"Perhaps they had a spill, and I'm suffering from the side effects. Of course, nothing smelled off in there, so it must be something wrong with me. Well, wait—let's not be rash. I'm not condemned to the loony bin yet. That's a relief. What else is there? Hmmm… other causes for hallucination… got enough sleep last night… That must be it, then! Oh, how I'd wanted to avoid the worst, but I'm going mad," Millie said shrilly. "I'm surely going mad!"

"You're not. Now will you shut up?"

Millie huffed but stayed silent for the next half hour or so.

"These aren't Narnian landscapes," Edmund said to himself.

"What landscapes?"

He sighed.

"Can I at least know where we are?"

This would be a long story, and one he didn't have time for at the moment, Edmund thought. "We are somewhere in the world of Narnia, though I doubt the country," he said aloud.

Millie blinked. "I've never heard of the country and—pardon me—a world?"

"Yes. Narnia is a world different from our own."

"How did we arrive here?"

"You don't believe in magic, do you?"

Millie contemplated this question. "No," she said shortly.

"That'll have to change," Edmund muttered.

"Why will it have to change?"

"You'll see soon enough."

"Not to bother you, but I'm getting a little bit stressed out. We must have been gone a few hours at least."

"You needn't. No time passes in our world during the time we're here."

Millie stopped abruptly as her eyes looked like they were going to pop out of her head. "How is this possible? Is it similar to Einstein's special theory of relativity, but for teleportation?" Blinking, she jogged to keep up with Edmund. "Moving through space, not time?"

"I doubt it."

"Then how is it—"

"I don't know. Nobody knows." He snapped.

"Has anybody asked?"

Edmund just stayed silent. Millie, in turn, shrugged and faced the dry horizon. What unsettled her was that desolate, utter silence. Crickets didn't chirp, birds didn't sing, and snakes didn't rattle (which seemed the most applicable in this situation). The ground was dry, and she could feel the papery heat of it even through her shoes. Then she wondered if it was prudent to be wandering around with a stranger unsupervised, but supposed that with Susan's brother, little could possibly go wrong.

Of course, that was before she heard a roar that made even the sands retreat.

"Desert lions?"

This time, Edmund looked just as surprised as she did. Desert lions were known to frequent the Great Desert, but what if—

"Am I going to get an explanation anytime soon?"

"Depends," Edmund stopped walking, dark eyes scanning the horizon. "For now, don't move."

Millie stopped walking and tapped her foot, little puffs of sand billowing each time. The roaring was getting closer.

"Didn't I ask you not to move?"

Scowling, Millie tried a trick her music teacher had taught her—tapping her toe inside the shoe. (It was the only thing she had taken away, since music never came easily to her.) Nevertheless, there wasn't a tempo, and standing still was simply a demand she couldn't meet. "Can I talk?" She asked instead, hoping that the tone somehow twisted itself into a rhetorical-sounding request.

Apparently, it didn't.

"No," Edmund replied simply. "No moving, no talking, and—really, is it that hard?"

"Yes, actually. You ought to try it sometime. Ah!" Millie yelped, picking up a stick and brandishing it whichever way it would go. "What was that?"

Another snarl sounded, just like the one the pair had just heard.

"Stop drawing attention to us!" He hissed.

"What, then? Just sit here and get eaten?"

"I'd be able to think if you could stay still for a damned second!"

"I already tried that."

"Well, try harder!"

Millie clamped down hard on her lip and hunched her shoulders forward in effort though her narrowed eyes said enough.

"That's better. Thank you."

"You're welcome!" Millie replied brightly, then smacked her forehead. "Oh, drat."

"Marks for effort." Edmund's eyes narrowed as his vision focused. "Susan'll kill me for getting to come back here so soon."

"Wait a minute. How come you can talk, and I can't?"

Edmund sighed. "Because you are unnecessarily loud."

"What has Susan got to do with this?"

"She's been here. All of us have."

The animal sounds came closer.

Millie gasped suddenly.

