The Alpha Female of Wicker

1

Finally, the car stopped, and they descended onto the dew-littered grass of the Prairie Quarter of the Royal Blue. They had ridden on a comfortable brougham carriage with wide wheels ideal for the rough roads of the rural country. All their luggage was strapped to the rear, and Rodrigue, the father of the Lace family was eager to detach and bring it inside their newly purchase house.

"It's a cottage," Annabel stated bluntly, gazing at the humble abode that would be her new home.

It was low-roofed and merely a head taller than her father. It was wood-panelled, well-made, but the choice of lumber seemed poor. She sighed and picked up her cherry-coloured travelling bag from the wagon. It had all of what she had really needed, for the journey, and for her everyday living, until she would be settled and provisioned from town. She sighed once more as she peered up at the small house. Her father has mentioned a basement, and she hoped it was spacious, for the bungalow seemed awfully small for the family of five.

"Remind me of the town's name, Ana," posed the smooth, now firmly matured voice of Daniel, the eldest of the Lace family.

"Wicker," she whispered, as a current whipped through her mane of strawberry-cooper curls. They flowed and undulated, caressed her sun-kissed shoulders, the breeze an emulation of summer, and then it ceased and she walked inside the house. It smelled musty and old, but it was well-built and no rot nor mould appeared anywhere on the lime ceiling. Annabel switched on the light and it glowed its electrical radiance across the rooms. There was a kitchen, a lounge, even a small room with a roll-top desk, which would be the baby's room. There was one bedroom on this floor, which made the young adults guess that they would be sleeping in the basement. Eager to see what the downstairs area looked like, Daniel and Annabel hauled their baggage down the narrow steps to the cave-like basement they were expecting. The floor was poured cement and the walls were of fire bricks. There were patches of oil staining the ground, and Annabel sighed deeply.

"This is better than being under Dominitian's rule," Daniel told her, resting his hand on her shoulder.

She nodded sullenly and saw that there was a small water closet complete with flushing toilet, which was a grand relief.

"It's not too primitive," he added, "there is electricity and running water."

"Is there heating?" she asked, biting her lower lip and scanning her surroundings in search of a radiator. Their eyes found it at once and they nodded, satisfied. Daniel had cropped straight hair, dark like their father's, with a tinge of blue when he stood under the moonlight. He had fine features, now squared with manhood. It was so strange to see him aged, mature, no longer aching to play mean tricks on her. He had subdued now, interesting, well-mannered.

There were no beds, nothing yet, which made Daniel have the idea of camping outside for the night, until they would buy mattresses and at least wooden frames or box-springs. He knew nothing of the economy of Wicker, of its shops, habitants, or anything of the genre. This was the rural part of the Royal Realm, and already the sentiment of change was crawling into his skin.

Melia brought Rodin to Annabel as she unpacked her cooking instruments and tools. Rodin, barely a year-old, was a plump infant who smelled still strongly of his mother's milk. His face glowed pink, and he dribbled of saliva profusely at times. Nonetheless, he was a beautiful child, and Annabel loved him dearly. Now twenty, Annabel had never yet given into love, or lust, or anything that meant having to split one's affection into another. She had been so busy going to school, being educated, she had not the time to worry about any foolish thing as love. Annabel rocked the baby tenderly and kissed his moist forehead.  A crack in the distance, both piercing and grave, sounded in the darkening sky.

"Forget camping, Dan! It's gonna rain!" Annabel called over Rodin's head.

"Damn..." he muttered from downstairs.

Rodrigue sighed and placed his hands at his hips, resting his back from all the heavy lifting. "Well," he said, his voice very deep, very masculine, that made Melia's insides tremble each time he uttered a word, "We'll have to sleep at the inn tonight, unless we're lucky enough to find some cheap mattresses to sleep on, or sophas or something."

Melia quickly made a simple broth for an early supper, and the Lace family ate in near silence. This change was growing on all of them and a certain amount of unwanted tension started to ascend within the members. Only Rodin stared with innocent unknowing splendour as his mother fed him bits of soggy bread dipped in his chilled soup bowl. Rodrigue muttered a faint prayer under his breath, and Daniel's leg fidgeted under the table, and made the glasses of water tremble subtly; the water within them vibrated and created symmetrical circles, tiny waves in a tiny lake. And finally, Annabel broke into uncontrollable sobs, as tears found her eyes and she wept, horribly embarrassed and at once, unable to contain the grief striking the whole of her spirit.

Daniel stood and embraced her from behind her stool. She shrugged him off, but as he retreated, she reached out once more to him and tugged his chest back upon her back.

"He tortured our people, Anna," Rodrigue clearly explained for the third time now to his suffering daughter.

"The King would have never allowed it to happen, but... you know how corruption finds everything, is everywhere. Papinae isn't as safe as it once was, and the Royal Red even less. We are far from the King, the Queen from the Prince and the Princess. Ter iye vila ina dae corra , and we can't do anything about it, so we move away from it."

"Into this?" Annabel blubbered. "The Prairie Quarter?"

"It's as far as we can go, it's as far as the political regime we can get. Here, the towns have mayors, the villages are independent and deindividualized. We will become one, all together, you'll see."

"I'll fall in love? I'll marry a man from here? Is that what I am to do? Be a woman, make babies and die and be buried in the ground? What happened to being Royalty? Mom, you once told me it would be beautiful to become Royalty, that it would be a privilege and that I should seek those men. Not... this is wrong. These are peasant boys!"

"Annabel that's enough!" cried Rodrigue. "Hold your words of insolence and whisper them only in your dreams. Clean them through our saviour and never, ever again speak of the Royals. We are away from them now."

"But I want to be one!"

"They are myth, they are nothing but Earthbound, like the rest of us."

"They are not, and you know it. You know that the Royals are creatures different than us... they are elders, from the past world. Their generations go through the thousands of years... before, when earth..."

"...Anna do not speak of past Earth. Do not remind us of all that the human race once had, because you know that all we will do is compare it to the little we have now," Melia spoke, her voice saddened by the obvious truth, "the story is too sad to be told once more."

"Where will we sleep, father? It's raining now." Indeed it was, small bullets of water had started to shoot upon the tin roof of their new home, and the scent and feel of humidity had attained them.

"We have blankets. We'll just have to be poor tonight, and then, I will splurge for you both, in compensation. How's that sound?"

"As long as Rodin is safe, warm and comfortable," Annabel muttered, drying her eyes, wiping from them the thick mascara she usually wore to accentuate her eyes. She then rose and gave Daniel a longing gaze before disappearing into the basement, without another word.

He gulped nervously and sighed."Let us hope that the Royal Blue will be good to us," Daniel prayed.

"For the Royal Red forsook us," Rodrigue closed, before stacking the bowls, plates and spoons and bringing them to the sulphur-stained porcelain sink in the kitchen.