Ever Lost

16

Seeing as I was only an intern, my tasks for the day were a mashup between altar work, and monitoring the cosmos. I found that cosmos work was most boring, I watched over the two realms guided by Luna and Aurora, took notes on the climate of the spiritual zone, and then continued to shine their altars, refill with beaded bracelets and treats every few hours. By lunch, I'd zoned out a total of ten times an hour. Nothing in all my days had ever been this boring. I felt myself zoning out again when there came a hand on my shoulder. It was firm but gentle and startled me to reality. My shoulder tingled where the hand had been with discomfort as I cringed, turning around. "Are you even doing your job?" Lady Elizabeth asked, moving between the Playground and Neptune. I bit the innards of my cheek and handed her the clipboard I'd been jotting on. Lady Elizabeth flipped through the pages while shaking her head, "These are unacceptable. You must be more detailed in your observations." I looked away from her instinctively. I had, over the years found it increasingly difficult to look disappointment in the eyes, but especially now as she emanated a mother's energy. Her disappointment was rooted in love, and it was more vicious as such. It filled the room, crawled under my skin but did not leave me with the aftertaste of shame. Instead, I was deeply aggravated by her audacity. She hardly knew me well enough to feel such a way about me and yet she did. I'd rather she keep her emotions professional. I wanted nothing to do with her past this room.

Lady Elizabeth studied my face, "take a break, I'll take it from here." I gathered my papers and murmured my thanks, making my way out of the room. The weight seemed to lift off my shoulders the moment I stepped into the hallways. The castle seemed to extend on for an eternity, it was so far that a staircase, off-color vase, even a portrait was enough to excite me. Despite the repetitiveness of the hallways, I took pleasure in traversing through them. Each hall lead somewhere entirely different than the last and it felt as though I were walking through a labyrinth with a new treat on every turn. A garden, horse stables, a pool, fencing, everything anyone could ever dream of. It excited me plenty, but I never stayed in one area for long, I didn't have much time to wander, and I wanted to make the most of it. I continued wandering through the halls, stumbling upon a set of doors unlike the others I'd entered. It's handles were silver as was the embellishment adorning the doors and unlike the other doors, it lacked key holes. Lovely music emerged from the room, a soft tune like a harp. I pulled the door open gently and stepped into the wide room, light footed. The room was big, sure, but not quite like a ballroom. There were runes carved elegantly into the walls, like simple calligraphy and not spells. Across the room, a woman sat playing the harp. She was older, evident by the lines that decorated her face, how her skin dropped slightly, and her fingers appeared worn but she was not ugly. Far from it, in fact her beauty still shown through. Her eyes remained closed as she played her tune but I knew she knew she was no longer alone.

I started to step forward and she spoke. "Has the queen sent you?"

"No, I'm just visiting." I answered, taking in the marble floor, the mirrors across the room, the chandelier. My gaze was pulled towards the mirrors, the room should've been empty of just us but the mirror showed something entirely different. The floor was bustling with activity of phantoms, ghosts, figments of people in the mirror but none of them truly there.

"Ah, you've come to dance then?" Not that either. I shuddered. "No, just stopping by."

The woman continued playing, "what's your purpose if not to dance? Why visit my prison if I cannot serve you?"

"I wasn't aware this was a prison." I prickled up. "I'm a student."

A smile appeared on her face. "Ah, I see. I've been expecting a student."

"If you come to join me, you must know I cannot stop playing and you mustn't walk through the dance." I noticed she seemed to look through me, wincing a bit as she strummed her fingers along each of the harp's strings. I looked around the floor, no one was there. I glanced at the mirror again and the figures made sense. They spun and danced round and round in old modeled ball gowns, smiling and laughing. I hesitated to step, when I did my feet led me around the floor. I stopped at a seat beside the woman who continued to play with her eyes trained on the floor. I sat down, "smart girl." She remarked.

"If their dance is interrupted, they will turn on me." She explained. In the mirror, the ghosts had stopped their dance, their gaze glued on us. She played louder, they stepped to the rhythm but it wasn't a full waltz. "I'm told you know about my parents?"

"I know about everyone," she grinned. "Who is it you seek?"

"My par-" I started to say, her lips twitched into a frown. "Andres and Dawn Willow."

"Andres," she snarled the name, it rolled off her tongue like a bad omen. She disregarded my mother, the tune she played pitched higher, grating on my ears. "He was quite full of himself that man, and certainly not to be trusted." I bit my lip, "and my mother?"

"An angel who never got the chance to wear her halo." She hummed, the tune relaxed. "She was so kind and naive, went along with anything Andres said."

"Like?"

"Nothing good, child. She went on a quest for him and never came back. The royal family speculated he was behind it, and he was dishonorably discharged." I expected her to continue, but she just stopped, wincing once more. But she seemed to lose herself in the music all the same. I cleared my throat, "what happened?"

"You aren't ready for that. When we meet again, you will be. For now, you must go." She said. "Your time is up." I opened my mouth, the doors shot open and I soon found myself stumbling out of it, the doors slamming behind me. I turned around but the silver doors were now replaced with a standard wooden door like all the others. My father had never been the type to hurt anyone from what I knew of him, in his messages he had been considerate and thoughtful. I found myself attempting to justify crimes I wasn't truly sure he committed, thinking over ever possibility and ever possible reason why. Then I considered my mother. The musician's description of her was true to my memory. At the sight of my mother, my father became unjustifiable. A villain to my eyes. Whatever he'd done, she didn't deserve. I walked with a slower pace to my room. I wondered about her too now. What made someone fall so deeply in love that their loyalty was undying and unconditional? Was that a kind of love I wanted to experience myself? And Stella, she disappeared long after them, wrote letters too, but her letters stopped at a point. They didn't stop coming, I simply stopped receiving them. Nurse Hannah had decided that her letters were too vulgar for someone my age, that she'd keep them for me to read when I was older. If I wouldn't be getting any closure on her from the palace, I could get it from those letters.