Edmund looked around in alarm.

She snapped her fingers. "The man," she realized.

"What man?"

"Susan told me she fell in love and she'd never get to see the fellow again."

"Caspian," he muttered.

"What?" Millie barked.

"Shhhh!"

"Edmund, can you tell me what's happening? Please?"

"Didn't I tell you to be quiet?"

Well, at least she tried to be diplomatic. Please was a new addition to her vocabulary, especially during the menstrual cycle. If she couldn't chat with this stiff, she'd keep it all internal—talking to herself. Yes, that sounded just fine. It was just a matter of: 'how are you doing, Millie? Well, I hope? Yes, yes, I'm quite fine. I appear to be in a desert although it's not one of earth's deserts because—well, I'll be damned! I don't even know why! Susan's little brother told me so…yes, I could be stuck here with anyone if magic is possible, and I'm stuck here with somebody whom I don't like, or, more accurately, who appears to detest me. I'd really have no problem with him otherwise. He keeps telling me to shut up in a manner that is wholly irritating. I wish I weren't menstruating.'

Millie smiled to herself, quite pleased with her progress.

'And Susan's young man is from here, the sunny world of… Ninny-a? Oh, bother, I've already forgotten! He must be a looker, if Su left her senses for him. I wonder if he looks like James Mason.'

Edmund turned and gave her an odd look, apparently surprised that she could hold out this long.

She beamed in reply. 'Now where was I? Hmmm, don't remember. It sounds like there are lions out and about, but I'm really not sure. After all, if all this is before my eyes, it could mean I've finally gone daffy for all the sense it makes. Still, it's novel, if nothing else. I'm trying to remember any books that even remotely began to cover an experience such as this. I'm also failing. Isn't it strange how it's possible to try and fail at the same time? There is that time I was falling to the ground, and everything suddenly came in slow motion, how I was trying to right myself and falling anyway. If only gravity could be stopped in certain cases. Some people have died after all, and gravity's all to blame—well, with perhaps a bit of stupidity thrown in in most cases. I've got no idea what else to think about now. It seems that there are a million things I've got to do, a million responsibilities coming to mind. There are groceries to run back to the house. And yet here we are, in the lovely if rather arid land of Ninny-a."

"It's not Ninny-a. It's Narnia."

Millie's head snapped around. "Does this world make telepathy possible, too?" She asked in wonder, momentarily forgetting about her vow of silence.

"No. You've been muttering aloud for the past fifteen minutes."

"Oh." She said. "Well, why didn't you say anything?"

"I wasn't really listening until you announced that you were in the world of Ninny-a. It isn't Ninny-a. It's—"

"Narnia," Millie replied through gritted teeth. "I know. And I do recall saying I was in the land of Narnia, not the world of Narnia."

"Well, if that's true, then you're mistaken."

"What do you mean, I'm mistaken?"

"I don't know which country we're in at the moment, but it's not Narnia. Or at least it's not the Narnia to which I'm accustomed. We are, however, within the world of Narnia. That much I do know."

"Wait a minute. How am I allowed to talk all of a sudden?"

"The sounds are dying down." Edmund still looked wary though slightly less alert.

Millie turned to him. "So, you've been to this place. Narnia," she corrected herself.

"Yes. Though I admit I'm at a bit of a loss as to why you're here, as well."

"Not half as much as I am. Is there—is there any way to get back?"

"Yes, but never until we've accomplished something. Usually this means Narnia's in trouble."

"I'm—I'm really not going crazy, then?"

"No, you're not."

"I—I feel as though I must've been knocked in the head, though. I mean—all of this. How is it possible?"

"Don't worry about that now."

"It's a little hard not to."

"Well. Now I see why you get on so well with Susan."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"She reacted much the same way when she first came a year ago." Edmund replied dryly. "I suppose I ought to warn you. Some of the animals talk here, though I doubt it where we are."

"Just like in Dr. Doolittle!"

"Do you always draw comparisons to novels?" He turned to her in annoyance.

