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For the most part, Narnia loves her royalty and her royalty loves her. But every once in a while, something happens that makes Peter long for England and its simplicity.
Such as waking one bright morning to find a rabbit burrowed under his nightclothes. It is tiny and fluffy, orangish brown, and its shaking like something's just tried to eat it. It makes Peter want to tuck it further against his chest to keep it safe and sound; it is a big brother thing, to want to protect something smaller than oneself.
"Hullo," Peter says after a few seconds. The Rabbit shivers again, softer than any fur he's ever worn, and worms its way under his chin. Peter wants to croon at it and stops himself just in time. It's not seemly, speaking to an Animal like they were a dumb beast. "Hey now, it's alright."
He carefully does not stroke its ears, because he's found that taking liberties with Rabbits is frowned upon, even if they are fuzzy babies. "What are you doing in my bed?"
The Rabbit (it surely has to be a Rabbit and not a rabbit, because how could a dumb beast have found its way into Cair Paravel?) twitches its nose against Peter's throat and makes a thin, squeaking noise. Its floppy ears drag against his collar bones as it pushes its face harder under his chin.
He really does want to scratch its ears. From what he can see, they're adorable.
"I'm sorry," Peter says politely, staring up at the ceiling, "I didn't quite get that."
The Rabbit squeaks again. Its tiny, pink nose tickles the bottom of Peter's chin when it rears up to touch its front paws on his cheeks. Peter makes eye contact with it, but it still doesn't say a word. He wonders if Animals have to learn how to talk the same as humans do and whether or not this particular baby is old enough.
Probably not.
"See here," Peter finally murmurs, "I don't know who you belong to, but it's bad manners climbing into the bed of someone you don't know."
The Rabbit gives him a dirty look, Peter's fairly certain. It snuggles at his nose and simply stares at him like he should be understanding what it's saying. Peter begins to think it might be one of the kitchen's animals, escaped and... coming to him for help? That can't be right.
"This is one of Edmund's pranks, isn't it?" he asks the rabbit, picking it up.
It's entire tiny, fuzzy, cute as a button face lights up when he says his brother's name. Peter holds it above his head and wrinkles his nose. "Edmund," he says again, to test, and the rabbit wiggles in glee and tickles his fingers with its whiskers. "Edmund?" he tries again.
The rabbit makes a squeaking sound that Peter's fairly sure is excitement.
"Lion's Mane, that'd better not be you, Edmund," he says. If his brother's hiding behind the curtain waiting to laugh at him, Peter can always blame the strange conclusion on being woken from a sound sleep with something soft and fluffy snuggled up to his belly.
Nobody jumps out of his curtains, but the tiny rabbit baby does look at him with the exact same expression Edmund used the last time Peter said something he thought was monumentally stupid.
That tears it. "Oh, Ed," Peter mutters.
The rabbit is smaller than Peter's palm. He cradles it between both hands anyway and stares at it. It stares back at him with very dark, very familiar eyes and twitches its nose as it shivers.
There's really only one person it could be.
"Bugger," Peter says with feeling. Then he gives in to the urge to rub at the tiny, floppy ears and his brother gives him another dirty look from huge, baby rabbit eyes. The ear feels velvety, even against the emerging calluses on his fingers, and he smiles down at the glower he's getting from Edmund.
"That's not in the least bit intimidating," Peter informs him dryly. He rubs his face in soft, fluffy fur and smiles against Edmund's tiny rabbit back. "And if you think this is bad, wait until Lucy sees you."
Edmund cowers against his chest.
"Did you decide to keep a pet, my King?" Orius asks as soon as Peter has managed to catch his brother, dress himself, and then catch his brother again, as Ed seems to have a certain fondness for hiding under the four poster bed.
Edmund makes a tiny, sneezing rabbit noise of irritation and kicks moodily at Peter with his back feet. "I haven't," Peter admits. "I do believe this is my brother."
In the centaur's defense, he only blinks about five times before he can force out an, "Oh?"
