08-06-2025, 01:25 AM
She doesn’t see him for a week.
Truthfully, she doesn’t see him for the time it takes for her to fall into exhausted sleep seven times. How long is that in this place? She calls it a week because there’s nothing else to count it by. The sky churns with gray cloud without break or end, the lanterns in the Market do not seem to go out, no one sleeps but her and perhaps him. She wouldn’t know. Perhaps that too has fallen away, another small piece of his humanity discarded like a cloak.
How long has it been since she opened her eyes to this gray world, since he slaughtered those in the monastery, since she ran into the forest, since he chased her and caught her and brought her here to this, his city?
By the time she thinks that perhaps she should count, she already cannot remember. Tomorrow, she thinks. Tomorrow she will start a tally, already knowing that she will not.
This day, this today, she wakes on a bed of silk and silence and she thinks of all she does not know and she stops herself before she claws at her face. There is fresh water in a basin but no servants to have put it there, a cloth folded neatly nearby. She uses both because what else is there to do? Her hands are unblemished, her fingernails beautiful and even. She tries not to think about it.
She walks once more down the streets to the river and the Market because she has not seen him for days and there is no one to talk to and she wonders already how long it will be before she goes mad with it. If the streets have names, no one knows them. If the Market is called anything at all, no one tells her and she only calls it a market because she has to call it something. Chosen, the Dead murmur as she passes, ghost white and shining in this mockery of a place. Some of them bow, which she ignores because she does not feel as much chosen as she feels dragged.
She trails her fingers over the black, black stone of the buildings as she descends and they do not stain. She leaves her delicate shoes behind in the palace as always and her feet feel only the cool of the cobbles; her toes do not get dirty, the hem of her dress kicks up no dust. Nothing lives here, nothing grows, nothing touches anything else it seems.
She wears a king’s ransom in jewels and she would tear this dress from her bones if she could.
Truthfully, she doesn’t see him for the time it takes for her to fall into exhausted sleep seven times. How long is that in this place? She calls it a week because there’s nothing else to count it by. The sky churns with gray cloud without break or end, the lanterns in the Market do not seem to go out, no one sleeps but her and perhaps him. She wouldn’t know. Perhaps that too has fallen away, another small piece of his humanity discarded like a cloak.
How long has it been since she opened her eyes to this gray world, since he slaughtered those in the monastery, since she ran into the forest, since he chased her and caught her and brought her here to this, his city?
By the time she thinks that perhaps she should count, she already cannot remember. Tomorrow, she thinks. Tomorrow she will start a tally, already knowing that she will not.
This day, this today, she wakes on a bed of silk and silence and she thinks of all she does not know and she stops herself before she claws at her face. There is fresh water in a basin but no servants to have put it there, a cloth folded neatly nearby. She uses both because what else is there to do? Her hands are unblemished, her fingernails beautiful and even. She tries not to think about it.
She walks once more down the streets to the river and the Market because she has not seen him for days and there is no one to talk to and she wonders already how long it will be before she goes mad with it. If the streets have names, no one knows them. If the Market is called anything at all, no one tells her and she only calls it a market because she has to call it something. Chosen, the Dead murmur as she passes, ghost white and shining in this mockery of a place. Some of them bow, which she ignores because she does not feel as much chosen as she feels dragged.
She trails her fingers over the black, black stone of the buildings as she descends and they do not stain. She leaves her delicate shoes behind in the palace as always and her feet feel only the cool of the cobbles; her toes do not get dirty, the hem of her dress kicks up no dust. Nothing lives here, nothing grows, nothing touches anything else it seems.
She wears a king’s ransom in jewels and she would tear this dress from her bones if she could.
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