"Yes. Films, too. It's a bit of a bad habit of mine." Millie said sheepishly.

He stopped, running a hand through his hair. "Would it help for you to imagine you're in a novel right now?"

"Yes. Yes, by Jove, it would! Thanks, Edmund!"

"Only this isn't fictitious," he muttered under his breath.

"What was that?"

"Nothing."

Silence prevailed for the most part, with Edmund pointing a few things out about Narnia's general history.

It was all so utterly bizarre, and as soon as Edmund explained one thing, another thing he'd explained earlier was pushed clean out of Millie's head. Nothing could surprise her anymore, she had been sure. How quickly everything could be thrown upside-down. Yet it was also reminiscent of the devastation she had felt at the war's damage alongside every other citizen with similar sentiments. This was a different kind of war, though, one she couldn't quite place a finger on. The only viable guess was that it was a war for her sanity.

Nonetheless, her musings inexplicably faded and blurred, and a certain weight on her posture was lifted. This place was infiltrating her mind as if through a spell. Not so horrifying anymore, now that she was getting used to it, Narnia took her as it took many others—and a new round of roars couldn't even displace her spirits.

A shape on the horizon became sharper with every step she took, growing limbs as the pair approached. Its size was already apparent even from a distance, and it was nearly the color of the sands around it—in fact the only way to tell that anything was there was an outline against the sky and the shadows the unidentified animal left. What was color became fuzz, and what was fuzz became hair. A circular head became a mane, and feet became clawed. Well, maybe it was friendly. However, when it raised its head and roared, moving its paws in the sand, Millie stopped short.

Her sense of peace disappeared.

It was a lion, the greatest lion she'd ever seen. Millie said a quick little prayer in her head for the first time in months and stood as still as she possibly could.

Then, it moved its paw and gave her a small frown.

"What is that?" She shrieked, diving behind Edmund.

"Ah! You'll make me go deaf!"

"You would show your devotion only when you have need of me, Daughter of Eve?" it growled, setting its stern eyes upon her.

"It…it talks?" she squeaked to Edmund.

"Aslan." Edmund knelt grimly, leaving Millie in full view behind him.

Millie stuttered and stumbled backward.

"Rise, King Edmund. Surely now you know of what I spoke. You are in the Great Desert, a day away from the outskirts. At its western border you will meet a young man named Haruni who will lead you to your destination."

"So we're in Calormen, then?"

"Yes," the lion purred. "On her deathbed, Aravis wished for slavery to end in Calormen. Her son was preoccupied with ruling two countries at once and could not abolish it before he was killed."

"How?" Edmund asked.

"A Calormene arrow."

"And no one succeeded him in Narnia," he surmised.

"That is not relevant to your current task here, my son," the lion reprimanded, but kindly. "Since you have left, one month has passed. For the past fifteen years Murad Tisroc has reigned."

Millie herself couldn't get past the slavery issue. What kind of barbaric land was this? Slavery was rid of a hundred years ago!

With that, the lion turned to her. "You have a purpose here too, Millicent."

She looked up sharply, not remembering the last time somebody used her full name. On second thought, it was probably when she broke her aunt's compact mirror by accident a week ago.

He chuckled before continuing. "You will aid King Edmund in this endeavor."

"But—how can I help?" she asked, wide-eyed. "I've—well—ah—never done anything even remotely related to this!"

"You will learn of your capabilities later on. Until then, my daughter, I will be watching."

Then… "My—uh—m—m—ma—my—my ap—ologies!" She finally blurted. "For before."

Aslan gravely bowed his head. "You are forgiven." He turned back to Edmund. "No one did succeed Ram, but Caspian is working swiftly to restore order to the kingdom. He has already made notable progress. Seeing this through will help bring peace to all the countries and ensure the welfare of your own."

With that he turned and simple walked away, followed by a wave of sand. After it settled, he was gone.

That clarified his presence here, Edmund thought. This would tie things up, provided it's done with minimal bloodshed. Hopefully this Haruni fellow would see his rhetoric, and if he was at all experienced in insurgence, he likely would.

