M E S S A L I N A . //
Messalina had known friendship but once in her life, and how she wished she had never tasted the sweetness of that forbidden apple. She recalled the memory with an aching sense of bitterness. It had been her second year in the castle. Despite the barbs she had thrown at him in her initial uncertainty, a boy with a pelt of deepest onyx had been unwavering in his determination to make this girl of hollow porcelain smile in earnest. He had sought her out where he could, tiptoeing into the library where she studied and slipping handmade puppets over her small hands. They hid under the great oak table, lost to a world of their creation as he indulged her with his fantastical tales. She called him Wren—he called her Messa.
Their friendship ended before the last patches of snow had melted from the frozen earth. When Mother found the worn puppet in Messalina’s wardrobe, she had regarded the stuttering girl with narrowed eyes as she set the puppet gently on top of her bed. What a cute little toy you have here. Be sure to store him away safely, sweetheart. The next day, she waited for Wren to come to their special spot, to delight her as he always did with his stories and his dolls. He did not come. She waited a week. He never came. Not knowing what else to do, she had whispered a silent wish to the North Star like the children in Wren’s tales. Perched precariously by the window ledge, alabaster hair leached of all color by the moon’s light, she had pleaded for an end to her loneliness, for the ache in her chest to cease. She remembered the saline taste of her tears as they fell silently across her cheeks and darkened the neckline of her nightgown. They came without her permission, and she wiped at them in distress as she willed for them to stop. Tears were for the weak, and Messalina hated weakness, could not succumb to it for she would certainly lose even Mother if she did. Mother had warned her about the deception of others, and she’d been right—she always was. As she realized the extent of her idiocy, she fled from the window to the depths of her cold, vast bed in shame.
Yet the star had heard her wishes. The pain ebbed away into nothingness as solitude became her most trusted companion. She studied faithfully and practiced diligently; she was delightfully pleasant to the ones whose titles dripped from Mother’s lips like honey, and coldly indifferent to all others. The whispers and stares that trailed her in every hall became nothing more than dull static, tedious to even address. That was how she had existed before she’d been forced to construct a new life out of ashes in the court of Dawn, the court of Beginnings.
Under the blood-red sky and biting wind, Messalina steadied her breath as her eyes flitted over the form of the stranger that had appeared so suddenly in front of her. She felt dwarfed by his looming stature, made larger still by the pair of massive, featherless wings that rested upon his shoulders. The serpent’s skin that patterned his flesh gleamed dully in the fading light, and her eyes rested for a fraction too long on his earless head, as smooth and reptilian as the rest of him. He could crush her fragile frame with a flick of his wings; yet she felt no hostility from him, no reason to treat him any differently than she would anyone else. You have traveled far, with only a song and a rose. His voice echoed towards her, devoid of any inflection of tone or mood. She tilted her head as she processed his words, her mind picking apart every syllable as she tried in vain to read him as she read the men she’d been forced to entertain. Without clear analysis, it was difficult for her to craft an ideal response, one that could sway the conversation towards her control.
His blank eyes gave nothing away, however. How frustrating.
@Lothaire
notes: it's an angsty messa :/