"Yes. You see, he has my brother's scowl," Peter states tiredly, lifting the rabbit up so that's he's nose to nose with him. Ed tilts his head to give him an absolutely filthy look out of one big, dewy dark eye and Peter nods to himself. "I'd recognize that stare anywhere."
A centaur's booming laughter is like balm to the soul.
The rabbit that savages his hand, on the other hand, is exactly like his little brother and there has never been anything better for Peter's soul than Edmund. He scratches at the lop ears on Ed's head with the hand he's not trying to chew off and Edmund stops gnawing to close his eyes in contentment.
He'll have to try that when he's human again.
"Do you believe it is malicious enchantment?" Orius asks after he's gotten himself under control. He swats at a fly on his flank with a look of disgust and stamps his hooves.
"No," Peter says. "I don't think so. All the same, I hope Aslan comes to Cair Paravel soon."
Peter's fairly certain that the rabbit is Edmund and not a practical joke. For one, he hasn't seen his brother since the night before he found a rabbit on his chest and Edmund simply isn't the type to run off without warning, not anymore. For another, the rabbit has a tendency to wander off specifically after Peter tells him to stay put.
"Edmund," Peter hisses, bending in half to look between his legs and under his throne. "Edmund, you had better not have wandered off!"
Lucy giggles. She brings her bare feet up to rest on the edge of her throne and grins at him from under her bangs. "You know Edmund," she says.
"Forever not doing as he's told," Susan adds. She doesn't lift her feet, but she does rearrange her skirts, feeling around for a rabbit hiding underfoot. "I'm clear. Are you, Luce?"
"Yes," Lucy says. "I don't think Edmund would want to hide under our skirts anyway, Susan. He might accidentally see our underthings."
"There!" Susan says suddenly. She darts from her throne in a whirl of long skirts and long hair, to pluck something from the ground right before it can skitter off their raised dais. "Really now, Edmund. Where do you think you're going?"
She makes a noise of triumph when she lifts back off the floor with a ball of tiny orange-brown fluff in her hands. Edmund kicks out with both back feet, frantically, and Peter starts frowning even as Susan brings him to her chest, quickly. The Rabbits had frightened all three children with tales of leporids breaking their backs trying to struggle away from predators.
He trusts Susan to take care of their little brother, but he's still insanely glad when she deposits the tiny rabbit in his lap before she settles back into her chair with a demure smile at the gawking guards.
"Calm down," Peter murmurs down at Edmund, gently pinning the rabbit in place with one hand on his back. He gently ruffles the floppy ears with his free hand. Edmund's breathing too quickly, but he supposes that could be because something big and fast had swooped him off the floor without warning.
Peter suspects that Edmund is, at times, more rabbit than boy.
"There," he says, when Edmund's heart settles down into a quiet rhythm under his palm. "Stop being such a silly ninny."
The look he gets out of one dark eye is positively putrid.
Sudden inspiration sparks. "Susan, can I have a ribbon?" Peter asks.
Susan's mouth twists, but she begins to unwind one from her hair as Lucy leans around her sister to look at him. "Why, Peter?"
"Shh, Lu, you'll see." He rubs his fingers through Ed's fur to get his wandering attention. "You have no idea how long I've wanted to do this, Ed," Peter tells the rabbit. He wiggles his whiskers up at Peter and then shakes his tail. From his far left, he can hear Lucy make a high-pitched noise of delight in response to it.
He takes the ribbon from Susan and lifts Edmund in one hand to slip it under his belly.
"Oh," Lucy calls in sudden comprehension, right when Susan laughs. "A leash, Peter?"
Edmund kicks at him suddenly, sharp bunny claws catching on his wrist. "Behave," Peter says firmly.
"I remember you did fashion a leash for him once before," Susan says, still laughing softly. "Do you remember? Mum was so confounded by you that day."
He remembers. Edmund had been three and toddling off at the first opportunity, constantly becoming lost in the shop, in the park, in their own home. Peter had tied a string around his wrist and attached the other to himself and he's fairly certain Dad had laughed himself to tears over it all.
"If you didn't wander off, I wouldn't have to do this," Peter says at the sulking rabbit. He knots the ribbon gently around Edmund's skinny middle, brushing the fur flat so he can't wiggle out of it.
