An Idyllic Dystopia

The Prince Who Was Afraid Of Phantoms

The princess could feel a painful heat rapidly spread across her chest as the clock struck midnight and her balcony doors creaked open, ever so slowly. She hurried to him, her soft curls escaping from underneath her straw hat, clutching the golden hilt of her sword with one hand and the strap of her bag with another. She paused at the door, and slightly inclined herself to look at the shadow outside. It was him.

With a sigh of relief, she took one last look at her room, and edged open the doors enough for her to fit through. She knelt down on her balcony floor and rummaged through her bag for her arrows. She pulled one out, and looked up to find him tying another rope to the balustrade.

"What are you doing? I don't need a rope," she whispered to him, brandishing her arrow.

He turned to look back at her, his eyes radiating the only light through which he could be seen in the moonless night, and confusion.

"How else are you going to get down?"

She pulled out the second arrow and got up, placing her bag on her shoulder and gently closing the doors.

"Just get down safely, and make sure the guard doesn't find you. The one on this end," she pointed to the other end of the balustrade, where his rope had been tied, "is known to shoot the heart of anything he takes aim at."

He stared at her.

She sighed.

"Quick, climb down, and I'll untie the rope and throw it to you once you've reached the ground."

"But how will you come-"

"Move it," she hissed.

The princess watched as the man slid down the rope and almost lost his balance as he attempted to set foot on the ground. She sighed a fourth time that night as she untied his rope. He was staying close to the shadows, but scurried over to get the rope and rushed back.

Good for him, she thought, as she traced the wall of the castle to find the hollow spaces between the bricks. She thrust an arrow into one, and did the same with the second a few spaces beneath the first. She heaved herself, and with great balance, she swayed from the first arrow to the second. Having gained confidence in her abilities, she latched herself firmly, pulled out the first arrow, and thrust it into a lower space. She continued moving downwards at a steady pace, and felt her lips curve into a smile, in tune with the cool night breeze. She sensed the spaces getting smaller, and assumed that the ground was close. She knew she had reached the bottom when she heard a low, surprised gasp, and lightly launched herself onto the soft grass. She hauled the arrows out from the gaps and stuffed them into her bag.

"We need to hurry," she said to him. "If we don't want to be caught."

"The night couldn't be any more unfavourable, and I don't know the way."

She scoffed. "Please, I was hoping there wouldn't be light. I grew up in this castle. Of course I know the way."

"I thought princesses were never allowed into the sight of even the majority of the guards, let alone the commoners?"

"I wouldn't have climbed down this wall if I was a princess who listened. Let's go."

The man hurried to follow the princess as she took off silently into the distance.

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Queen Annelisse of Oryn couldn't take her eyes off of her crown, dazzling in the sun's rays. Despite having owned it for years, she realised that she had never once spared a moment to its acknowledgement. She tried to fill the hollowness she had been harbouring in her heart since that dawn with the luminescence the gold seemed to possess.