Edmund took about four or five steps without hearing an additional set. Puzzled, he turned.

Millie stared at the spot Aslan had vacated some time ago, mouth open in an unflattering manner.

Sighing, he walked back to the muddled girl. "No time for tarrying," he said.

She turned to him. "King?"

"Yes."

"But you—you didn't tell me!"

"Something tells me you wouldn't have believed me."

"Of course I would've. Don't be silly."

Edmund chuckled. "Right."

Millie crossed her arms and frowned. Nobody had any business being correct all of the time. In fact, she kept waiting for him to bring up her full first name and tease her about it like everybody else did when they found out, but he didn't. It was rather diplomatic of him—very diplomatic of him, as a matter of fact. She cast him a sidelong glance.

Maybe this Edmund—er, King Edmund, apparently—wasn't so bad after all. Nobody who was related to Susan could be, and Millie had been rather rude at the chemist's… "What is this place, anyway?" she asked, turning to him. "It's beautiful… almost too true to be true."

"You haven't even seen Narnia yet."

"I thought we were i—" Confusion swept her face before it dawned on her. "Oh," she said. "The country."

"Yes. The country."

"But it's a country that's clearly part of a utopic world. None of it can be bad."

Something about Edmund's following laugh sent shivers down her spine.

Millie stopped, putting her hands on her hips and frowning. "All right, then. What bad has happened here?"

"Well, I'm not sure I should tell you in light of the fact that such stories lie in the land therein we're heading."

Oh, dear.

"Calormen has long been a land where injustice has prevailed at the hands of opportunists. Telmar was, too, until it was dissolved. Keep walking."

"When?"

"Approximately one month ago."

"Oh. What happened to it?"

"Narnia took it."

"Ah. Conquest. Imperialism isn't good, you know. Look where it got us. Yes, Napoleon had quite the success at Austerlitz, but trampling the Soviets was a big mistake. He had that coming to him. Then we tried our hand at it for a while only to lose everything and then some in the Great War. Of course many things determined the eventual downfall, not imperialism, but it didn't last, is my point."

"America had its share."

Millie whirled on him. "How did you know I was American?"

"'Gramme'" was misspelled on the list you wrote on the back of the chemist's receipt."

She paled.

"We took Telmar because they revolted against the Narnians when they were without a ruler and too weak to defend themselves." Edmund's face was placid, but his voice was cool with rage. "In our absence the Telmarines continued to oppress our subjects until they were thought to have died out and took the land after that."

Note to self… Open fat bloody trap: insert foot. Again. Millie wanted very much to be buried in a sandstorm. Maybe this still wasn't a real world with a real king, but at this point it was clear that she was going nowhere soon.

"I'm sorry," she turned away. "I shouldn't have assumed."

"No, you shouldn't have."

"Where were you when all this happened?"

"Again with the implications?" Edmund asked icily.

Millie winced. "No. Just trying to understand."

"Between the first and second times my siblings and I came to Narnia, approximately thirteen hundred years had passed."

"What?"

"It was only one year in England, but that apparently equated to over a millennium here, at least in that particular instance," he explained patiently. "Time doesn't pass equally between worlds. Obviously our reign stopped when we disappeared and went back to England, and things rapidly fell into disrepair. By the time we returned, everybody was gone, and our castle, Cair Paravel, was in ruins."

Millie listened wide-eyed to the tale of the Pevensies and their aid in Caspian's ascent to rule, how together they restored peace between the countries at odds.

"And Susan? Did she get married to Caspian?" she asked with a grin.

"That's the part of the story you were captivated by?" Edmund gave her a short look of disgust. "No. We returned shortly afterward."

"Well, Susan seemed really heartbroken," Millie said by way of excuse. "I always thought she'd spent more time with him."

"Yes. I never really understood her crush on him."

"Crush?! She loved him!"

"For the past few weeks I've had to listen to Susan drone on with the same rubbish, and that was bad enough. I'm not going through it a second time with you."

