It is strange the I am the gateway to this new and rotting world, for I am not the original focus of this tale. I am a woman barely mentioned, my potential unattained. In most ways I am a mystery, a stranger to you. Yet, I am romanticized, with a thousand different interpretations and faces: my pain, sorrow, grief, madness, but especially my death is stretched to grotesque exaggeration, while my voice, joy, smile, my very soul is shrunk into the depths of obscurity.
I am told not to love, told to lie and play a pawn in a game no one can win, told to quietly sit by and watch like some specter in life, to heal my own madness alone. My feeling, opinions, my whole person is refused expression until I am already dying. How strange, that only the end can shed new light on the beginning. Yes, it is odd that I am the face you meet before descending into a ruined kingdom. Perhaps the Fates have some cause in this, though my impression is both Hecate and Persephone; perhaps I am meant to be a guide through this labyrinth of pain and confusion, as long as time allows me.
Yes, perhaps.
