GIRL WITH AN ACCENT OF BLOOD
“Queen Marisol, I would like to apologize for interrupting your meeting earlier.” The words burn on her tongue -- humility had never come easily to her -- but her face is a mask lacking any hint of expression, angled so that she might be able to better see the winged mare from her good eye. “Commander Vespir, at your service.” She cannot bear to say ‘former’ just yet, not when she has lost so much already in the span of hours -- except that it hasn’t been just hours, has it? It has been sixty years of time robbed from her, sixty years of everyone she has ever known continuing to live and eventually dying while she had laid asleep in the swamp, sixty years of the Ager rotting away and forgotten.
Sixty years while the Ilati had faded away into obscurity, sixty years since her mother had been informed her daughter had disappeared and had died not knowing what had become of her, hidden away in the swamp they had called home where even the Ilati dared not tread.
Sixty years of grief in the span of a few hours, weighing upon her slender shoulders until she felt like she could drown beneath it.
Cleopatra had been gentle, at least as gentle as Cleo ever could be, but… there was no softening the blow, no way to escape the truth or hide it beneath pleasantries. She had slept while everyone around her had struggled and died, had failed in her mission to find Prudence and restore the Ager.
Just the knowledge of her failure burned.
Vespera, what will become of me now?
Sixty years while the Ilati had faded away into obscurity, sixty years since her mother had been informed her daughter had disappeared and had died not knowing what had become of her, hidden away in the swamp they had called home where even the Ilati dared not tread.
Sixty years of grief in the span of a few hours, weighing upon her slender shoulders until she felt like she could drown beneath it.
Cleopatra had been gentle, at least as gentle as Cleo ever could be, but… there was no softening the blow, no way to escape the truth or hide it beneath pleasantries. She had slept while everyone around her had struggled and died, had failed in her mission to find Prudence and restore the Ager.
Just the knowledge of her failure burned.
Vespera, what will become of me now?
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