Juliet's Trail of Petals

Chapter 1: Part 1: Wake

"JUDE! WHO'S EARS IS MY FATHER PIERCING WITH HIS DRUNKEN WORDS?" I ask to the servant who had reported Harrieta to my father with such disdain it could melt the skull of an infant.

"Harrieta's your highness," he responds softly, being careful not allow himself to drink in a single sip of my poisonous stare that was riddled with sharp irritation.

I feel the blood in my veins rushing to my face as I listen in to the muffled words spewing out of my father's rotted mouth until I arrive behind a wall to listen in. I form my hands into fists, I wished I had such an authority so I could strike my father I would do so now, but for now I must squeeze my fists. And as I think of all the ways in which to curse my father's name, I hear what exactly it is he has made as an excuse to punish Harrieta with his putrid breath. And like a river, I feel my blood start to run down the side of my palm, and onto the floor. I feel as though I could punch through the stone wall separating me and the vulnerable mouse subjected to the roar of the tiger who will eat her alive if not tamed. Suddenly I hear the clop of hoofs walking down the stairs and toward the corridor, and my I can feel my eyebrows become loose, and my fists mirror a similar action. And as my mother continued down the corridor, I can see her eyebrows have also been furrowed, and her lips placed in the shape of the English letter n. And as she passes me looks at me, she looks as if I was attempting to murder her. My mother had often described my facial expression specifically reserved anyone who was attempting to cause distress to the one she calls "my peace."

"She is your peace Al, and when you disturb the peace there are consequences, as there is in any kingdom," my mother would say to me.

And my mother would be correct in her saying, because though I often struggle with Harrieta—the peace in question—to release the imprisoned thoughts that lie in her head that sew an expression of sorrow on her face, or how we can hardly get time to ourselves lately, she was the love of my life. And this fact is a jungle cat whose tail my father had not hesitated to slam his heavy feet on. And when this feline scratches at his bare feet, he continues to disrespect it, and when the cat turns to ask why, he claims his badly scarred feet are the only reason he needs. And so, he once again steps on the tail of this tiger.

"WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE!!" My father, a king, was drunk as he always was on the days of sun and Saturn, yelling at Harrieta.

He can never see karma coming down the steps to the kitchen to stand right behind him as he turns to face her.

"Why are you yelling at the servant Julian? What did she do to you by serving the food that the chef cooked and plated?" My mother scolds. She manages to be one of the only two people in Greece who can actually criticize him without a war being started, and the other (me) is on the other side of the doorway listening.

I had originally come down to ask the chef for some more bread to go with my kleftiko and came down to the belittlement of the one person in this world that made me feel like I was more than the princess whose coronation is in about three months. And the only person that appreciates the fact that I've painted over half of the paintings hung on the walls of each corridor in the castle that is soon to be completely mine.

"She has put her filthy peasant fingers in my stew!" He whines back at her.

"Do you have proof? Why on earth would she even do that, the servants just had dinner but thirty minutes ago! Why on earth would she be hungry enough to want to stick a single finger in your stew?" She says harshly in her thick Libyan accent, "This is just you throwing a temper tantrum because Alexandra doesn't want to marry one of Poseidon's daughters, isn't it? Or the son of Athena?"

I'm Alexandra, the oldest child and heiress of the Adamos throne, and I never really understood why marrying someone who isn't benefiting the kingdom politically was so conflicting for my father to accept. Especially, considering the fact that my mother was a woman in the Numidia Kingdom that he met while on his way to make war plans with one of his father's generals stationed there, and also the fact that we are on good terms with all surrounding kingdoms.