The Queen's Wife (girlxgirl)

1. The little kingdom

🌾

This is her kingdom.

She lays on the yellow grass and looks up at the sky. She can feel the texture of the wheat against her fingers, she can hear the rustling of its edges and see the utmost tips of its peaks. The yellow grass moves with the soft wind. To the left, always to the left. It sways, sometimes, and sometimes it bends too far and breaks. Sometimes she reaches her hand out and grabs one, just one. She wraps her fingers around it and rips, so that it remains in her hand, suddenly useless and without purpose. Her own little plaything.

In this world, she is the king.

In this world, she is the god.

The small and helpless pieces of grass are under her mercy, as she does whatever she chooses with them. Where she decides to lay down, that is up to her. They have no say. They sway with the wind and she watches them do so. They sway too far and break, and she watches them do so. She doesn't help them, doesn't care about them. For her, they are her pointless entertainment. She is their god. And above her, there is the sky. When it comes to the sky, she is a god to it as far as she can choose not to see it, or choose to see it.

So in this world, she is a king. This is her kingdom.

And in her kingdom, she can do whatever she wants. Keep her brown hair to her shoulders and not cut it short, just like how she likes it. Brush through it whenever she gets the chance, just like she likes it. In this world, that is how far her power stretches. But then she sits up, and sees beyond her kingdom. To the place where her rule does not matter, and her say does not sound. A little house, and a little road, standing next to her wide kingdom of wheat. And in that little house, sits a woman and a man, who are the kings and the gods of this little world.

So Maud sits up, before they can start complaining again. About her age. About how she shouldn't be laying on the grass instead of working, because she is already old enough to understand their struggle. Understand that she has to work. Already twenty, already old enough to understand that her kingdom is small and does not matter. Not like it mattered when she was young. Power changes. It felt so strong in her youngest days, now it feels insignificant. Only those few moments of peace, when she can watch the swaying of the grass and the movement of the sky, only then does it feel strong again.

But she is not a child anymore, and those moments are far and few in between.

So Maud stands up on wobbly legs, and gathers her balance. She brushes her fingers through her brown hair, a habit, and shakes it away from her face. She wipes the dust from her cheeks and nose, and sneezes once, just to get rid of the smell of grass in her nostrils. Slowly Maud drags her feet towards the small house next to the small road, where the kingdom of those she cannot control stretches far and wide. As far as she can see, over the yellow fields of wheat. Her legs feel tired and sore, her beige dress dirty and ragged. Her shoes are clumpy and too small, pinching a bit at the toes. A starving feeling grows under her ribs, a cough builds in her throat, the rumbling of her stomach can be heard.

The wind feels ever colder, the sky a bit more cloudy than before. The small wooden house, with no windows and a small door with a crack at the bottom, rises up with struggle. She reaches for the door handle and wraps her fingers around it, pulling it backwards with a creak. Nothing awaits her on the inside but darkness, a single candle standing on a wooden table, and a fire lit somewhere further into the house. One woman. One man. One standing by the fire, one seated hopelessly on a chair in front of the candle. Their faces are illuminated by the light. Dust over their skin, clothes ruined and ragged, hands rough and eyes hollow.

Maud closes the door behind her. She waits by the entrance for a while, just to breathe. There is not much to do in this little kingdom. Every day looks the same. It smells the same, it sounds the same. The striking scent of boiled potato is the only thing she can ever smell inside this hut, more often than not it's the only thing they eat. Or maybe it just feels that way. Maud is really tired of potatoes, but in this kingdom one can not afford to complain. Not even as kings.