He can't help the smile that touches the corners of his lips. "You look ridiculous," Peter says, putting the silly ball of fluff back on his lap. Edmund makes a sound of protest but quiets almost immediately when Peter passes a hand across his back.
"That's not fair, Peter," Lucy says. She swings her feet off her throne and looks like she wants to snatch Edmund out of Peter's hands. "Why do you get to hold Fluffy?"
Edmund does a full body cringe and buries his tiny, twitching face into Peter's stomach. Peter grins. "Because I don't call him Fluffy," he says lightly.
"If you're quite done," Susan says with a little sideways smile. "I do believe we have royal business to attend to."
Peter rubs one of Edmund's ears between his fingers and sighs. "I do believe we do," he says solemnly down at his brother. He scoops Edmund up by wrapping his fingers about his tiny middle and leans over to set him down below his throne. "Behave," he tells Edmund sternly.
The rabbit twitches his small pink nose at him and sits down to lick at his front paws.
"He's so cute!" Lucy squeals, sprawled out over her throne to peek under both his and Susan's chairs. She pats down her dress until she finds the pouch sewn into it and digs through it cheerfully. "Come over here, Ed, I've got a carrot for you. Somewhere."
Edmund's whiskers go flat. "I don't think he wants it, Lu," Peter says with a chortle.
"Send in the party from the Katharis Mines," Susan says primly while Lucy and Peter are still staring in fascination at Edmund's prickly little bunny face.
When Peter became king, he never gave a thought to just how boring it could be. The dwarves from Katharis arrive, both of them glaring at each other fit to kill, and it's a tense few minutes before Lucy laughs like a bell and gets them to behave out of sheer mortification.
Peter settles down to listen to their complaints.
After a bit, he notices that Susan's starting to squirm slightly in her chair. He ignores it for a few minutes, but then she leans over to whisper, "Peter!" and he can't ignore it any longer.
Peter immediately lifts his head off his fist and slants her a sideways glance. "What?"
"Where's Edmund?"
"He's right..." Peter trails off. The ribbon is still tied to the arm of his throne, but there's not fluffy orange rabbit attached to the other end. He discreetly leans to the side in an attempt to spot an orange tail or a lop ear, but his brother's simply not there any longer.
Lucy stifles a giggle behind her hand. Susan's mouth curves into a small, subtle smile, hardly noticeable at all. Peter reaches up to press his fingers into his temple and the dwarf droning on about mining rights stutters to a stop.
"My lord?" he asks tentatively. "Is there something amiss?"
"My apologies," Peter says. He waves his hand grandly at the dwarf and flicks his gaze across the room, trying to find a twitching bunny tail. "But I have to find my brother. Please, continue without me."
Then he abandons dignity and slides to the floor to hiss, "Edmund, you little rotter, come back here."
Of all the things Edmund as a rabbit is suddenly terrified of (this is up to and including: the kitchens, fire of any sort, Lucy smiling at him, Peter doing anything in a way that could even remotely be described as quickly, sleeping out in the open, and any and all carnivores in their Court), Aslan is not one of them.
Peter's glad. He wouldn't want to chase his brother down. Again.
"Well met, young one," Aslan says, crouching on the ground. He touches His giant nose to Edmund's tiny one and gives him a big, friendly lick once that's over. His eyes twinkle. "You have changed much from last I saw you."
"We were kind of hoping you could, ah, change him back," Peter says, because Lucy's too busy running her hands through Aslan's mane with a blissful look on her face and Susan's crouched down beside Edmund, holding the custom fitted leash.
Aslan turns to smile at him. "So shall it be," He says and suddenly Edmund is on all fours on the ground, staring up at Aslan with a bemused look on his face.
"That was rather strange," his brother says, the first time he says anything in two months. He leans back on his heels and looks up at Peter with his dark, dark eyes and Peter swears that his nose twitches. It makes him smile, shaking his head, and he drops a hand onto Edmund's hair.
It's not as soft as the rabbit fur, but he scratches lightly at it anyway.