Revolting Rose

Chapter 14/Part 3 - The Grand Duchess

Zaech heard Skarra cooing his name, trying to rouse him from his pillow-lined pit of misery. He answered it with a groan and pulled his pillow over his ears.

After the abysmal first banquet of the season, he had barely bothered to leave his bed, but as ever, Skarra insisted he hear regular reports on the festivities. Each passing night only came with greater disappointment. The Empress of his Heart was still nowhere to be found. The month had barely fizzled along with the Lord running the events, and many of the Ladies, he was told, had resorted to hosting gatherings of their own instead.

"Leave me here to die. I can't live without her," Zaech murmured despairingly into his face-cushion.

"You're going to have to live for a little longer, your mother is here," the lump of a bird grunted.

Zaech lifted his head to look at Skarra, but he did not seem even the slightest bit guilty for having brought such terrible news. Then again, his face rarely showed any traces of emotion at all. It was like a solid block of bronze with some dull, grey eyes poking through it.

"Why has everything suddenly turned against me? I have lived a pure and virtuous life. I don't deserve this cruel punishment." Zaech buried his face deeper in his nest of cushions, but still Skarra loomed over him like a feathery storm cloud. "You're not leaving until I go to her, are you?"

"She insists that you see her right now, Prince," Skarra said with no indication of letting up.

Accepting his fate, Zaech slid from his bed and searched through his clothingcup for an outfit to change into, on the off chance that his blue-eyed beauty had returned.

"You don't need to find something nice to wear. The Tyvern..." Skarra coughed and tried again, "...The Empress of your Heart... has not shown herself, and Ordena still won't look at you, Prince."

"Then I'll go in my sleeping clothes, and once it's dealt with, I'm coming straight back here to wallow in self-pity some more."

Zaech groaned with frustration. His talons felt like lead as he dragged himself through the unnecessarily complicated palace.

"You did try to get me out of this, didn't you?"

"Of course, Prince. I tried to avoid her, but she found me," Skarra replied.

He brought Zaech to the palace's largest greeting-shroom. Despite its size, there was only a single piskiestool growing behind a large cluster of tablecups. An Amphelian screen had been placed off to the side with a perching post behind it.

"Sit over there," Ordena screeched, as if Zaech could not have guessed the perch was for him.

Perches were so uncomfortable. They gave no backside support at all.

"You should have found me a nestbox to sit in," he grumbled to Skarra as he tried to sit on the narrow bar. Unlike other Amphoerix, he refused to hold it in his talons. It was unseemly to sit that way.

While Zaech was struggling to get comfortable, his divine mother was filing her finger claws while a pair of Amphelian maids preened her golden wings. No amount of grooming could make the leathery old harpy pleasant on the eye. She had the posture, the awkwardly long, drooping neck and bald head of a vulture.

Thankfully Zaech had taken after his late father in nature, talent, song, and appearance. In everything, really, except for sharing the golden talons, wings and tail of his mother, which on her was gaudy, but mixed with his other chocolate plumage was glorious.

"Now come here, pigeon," his mother said, beckoning Skarra to her. He did not budge until Zaech gave a shrug of indifference.

"What do you want from me, Mother Dearest?" Zaech sung. "I was busy suffering."