𝐂𝐑𝐀𝐕𝐄𝐃│✔

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝟑𝟕

Pandora

The language of flora has always been more understandable to me than my own mother tongue. Perhaps it's because I don't have to analyse each meaning behind their petals in search for the double edged sword. Or maybe because flowers don't talk down on or to me.

 On the contrary, I suppose it would be concerning if one were to ever answer to my long monologues blemished with dull self hatred and the beyond detailed contemplations of the purpose behind my existence.

The greenhouse behind our gardens has always been my escape from the outside world, and its claws that do no more good than pain me. No matter how many times I tried to make amends with it, it always find ways to hurt me. 

Proving my instinct to stray away from it righteous. Even now, the world has shown me that I don't have a place in the Realm of Mortals. At least, in here, a distance away from the Palace and its people. Surrounded by the thorns and roses and flourishing peonies. Sitting on the clay bench hidden out of sight from any intruder who may find the need to enter. The world seems to spin at slower rate, my time extended to more than simply existing.

Only an hour ago, I felt the swelling of my heart at the sight of me in front of the mirror, one that was worth the hours of preparation preceding this moment of confidence. The presence of a certain someone leaving traces of longing behind, and I would rather scrape them open, over and over again, than to forget their feel.

I would do it, I had confidently decided when his hand pulled me closer to him, I would leave my pained past behind would it mean to have more of this.

I must've forgotten, in the time lapse of one song, that I'm a child cursed by the Heavens. Joyful smiles and appeasing touches were never meant for me.

Tears flow down my cheeks like rivers descending from the Eagle Mountain at the North of Feather. Cooling down until they're no more than spikes of ice the further they fall. Until they accumulate in small puddles in the palm of my hand. 

The moon, who I've always found to have an appeasing presence, seems to laugh at me. Her brightness dimming with every blink of my blurry eyes. I've given up on wiping them with the back of my hand some time ago, seeing that it didn't do much else other than making the corner of my eyes irritated, and my eyelids puffy.

I've always hated crying.

The longer it lasts, the sadder I seem to become. Cry over one thing, and soon, every unshed tear you've kept hidden beneath layers of false laughter appear to take their turn. Perhaps it's not the crying, but the scolding that happened afterwards that made me hate it so. Mother would use the puffiness of my eyes as excuse to belittle my every flaw. Father would be even more stern during our training sessions, going as far as locking me up in the dungeons for longer periods of time. As punishment for showing weakness.

"Only newborns are meant to cry," he would preach, "every time you cry after that, is an opportunity for your opponents to spot your vulnerability. Choose, to kill or to be killed. Crying is weakness, and what happens to the weak?"

"They die," I whisper to the lonesome reassurance of the dark between the stars that set itself over me like a blanket. A chilly breeze of the midnight wind blows softy against my back exposed by the messy bun I've tied my hair in.

A warmth traces my scars, the feel of it too real to be a gush of wind. I'm about to turn around from my seated position, when the soft material of a vest falls on my shoulders.

 The dark velvet material sewn with shimmering ruby cufflinks at each sleeve, and my shoulders slum on their own accord at the recognition of the presence standing behind me. Still, he continues to trace my scars with his index pulling the material aside enough to expose my back, adding another finger when he crosses the one drawn with a rusty dagger that left behind a deep mess of a wound. He does that with every single one of them.