To My Duke, Dearest| j. kirschtein

xvii. Sanctity of Sleep, Brutality of Peace

Shards of serrated glass mercilessly embedded themselves within your lungs. With each painful, pulling breath you took, a choked wheeze escaped your lips. The saltwater that ran upon your cheeks refused to cease, no matter how hard you willed away the pain. No matter how hard you willed away this frigid weakness within you, you continued to falter. You continued to imbue your actions with too much emotion, too much heart, and lines were blurring over like the ink spilt over parchment. The tears were blurring over your cheeks with white, hot agony, sorrowful anguish and debilitating numbness. 

Everything felt broken.

Trembling, you slowly eased your back away from the wood panels on the door. Your window was shut, nothing but the ragged hitching of your unsteady breaths echoing within the vastness of the room. Moonlight continued to streak through the thin panes of glass, but you found it tainted, worthless. It appeared and splayed out like the river of blood belonging to your tight village lane. The smooth carpets of the flooring becoming the long-stemmed grass that tumbled down the enormous hill that fell towards the riverbank, that was desecrated with the bleeding bodies of the farmers who tended towards those very same fields.

This was all your fault, the bitter responsibility lied with no one else but you. You had broken the balance of blissful ignorance that had been keeping you docile ever since that very day. You had summoned the unimaginable weight of the searing pain that felt as though someone had really, truly taken the knife to your heart. Shuddering with the weight of another hiccuped breath, you forced yourself straight. You needed to witness another face, another person who was not you and you poisonous, gruesome thoughts, someone who was not indirectly responsible for the death of your family.

Fingers searching within the darkness, you wrapped your fingers around the cool metal of the door's handle, forcing it to inject some form of clarity into your system. But everything was a black kaleidoscope, an elixir that had been combined with incorrect ingredients causing a juxtaposing heartache of wanting to escape and wanting to hide.

 Shutting your eyes, you twisted the lock, enjoying the metallic click of the mechanism as it was something other than the sound of your pitiful crying. After twisting it open, you immediately twisted it shut. The repetition of the lock reflecting within your heart until the compressions of your chest had eased and you were seeing sharper.

Porco. You needed to see Porco. You needed to tell him that you wished no longer to have any affiliation with this plan and that you wanted to return home immediately. Home. Where exactly was your home? Not in any recollection of your memory could you ever try to piece together the route back to your slaughtered village, the vile orphanage did not want any affiliation with the likes of you, you were aware of that much, and Liberio Castle would hang you for treason. So if your home was not any place you had ever visited in Marley, where on earth was it?

Carefully, you pondered this as you waited in your room, the weighted door swinging shut the moment you entered the hallway. The cheerful glee which you had escaped your room with, not even half and hour before, had evaporated. It no longer had ethereal moonlit shadows, but a river of bland greyness, that did not touch not stir any aspect of your tampered soul. Now you were left with an emptiness, a starving and unquenchable desire for something you had absolutely no knowledge of. Revenge, acceptance...love?

Turning your head to the right, you chewed your lip in question as to where Porco's room was. Much to his grumbling, you had gained the awareness that his room was in a different sector of the palace, thanks to the wicked proceedings of that villainous Dot Pixis. But precisely where was your current calamity. 

Creeping towards the banister of the staircase below, you ducked from the warm glow of the lanterns that the patrolling guards where holding down below. Was that what you were? A creature of the night who hid from the warmth of light and dwelt in the dusk?