The Seven

Chapter 2 - Flayke

"Queen Hayle: a ruler to the people, a mother to our hearts."

Flayke traced her fingers along the intricate cursive lettering, wiping the lightly fallen snow off the statue's metal plate. Around her the white flurries she was named after swirled and danced around her face, sticking to her eyelashes and dampening her hair.

Looking up, Flayke studied the tall statue, an ice sculpture made with such precision and care that she could make out several resemblances between her and the stationary masterpiece. She found comfort in her grandmother's frozen expression, a face of determination and leadership than that of the serious and almost sad portraits that lined the castle walls.

Like many other times before, Flayke had no intention of visiting her grandmother's sacred memorial, yet she always seemed to end up there when her mind was so full that her feet had no real idea of where to go. She found strange comfort there, in the isolation and simplicity of the walled-off surrounding courtyard. She felt peace there. A place in the midst of the castle that she was able to go to be alone.

Flayke moved away from the sculpture, allowing her body to slump onto one of the four plain benches that surrounded it. She looked up at her grandmother whose glazed eyes looked up toward the cloudy white sky, her frozen palm stretched out as if demanding it to give her what she wanted.

Flayke's hands began to tremble as she covered her face. "Grandmother," she begged, "tell me what to do..."

In some ways, Flayke understood her mother and why she pushed for such foolish things. To be a leader was hard; to set rules and enforce them was hard. It was a job that couldn't and shouldn't be done alone. But Flayke was not a man; she would not lead. Flayke was a princess, a soon-to-be bride, a soon-to-be queen.

She was not a man.

She would not make the decisions. She would be nothing more than a public figure, a shiny accessory her husband would drag around and show off. She would be nothing more than a pretty face, nothing more than a supplier of heirs. She would wear fancy clothes and go to fancy dinners and sit there, her words trapped in her throat and her ideas trapped in her mind. She would be seen, not heard, and her dreams for her kingdom would no longer be plausible. It didn't matter that she had been raised for the throne since birth, or that she knew the name and location of every city of every kingdom, or that she could take on any of the guards and win. It did not matter because she was not a man; she could not be king. She could never lead.

Not as long as she had tits.

But any of her suitors could, all it took was for her to point her finger and choose and that man would have control of everything. To Flayke, it was incredibly unfair and ridiculous, but it was tradition and that's how the royal family has done it for the past five hundred years, so it must apply now.

Now, when the world was so fragile. Now, when her people were in their most need.

"We aren't doing enough... I'm not doing enough," Flayke murmured to the inanimate statue. "Everything that's happening with the war..." She clutched her hands tightly together again, the snow billowing around her harsher than before. The wind echoed through the courtyard, the screams bouncing between the walls before escaping out into the open sky. "We need to do more, taking in refugees... it's not enough." She glanced up at her grandmother again, traces of shame dancing across her pale face as if she were the cause of such a tragedy as war. "Please, Grandmother, tell me what I should do?"

Like always the statue remained silent, staring into the sky.

It wasn't like Flayke really expected anything miraculous like the ice sculpture of her grandmother responding to her prayers with a string of wise words. She didn't expect any form of a supernatural phenomenon, but she had hoped that somehow, some way her grandmother would give her a sign that her refusal to marry was right.