A S P A R A
I woke before sunrise, feeling sick.
The night before, the Last Night, in our room I was weaving prayers (although, they were fashioned more like demands) into my sister’s hair. I wish I were generous enough to have prayed for victory and freedom and justice, but I did not. Mostly I just prayed come back to me.
I fell asleep with that singular thought on repeat. Come back to me. Come back to me. Come back to me.
I woke before sunrise, feeling sick, and the rest of the day passed in a haze. Like grease had been smeared over the glass of my eyes. There was no focus, no clarity, no sense of certainty-- just a blur at the edges of my vision. A watercolor sickness. I remember, to my shame, just wanting the goodbyes to be over with. Just wanting them to set sail already and be done with it already.
In many ways I already treated them as gone. I tried not to, but I couldn’t help it. In the days before they set sail, every precious moment with my sister had been tainted by the dread of her imminent departure. In mother’s stories I didn’t hear the words; I just felt the weight of them, hitting me like stones. And father’s company-- reassuringly calm, quiet, easy-- only reminded me of how unbalanced everything would be without him.
There was a huge crowd gathered at the docks. I’d wager the entire court was there, loud and tense and packed together like a huge and particularly cumbersome group of fish. Furfur and I were leery of crowds, the heat and smell and sound of them, and for a few minutes I stood at the back, blinking the sweat from my eyes, debating how much my mother would care if I didn’t see her off personally. It was all for show, anyway.
Just as I was thinking about that, about the show of it all, magic washed over the court like a wave. Buildings and roads turned to stone and metal with a sound not unlike a sigh. The crowd rippled with oohs and ahhs. I wanted to scream at how easy it was for her to just change everything. And then, I wanted to scream at how easy it was for all of them to leave me. To leave Novus, where my roots ran deep, deep, deep.
I wanted to turn away, but I noticed how a crack of violet unfolded at my feet. Smooth amethyst, running the length of the earth from me to her. A beckoning, a message, and I folded to it without thinking it over too much. She was my mother, and I loved her, and I might never see her again.
Small as I was, it was easy to slip through the cracks between people. Furfur padded at my heels, quiet but imposing. Shouts erupted around me and the crowd grew boisterous. “Queen Antiope” rang in the air like church bells. Reverent; In Queen We Trust. Celebratory. The need to scream grew and grew.
“Mom.” I slipped free from the hot, writhing sea and then it was just the two of us. In my memory it was silent. I know it wasn’t but that’s just how I remember it: me and her and nothing else, not even the beating of my heart. I lowered my horn and pressed its spirals against her own and I had nothing to say. No, I had too many things to say. And like I fool I didn’t say any of the things I should have. Not I love you or I’m sorry or I changed me mind, take me with you, don’t leave me.
In the end I said: “Bring them home safe.”
It was vaguely threatening, although we both knew that I could not back up those fighting words. Because whatever happened in that distant land, I would not be there.
"I--" As soon as I started to speak the crowd was among us, and then between us, all those farewells and congratulations and thank yous and I couldn't even finish whatever it was I meant to say, because I guess that's just the kind of person I am; easily swept away. Like dust on the floor.
Maybe it was better that way.
@Isra
