fall through her fingers.

"This is like the earth in Charn," she said. "It was a red colour, like this, and always warm to the touch. I liked to play with it like this when I was a child. My sister used to tease me that she was the jewel of our parents and I was the dirt on their boots. It was one of her crueller jokes."

She let the rest of the soil fall off her palm. "What will happen to her? If I am here to answer for what she has done, what will happen to her?"

"She has used her sorcery to seal herself in a deep and magical sleep. There is only one way to break it and I shall put my own restrictions in place in the hope that no-one could ever wake her," He told her.

"Your own restrictions?"

"I am Master of the Outlands. I have a power of sorts in all worlds, even Charn."

"Then why did you not stop her?" she asked. She nearly stared at Him but her uneasiness stopped her just in time.

"I have a power of sorts," He repeated. "Just because I am able to doesn't mean I should. Charn had been suffering from a sickness for many years before you were born. You and Jadis were my last hope of a cure but alas, you could not find harmony."

He sighed and she felt His eyes pierce her back.

"Now tell me, Caelia," He commanded. "Tell me what happened to Charn."

AN: This was born out of a belief of mine that every tale has two sides. Upon reading the Magician's Nephew, it struck me that the only person to tell us that Jadis's sister was evil was Jadis herself. This got the plot bunnies boiling in my mind, what if her sister was not evil?

I am also using the term the Outlands to describe every world under the Emperor's dominion that is not part of His country, for example Charn, Earth and, after its birth, Narnia.

I hope you enjoyed the first chapter and I will see you in the next, hopefully! :)