Princess Pariah

If you search, my sweet, my mother, you will find none but me. That mysterious force which haunted my heart in dreams had come to me again. You are strong, you are pure, they will see. Stone walls surround me, echoes from forgotten days when the palace was alight. They do not know, but they will remember.

I sit on my throne overlooking a knelt peasant at the foot of the small staircase. His lips were moving but his words were garbled with static. Two guards stood at the far end of the room, flanking either side of the great door.

My head turned to the right without my command and would not succumb to resistance. Whatever this may have been it seemed more a memory than a dream. Then I noticed to what I looked, an adolescent colt seated on a large, velvet pillow. He looked back into me with his attentive silver eyes, and though I strained myself I could not hear the sounds his lips would make, hearing an incessant screech instead.

At those words the peasant smiled amply, bowed to us, his judges, and backed slowly away. I raised my hoof to submit my royal agreement and dismiss the meeting as our humble servant withdrew out the door. Guards followed after him, I suspect to carry out my verdict, and closed the gates behind them. I turned again to my young advisor and placed my hoof upon his head in approval causing his smile to glow more radiant.

Flash out and in like the transition of a spark in the darkness. Light gives way to a new scene of memory. The young colt, older now but still young enough, comes to me in great earnest. I reminisce about times long past; the panorama plays in my mind, both in memory and reality, of our meeting. Here we now stand in the light of the moon again, but this time he bears news for me. Headstrong and honest his message weighs on my heart. My colt has become my soldier, signing himself away to the harsher districts of the night.

It was early then, the rising of the rebellion, but not unheard of. Word had come to me of patrols not returned and I had dismissed a few guards in disgrace. Now my restless soldier would brave the darkest corridors in search of these insurgents, to protect me, he says. I need not truly hear his muffled remark for this news was carved into my essence on this night. Instead I remembered, as my lips unconsciously move, what we had said.

“Are you sure?” I would ask.

“Yes, mother,” he would reply. But what a double edged sword that word had become, my dearly loved leaving me to face forces unknown in my name. How hard this was to swallow.

He did not dance in the light as I would have liked, or show me one last feat of innocence before trudging off to find his purpose. Without another word he bowed to me, something I had never asked nor expected of him. He backed away as all the others had, humbly and honorably before his princess, and disappeared in the shadows of my moon.

From the depths of the darkness peered a pair of orbs so cold they caused my very being to shiver, their blue was paler than the moon surface and pupils only slits. We know what darkness does to virtue. We know how fear shapes a soul.

The light of the eyes grew and enveloped me, dropping me down on a cold lunar surface. A great fire blazed before me, illuminating the scene so fresh in my mind. My misguided Captain backing away from me into the shade, offering me up as tribute to the guards gathered all around. Even now I could only stare on in longing as my last strand of sanity departs.

No one love us, my dear mother, none but us. In the crowd of eyes I made out those same shimmering slits. Make them see what we have become. Make them believe in us again.