Sigh. Hug.

"Okay, it's Christmas, let's go do something that's not at all depressing."

"Snowball fight," James agrees enthusiastically.

There is a royal snowball fight. It's adorable.

It is adorable.

There's ice skating, later, although it takes a couple twisted ankles before the cobbler making the skates really has them down (thank goodness for Isabella's cordial) and there's hot beverages by frosty windows and there is sledding and there are songs in praise of Aslan sung through cold clear air. There is, in short, winter.

There's also Winter. James keeps visiting him and insinuating that she might like to join the picnic, next year; Isabella feels no such urgency and doesn't want to add noise to whatever data James hopes to collect from the exercise, so she makes no plans to go, busying herself instead with the emancipation of rebellious centaur foals and safety precautions in certain hunting grounds for speaking instances of prey species and the small health crisis caused by the discovery that the cornucopia can do cotton candy. Isabella practices harp and dances in the air on her air-walking shoes and when her old calligraphy teacher dies she takes over the class, showing small dryads and dwarves how to form pretty letters and decorate them.

The magic-detecting bracelets see use; Narnia proper is a bit picked clean but there are still a few things hiding in out of the way places where the Witch's followers couldn't dig them up, and more on the outlying islands. It is tremendous fun figuring out what they all do, and where they will best be put to use - most found objects, not being so customized for royal use as Christmas presents, find themselves turning the wells of small towns raspberry-scented or showing the stars on cloudy nights to centaur astronomers or rocking puppies to sleep or giving rides through the air to miscellaneous rodents. One or two objects seem to have no benign purpose at all, and after careful study they are destroyed.

Both monarchs are occupied with making sure the maps they have are better distributed, for the ease of the creatures who have reason to move about Narnia, or would if it were easier. Maps are alas not terribly responsive to up-to-the-minute weather conditions and some knights have to be deployed to rescue a party of tourist rabbits from a flooded bit of valley. Someone wants royal sponsorship for his book of the history of the Golden Age, beginning with the White Witch's defeat and going on from there, and he gets it. The rulers in question are epithized in this book as King James the Wise and Queen Isabella the Clever, which amuses the named parties very much. "The Golden Age" is published in time for copies to be sold in a little booth on Queensday, and a second volume is to be expected after a few more years have gone by and some more history has occurred.

Autumn concludes and its bright colors shrivel up and blow away.

And then there is -

Winter, again. Ever. Always.

He accepts the offer of another book after the first, and another, and another. He says that he does not mind if James joins his picnic. He gets better at concealing his despair, but never good enough to actually succeed, at least not in hiding it from the king. He does not ever quite get into a bad enough mood to be cruel to her, but there are a few times when she shows up and he refuses to speak at all.

It's surprisingly easy to just... not make time to go see him.

But the fact that his Christmas present was a picnic with Father Christmas is, James feels, a pretty big hint. She tries to stop by the dungeon at least once a month.

Christmas approaches.

James returns from the picnic well past midnight, carrying an unopened parcel. She flops into bed and falls asleep immediately.

Kisses.

And back to their monarching. Issuing proclamations and cutting ribbons to open bakeries and consulting on the second volume of The Golden Age and making proud, delighted speeches to their subjects on holidays and feasting and mediating and dancing and exploring and coordinating and rejoicing and enforcing and mentoring.

Years go by; Isabella doesn't picnic with Winter after all, although she occasionally considers it and occasionally visits him during the year, a little less often than her spouse does. Presents accumulate and are put to efficient use. Staff leave to care for aging relatives or start families or open businesses and have to be replaced; there are always guests to entertain, crafts and stories and skills to learn, food to taste, beautiful countryside to take photographs of - they've been to see most of the country in broad strokes but there's always some waterfall or glen or plateau or copse that has escaped them to go see the next time they go traveling. Always new subjects to meet - there are adults, of some species, who have never known unending giftless winter, who have always when saying the word 'Queen' meant Isabella and followed with 'and King', who have never gone to bed hungry or cold or afraid.

When the Queen and King, clever and wise, are solidly in their mid-twenties, it's maybe about time to address the question of heirs. (And of course the part-and-parcel question of, well, children - Isabella sighs when someone gives her a baby dwarf to hold, introduces her to a leggy centaur foal -) A question about it is in Isabella's notebook with a handful of others for the coming Christmas. Discreet researchers have been put to the question. No results yet.

For unrelated reasons they're visiting Tumnus in his old cottage, which he still lives in when he's on vacation from his work as their royal clerk. They're having tea, and little sausages, and toast with a fishy spread on them, and a plate of cheeses, and vegetable soup that makes the air smell like rosemary. It's terribly cozy.

They're just about to say their goodbyes and go home to the summer palace when Tumnus's cousin-in-law knocks and asks if Tumnus has - beg your pardons, your majesties - seen her grandchild lately? It's only the boy's gone missing. Nobody can find him anywhere.

This is the sort of thing one sets Knights to, and the nearest Knights are the monarchs themselves, and they don't have to be home before dark with Isabella's scepter. They mount up their horses and go looking, calling the little faun's name.

They give the lamp post a good, cautious berth, as soon as it's in sight swinging wide of it -

- and it doesn't help -