Winter Wildflowers

Chapter 31

Day 206

It was the end.
The rioting outside of the palace, the screaming, the anger, the injustice. It was disgusting. Stomach churning. A horrible scene that was closely followed by the sounds of knights drawing their swords. The Kingdom was in shambles, from corner to corner of the city, in every crevice and crack laid fear and dissention. The higher ups, as Ofelia had predicted, had cracked the whip down on the people, and so public shaming, public examples, public executions were being practiced on every street corner, out the front of every home, every shopfront, every garden. It had sent the people sprawling.

As for the higherups themselves, they hid away, though Ofelia doubted they would stay safe for long. The people who hadn't made their way to the palace gates rummaged through house after house looking for who to destroy. It was utter chaos, it was a Civil War.
So when the West finally laid siege upon the Kingdom three days later, Ofelia couldn't have asked for better timing.

It was as the first cannon ball fired into the Kingdom walls that Ofelia's handmaidens ran into her chamber, flustered, and panicking.
She ran to them, her hands to her chest. They hurried her out to room and led her to a secret door hidden beside a pillar. As a group, they rushed down a tight, spiralling staircase, each lady tripping over their own toes as they rushed.
They were wordless and out of breath by the time they reached the bottom, but still pushed Ofelia onwards.
Ofelia frowned, "Where are you taking me?", she asked, looking behind them.
One of the handmaidens, rather out of breath, hurried her my a hand on her arm, "His Majesty, the King, has requested you be escorted out of the Kingdom for safety."
Ofelia's breathed escaped her.
Knightley had asked for that?
Her mouth gaped and she swallowed. She continued to run alongside them until they reached a tunnel leading out of the Kingdom walls. Ofelia looked to the ground.
She had to see it fall, had to ensure it.
She was placed on the back of a horse, no doubt a fine rider on the front, and barely had time to wrap her arms around his waist before he shot away from the entrance, leaving only dust in his wake. She watched behind them, eyes wide, shoulders tense.
The women scrambled instantly, lifting their skirts to run.
Olivia stood still. Silent. Staring.
Ofelia's breath left her chest.
She couldn't leave her to die! She couldn't, she-
Olivia shrunk as Ofelia fled into the distance. And she closed her mouth.
Oh, how little Olivia reminded Ofelia of herself. The better part of herself. The old part. Big innocent eyes, alone. Ofelia looked away from her.

It was thunderous, the sound of his steed's hooves, and Ofelia could barely calibrate herself, barely hold on. A knight's armour was meant to be slippery, hence the large smooth shapes, and so she continued to slip and grip, her hands slid, and she grasped for his waist, her skirts slipped, then her legs.
She held on with all she could, though she couldn't pull herself fully back to the saddle.
Where was Knightley?

It was then that a single arrow flew from the sky, piercing high into the heavens before slicing through the air to plummet through Ofelia's guard.
With a piercing scream he scattered onto the ground below, Ofelia trailing behind him, pounding into the black earth.

Ofelia couldn't describe the pain she woke up in.
It was bright but dark, loud but so silent, still but swirly.
Overall though, it was overwhelmingly mahogany.
It smelt like metal, like leather. Smelt like blood. Looked like blood.
Through the slits in her eyes, the black, red dirt clouded her vision. She felt it in her hands. It was cold. It left red residue on her fingertips as she grinded it.
The sounds came next.
Noise so loud, she'd mistaken as silence, erupted in her ears. Her mind screamed at her.
Get up! Get up! Get up!
She'd gotten up a thousand times before. She had to get up, she always got up.
She gagged at the ground and though she knew she was still, she spun.
She clutched at the black dirt, her hand slipping on something beside her. She had to get up.
But there was something heavy above her. It wasn't the screaming pain in her lungs weighing her chest down, there truly was something pinning her down.
She couldn't turn to see.
She coughed. Her eyes adjusted slightly, and she realised just how dark it was. Just what those smells were. What the sounds were.
What the metallic liquid in her mouth was.
She was under a soldier.
And he wasn't moving.
She had to get up. She had to get up. She had to get up.
She whimpered and cried, gagging as she helplessly tried to climb out from under him. Her abdomen burned though, a strange burn, and her leg, which refused to even twitch, was wedged in and refused to budge.
Panicked, she looked out from under his body and the one beside him. She was in a battlefield, one littered with soldiers, dead and alive alike. It was later in the day than when she remembered last. And the colours had changed.
Veralta's handsome blue soldiers were purple, and the dwindling number of foreign yellow soldiers were stained orange.
There were red soldiers scattered amongst the ground, an unnumerable amount. Armoured and non-armoured alike, ones once yellow, ones once blue, ones once fathers, ones once sons.
Ofelia's arms gave out and she collapsed on the ground and began to weep, the crashing of swords and screams above her drowning her cries. She stillness of the men above her sending waves of chills down her back.
She cried and fell to sleep.