the seas are alive,
and they are raging with monsters, old sport.
| based on the voyage of the dawn treader |
| BOOK TWO OF THE KING IN DISTRESS DUOLOGY |
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Present Day, Narnia
THERE WAS A PERPETUAL rumination that often presented itself into a conundrum within the corners of Jamie's mind. An influx of protean complexities, hovering over quicksand that would threaten to consume her entirely. She'd been so close to solving it, break free from the labyrinthine gardens that poisoned her mind, but it always found a way to pull her back in, claws digging deep into her skin, teeth sinking in her flesh.
It was almost cyclical, concentric circles that went on and on through the end of time. Jamie could try, so very hard, to keep everyone sound. But the game was rigged, it would always end up with devastation, so cold and malignant, that frost would settle in her bones, freeze her blood over, until she would be nothing but the dead of winter. But even then, there should be no room for failure, she could be nothing short of the perfect queen.
But what did being queen mean if her entire life became a sacrifice for those she loved? Once, she may not have allowed herself to be close to anyone, keeping them at arm's length. It was a concept, a framework that she perfectly crafted with such intricacy that no one dared ruin it. Save for, of course, her closest friends. Still, she would keep to herself, savor the mercurial warmth of solitude, even if its bittersweet taste would linger on her tongue a tad bit longer than she'd like.
At the time of her childhood, she'd never really thought about how her predicaments and set-up had impacted her psyche. Her memories of Grace had been fond, full of a tender fulguration, and then one day, she was gone. She was no longer there. Her father told her Grace left them for another man. Her father was almost never there. There had been a void space where he stood in her life, apart from the moments when he would be home. Like her, Alistair Van Halen liked to keep to himself, drown in paperwork or tinker with miniscule trinkets whenever he was not away for work.
And Jamie liked to watch him. She'd listen to his grand tales about heroes and heroines, know of the complexities of his many adventures in France, and indulge in the fanciful gifts he brought along with him. But now, perhaps, she had realized that it had been a form of fancified dreamscape all along, a world of forms, as Plato often liked to put it. An illusion rooted from lies. A farce.
Who was she? What was she doing? The room with no doors closed in, the brown room, the one with the small window in the far end. The wood beneath her feet had grown rotten, the painting of a perfection torn at the seams, and no matter how hard she strove to crawl towards that window, and let the sunlight in upon her, it would be no use. There, she would spend hours upon hours on end. Sometimes, she would feel like the queen she was always meant to be. Other times, the frail child who only longed for her mother's embrace and her father's time, curling in on herself as sobs wracked her frame.
