Quoted By:
Witch queen. Five hundred years of peace. Absolute power, rule over a country, a land without ‘No more’. She sank, deeper into the rainbow, deeper into the bubbles. Another popped. Another memory.
A funeral. Her father laid to rest at last. She was nineteen. A simple ceremony, one of many that week, another village reduced to rubble. She had left for the capital that night, travelling for weeks. Where else? Where else could a person finally be safe, be settled? Her mother had passed months ago, throwing herself with a scream at roadside bandits. There was nothing left.
The capital, a city of poverty, of riches, of contradictions. Her father’s quiet bitterness, her mother’s smoldering rage, all came into focus. Knights in armor paraded in the streets, the king held feasts, the outer provinces burned. She cleaned stables, mended clothes, cooked, served beer, whatever it took to scrape a few coins together, to survive a few more nights.
And every night anger burned. Of a city in celebration while her family moldered in graves. Of a king spouting lies of glorious victories in places she had fled. And so instead of food she bought a book, a collection of papers held together by twine really. A book of promises and dreams, of a witch in flight raining death down on a city of fools.
The seller was caught a few days later of course, and a hot knife in the right places does wonders for the memory. And when she had returned for another book they had snapped shut around her, a sword at her throat that had never once been lifted to defend her family.
Mel woke up and stared at the embers of the fire, the twisting mess of memories rolling in her head. A deep breath in, a long breath out. It was time to get to work.
Still working on the next part, but wanted to something out today.
