Aslan pads over to her, each massive paw leaving dimpled indentations in the grass. "Your fears have haunted you, child," he tells her, and nuzzles gently at her face with his soft nose. "Come, let me breathe on you. Forget them."

A delicious scent lifts from his mane, from his breath, warm and life-giving and impossible. His breath puffs gently over her, before he lowers his head and licks at her hands, scratched from her panicked flight through the woods the morning before. "The time of nightmares is over now. You have done well, all of you."