Waning of the Sun Gods

Rain that Falls on May 9th: I

I am one of the only people still alive that can remember what this land was like when my father ruled it.

Noinyar was a beautiful place back then, a place that I was proud to call my homeland. My family used to vacation in the north – the north! Can you believe that? The snow settled over the tops of the wall we didn't think we needed, and they used to let children up there to play at war.

Other years we'd travel to the west where my mother's homeland lay, and my sisters would take turns racing ahead of the rest of us. I preferred to hang back with my parents and stare out across green rolling hills peppered with wildflowers and winding little streams, capturing the moment forever in my mind.

Us seven princesses filled the palace with noise and life. We thought that the world was always going to be our playground and treated the old storeroom and dark, secret places within it like our own little hideaways. I remember the little girl I knew I must have been through another's eyes. Maybe it is only too distant to seem real.

Or maybe I burnt her on my father's pyre.

I think that little girl was vain. After all there is a large vanity in my suite – I refused to move into my father's rooms after his death, though they were mine by rights – and I know I would not ask for one now. The handle of the drawer below it is both very worn and very dusty.

Though it was a gift from a distant family member, my mother's side if I recall, I can't bring myself to look at the mirror. The hope that if I avoid the sight of my own face this will still be happening to someone else springs eternal.

My father had dozens of attendants. The way he told it he was embarrassed to need them, but was more embarrassed if he left his rooms looking like a mess. I am ashamed of neither, so I chose the option that would let fewer people into this old mausoleum of a living-space.

Dressing myself is not difficult. Once, court robes had hundreds of fussy little ties, shining gold jewelry that needed to be arranged just so to catch the light. I have need of only my crown and my pendant.

It is easy to arrange the necklace – the great quartz heart sits above the scar left by my sister's burning fingertips as she tried to rip it from my neck, the chain rests upon the marks left as I struggled against her and choked as it dug into my skin.

My hands shake. I clasp it on the third try and think that it is a good day.

Every time I walk out the door I wonder who thought that it was a kindness to have the hallway from my room to the throne contain the memorials to my fallen sisters. Then I am reminded that I was then one who must have signed off on that at some point, and wonder what I was thinking. It is horribly depressing. Why would I ever think it would not be horribly depressing?

Was there a time in my life that I thought I needed to be more horribly depressed than I already was?

It isn't where their bodies are. It's just a strange, cruel reminder I chose for myself.

You as good as killed me, their stone eyes seem to say, following me down the hall. You did kill me, screams my youngest sister's forever peaceful expression, her hands – her terrible burning hands – open in a gesture of welcome.

They will not be gone forever, I remind myself. Someday they and my father will all return and walk the earth, bright and living again. But until then they shall rest in final slumber, and I shall walk as one of the dead.

If the walk to the throne room is meant as a sure cause of despair, then there is still a part of me that is still cheered by the sight of the throne itself. Unchanged since my father sat upon it, the great rayed sun that forms the back of the seat still glows with his light. Beneath it, giving into my own insecurities is not as easy.