Really nice, 'suela! I left a comment for you on AO3.

Thanks, sail! I'm still a bit dissatisfied with it, but it pretty much did what I wanted it to.

Out of curiosity, how are you dissatisfied with it? Nothing jumped out at me as I was reading it (I've been reccing it to some friends, btw).

Thank you, Anne!

how are you dissatisfied with it?

I think the setup with the sacred lion is too obvious. I think the prose is a bit clunky and boringly structured--too much subject-verb-object. (It's something I really need to work on.) I think the whole thing could have been built more gradually. I think Lucy gets sidelined and Susan needed more to do at the beginning, although she shines at the end. I'm not sure I got across the difference in the way Aslan's sacrifice worked--that this is a Narnia in which the willing sacrifice is the greatest source of power. Oh, and I didn't really know how to end it, which is why you get the switchover to the omniscient POV there for the funeral scene.

That said, I also didn't really want to spend 10 or 15,000 words on a story that ends on such a downer. Some stories just have to be told and not dithered over. If I hadn't posted it, it probably would have sat on my hard drive for a year.

Consuela, I read it and liked it. But I can see what you mean about certain parts of the fandom thinking it wronger than a wrong thing. I'm fairly sure there was a time in my life when I would have thought that myself (clinging as I was to the religion I was raised, not yet seeing something else in the old saw "All truth is God's truth"). But now I think what you have written is good, a universe or two over from what Lewis wrote.

Oh, thank you Windsparrow, that's very kind of you. And yes, it's definitely not mean to be Lewis's universe.

Thank you for sharing that, Consuela. The setup with the sacred lion didn't come across as too obvious. When introduced, it came across as just one more thing that was going wrong for them.

Some stories just have to be told and not dithered over.

Yes. This is why I have about a dozen what-should-be-short stories languishing on my hard drive, never to see the light of screen.

When introduced, it came across as just one more thing that was going wrong for them.

Oh, that's good to know. Thanks, Anne!

When introduced, it came across as just one more thing that was going wrong for them.

I agree. It wasn't until there was more information about the history of Narnia - the talk of the king going to meet his lion - that I thought back to it and started to wonder if it was an outright sacrifice that was required, or if it was a Challenge that might have more than one possible satisfactory outcome. It was not until Edmond figured out what Peter was doing that I knew for sure he would not be coming back. The True Death bit was unexpected and heartbreaking.

WindSparrow summed it up nicely, that's exactly the way it came across. Heartbreaking, but necessary.