@Ajjie: There was a lake less than an hour's drive from where we lived in the States (in the Midwest! 😆 ), so sometimes whole flocks of gulls would land in a neighbor's field and talk to each other. But they always sounded different at the lake itself, and even more different at the ocean (when I finally saw it).

found a good way to end off. I may have shared these somewhere on the site before, but they seem appropriate. Two pictures of Cair Paravel.

I refered previously to when we read LWW and MN as set books in Grade 4. After finishing LWW, our teacher had us draw Cair Paravel in art class. So here's my picture that I drew 20 (gasp?) years ago.

The second picture was not drawn by me. It was a present from my high school crush. (I feel a bit weird that I still have it). But it's special because I wasn't actually a Narniac when he drew it. He had just read the series I think this is what encouraged me to go back and revisit Narnia (and actually read all the books for the first time). Also it's Cair Paravel. And has a hedgehog. So I like it.

Ajji --love the colors in your Cair Paravel, and thanks for sharing the other version too that your friend gave you!

Last month I got to take a castle cruise down the Rhine in Germany and this castle makes me think of Cair Paravel...

thinking Digory also had brown hair. And then, boom, turns out all three of them are blonde?!)

Digory blonde?! what no. I need a page number. I don't believe it. I know about Lucy and Caspian having golden hair, but Digory?

Also I love the drawings of Cair and Benisse's Castle pic. (I don't think it's weird at all to still have the gifted drawing, Aj. Even if the crush is long in the past it's still a wonderful gift from a friend.)

@Ariel: Digory was blonde??????????? 😮

Digory blonde?! what no. I need a page number.

Page 168 of my edition of LB (also known as nearly-the-end-of-chapter-twelve): "[Peter] brought [Tirian] next to a man whose golden beard flowed over his breast and whose face was full of wisdom. 'And this,' he said, 'is the Lord Digory who was with [Lady Polly] on that day."
I mean, technically, he could have had a beard of a different colour, 'cause that can happen, but I've not seen it happen myself.

@Ajjie and hobbit: Oh, point about the Witch using her knife. Peter does have the advantage of the much longer blade, even though she's physically stronger. Perhaps the movie has tainted my mental images of their fight, since they gave Jadis swords to work with.
@hobbit: Ahhhh, I like your reason for telling the Four to not talk too much of it. That makes sense.
@Ajjie: I know Kristi or Petra did a character connection Susan and Lucy / Martha and Mary.
@Benisse: Wow, that's a great picture!

@Ariel (about Digory's hair color): ............... 😯 You are completely right. I'd forgotten about that. What. On. Earth. Over a decade of me imagining him as brown-haired needs to be undone now. Come on, Difory. First Faramir, now you??

Here's the list I found. I haven't checked or edited anything so there may be mistakes:

On the beard-colour thing. I know quite a few men with brown hair and red (or redder) beards. There seems to be something that makes the redness show through more in the beards. Never met a man with a golden beard and different coloured hair, though.

Digory: Golden (beard)/White, TLB Ch. 12; LWW Ch. 1
Uncle Andrew: Grey, MN Ch. 1
Lucy: Golden/Fair, LWW Ch. 17; TLB Ch. 4
Susan: Black, LWW Ch. 17 (Shown as light in some pics: eg HHB, pp. 83)
Tumnus: Curly hair, red skin, HHB Ch. 4
Shasta: Fair, HHB Ch. 14
Caspian: Golden, VDT Ch. 1
Trumpkin: Red like a fox, PC Ch. 5
Nikabrik: Black hair & beard, PC Ch. 5
Reep: very dark, almost black, VDT Ch. 1
R.Daughter: Yellow, VDT Ch. 13
Puddleglum: Greeny Grey, SC Ch. 5
Prunaprismia: Red, PC Ch. 4.
Dr. Cornelius Silvery beard, balding in pic PC Ch. 4
Rillian: Fair (my ref. For this is wrong – it says HHB! He must have been blond cause both his parents were and the blond gene is recessive)
Aravis: Dark implied (by “fair barbarians of the North”), HHB Ch. 1
Roonwit: Golden beard, chestnut flanks, TLB Ch. 2
Edmund: In HHB he is described as the “leader of the fair-haired men”, HHB Ch. 4

gasp.

Well I suppose I must concede.

Of course I imagined him as golden haired in that scene, but I suppose I subconsciously concluded that it was just something that happened to him when he went to Aslan's country. I might continue to hold that as a personal head canon.

It's so easy to disconnect young Digory from the professor. I haven't given much thought to his life in between. I wonder when he started growing a beard. I wonder why he didn't marry Polly.

I noticed that no one is brown haired in that list (except Roonwit's chestnut flanks). Either Lewis didn't like brown haired characters or thought their hair colour didn't need describing. Although I'm also curious as to whether "fair" always means "blond" as I imagined it or if it can mean light brown (terms liske these are always relative and I imagine can change over time and from place to place). I think I'm going to move the hair colour discussions over to their own thread, but feel free to keep discussing LWW stuff in this thread or sharing any late reflections.

@Swan. I'm more curious as to why Digory didn't marry at all. While it would be sweet if he had married Polly, life doesn't always work out like that so I'm kinda glad they didn't. (Like I didn't end up marrying the guy who drew me the Cair Paravel picture). We know from TLB they did keep contact so I guess that part makes it more curious, especially since there's no reference to her being married either, but I still like the realism of it.

Today I was listening to the end of LWW on CD and noticed something I had missed all these years. In Aslan's restoring the stone statues to life, there was a kangaroo that was de-petrified! Somehow I had never thought about talking joeys in Narnia -- ! (It's in the part when everyone is scouring the Witch's castle for statues, before Tumnus is found.)
So here's a little rhyme I made to celebrate this discovery:

That poem fits so well, Benisse!

I love that!! 😮