"But—"

"But nothing. Shut up."

"I won't shut up!" Millie cried. "That's very unfair."

"Indeed. I think you're rather incapable of it."

"I'm not!"

"You proved it earlier, Millie. And if not, prove me wrong now. You seem to like a challenge."

She was so affronted by this that she proceeded to give him the silent treatment, forgetting in the meanwhile that this was exactly what he wanted.

And Edmund was happy.

This place seemed to have extinguished all powers of speech for the girl as she held back a flinch, remembering the less-than-articulate manner in which she had presented herself. Millie continued to walk, thoughts swirling in her head.

Your country isn't real.

You're just a kid.

And you're as bad as Napoleon was.

All this she'd said—or implied—to a king.

Well, it couldn't be helped, she petulantly thought to herself. It wasn't as if he were a real king. After all, this wasn't a real country, or even a real world. It couldn't be… could it?

Oh! she grimaced. These cramps!

Then she looked over in alarm lest she had accidentally spoken the latter line aloud, but Edmund continued without any sign of hearing her. She suppressed a sigh of relief.

Yes, he was quite happy…for a while, at least.

Two hours of rumination later, Millie was no longer angry. "So what exactly are you king of?" The sun was beginning to set.

"Narnia."

"The country."

"Yes."

"Only Narnia."

"Yes."

"And the Tisroc is the king of Calormen, I assume? Well, ruler, rather."

"Correct."

"I think I understand now."

"Good."

"You're getting tired of my questions, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Well, I swear I'll get the hang of it soon. The hang of everything else, I mean. And once that's out of the way, you don't have to be nice anymore."

Edmund found he couldn't help laughing outright at this.

"What?" Millie blurted, trying to think of something else to say. "You agree, don't you?"

"Can we put it in writing?"

"Why, you—you're making fun of me!"

"Millie, every instance you keep your temper and refrain from acting and speaking foolishly, I shall be very nice."

"But I haven't—" and there she stopped short, for it was true. She knew it, and he knew it. "Why do you speak so formally?" she asked instead.

"Being ruler of a country. Had to learn certain things, including a new manner of speaking."

"Ah."

They fell into another comfortable silence.

It was growing cooler, and Edmund's eyes wandered out to the line where sand met sky, blurred by the ever-darkening colors. They weren't even close to the edge of the desert and would arrive there tomorrow at earliest. Haruni, he reminded himself. How many Calormenes did he have working toward this cause, and—more importantly—how many of them were considered trustworthy? He and Susan had been working on correcting some of the more pressing issues in foreign affairs, slavery included, but everything became undone when he and his siblings followed the White Stag and ended up back in their own world. It had given Calormen ample time to reassemble their strength and fortify their economic means. Slavery had spread to everything short of Narnia, Archenland, and Ettinsmoor, and even arguably to Ettinsmoor, if one considered eating other creatures as a form of slavery in the short term.

Then he turned to the largely tactless girl (who couldn't be ignored) walking a few paces ahead, going apace despite her shortness. She hadn't been at all what he expected from his memory. Besides being tactless, she was testy, foolhardy, presumptuous, loquacious, and haughty.

But at least she wasn't stupid.

"You're quiet," he noted.

Millie nodded from ahead.

Edmund sighed. "Suit yourself."

Response to Rei, MY ONLY REVIEWER SO FAR (hint hint): First of all, thank you. Yes, Millie will grow and develop as a character. Believe me, I can barely stand her at this point. (See below.) haha

General AN: Yes, we all sort of hate her right now, but at least she's a point of ridicule for me.

*points and laughs*

Some people react to being in Narnia more gracefully while others react… far less gracefully. It's pretty apparent where Millie is on that spectrum. In the meanwhile, fear not: she is holding out on all of us… including me.

*scratches head*

Anyhow, I hope you lovely people are enjoying reading this as much as I'm enjoying writing it. More characters are coming in the next chapter. And they're totally not obnoxious.