"UM?????"

"Mn," said John, because "mn" is what John said in response to all unexpected events. 

"WHY ARE YOU TEN? WHY AM I EIGHT?"

"I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation," says Queen Brenda, who is now just regular Brenda, twelve years old and with rather too many limbs for her height.

"Of course there's a reasonable explanation! That's what it means for there to be an explanation!"

Why is she so small. Diana has always been a small person, but the difference between being eight and being thirty-two is very noticeable on the height front. Both Arthur and the wardrobe tower over her. 

"We're expected at court. There are cases I'm supposed to hear. We still haven't come to any conclusion about the tariff situation with Calormen--"

The expression that looks grave and serious, yet kind and empathetic, on a graying man closer to forty than thirty looks bizarrely out of place on an acne-ridden thirteen-year-old. 

John enters the wardrobe again and knocks on the back. "Wood."

"Fuck." (She's going to have to stop swearing. Eight-year-olds don't know as many swears as Diana knows.) "Aslan."

"He could have something good in mind for us?" Brenda says uncertainly. "We shouldn't assume he's always an idiot."

"He left an eight-year-old in charge of the government of a country."

Arthur looks genuinely panicked, not Diana-can-tell-he's-panicked-but-he-has-a-gentle-kind-smile-to-everyone-else panicked, actual fear showing on his face. "We left Mirza as our heir, but he's a Bear. Everyone knows the queens and kings of Narnia are supposed to be humans. He has no legitimacy. It's going to be a civil war. --Fuck, I knew I should have married a woman and produced a legitimate heir, but there were still four of us, I always thought there would be time--"

"We all did, Arthur, you can't blame yourself."

"I am the High King, everything that happens is my responsibility."

Brenda hugs him. "You like men, if Diana or I had married our husband would have thought he had more power than us in our own country, and John is John. It's an understandable mistake to have made."

"God. Calormen is going to invade, and they'll have a right to by Narnian law-- why would Aslan have done that, if Calormen rules they're going to ban his worship and permit only the worship of Tash--"

"--I have another problem, guys."

"Oh?"

"--How sure are we that we didn't just disappear for fourteen years."

Arthur does a lot better with a Project to hand. "Well, we can figure that out quickly enough, and that'll inform our next decisions," he says, as if making a battle plan. "John, Diana, Brenda, come with me."

"The hallway looks basically as we left it," Diana says, "you'd expect them to redecorate in fourteen years..."

And they come across one of the servants, whom Diana vaguely recognizes although all of her memories from before Narnia are quite blurry. 

"Children?"

"Yes," says Arthur, "we were wondering whether it was time for tea."

"In an hour, dear, are you already hungry?"

"We're soooo hungry," says Diana, trying to act like her memory of an eight-year-old even though she hasn't interacted with one since she was eight herself. 

"Well, don't spoil your suppers, or you won't have room for the nice meal Cook is making."