Of Monsters and Flowers [Sihtric Kjartansson]

Act II: Chapter Five

Winchester
Kingdom of Wessex

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Lynette despised the smell of ale, perhaps it was because of how much she had been around it growing up but she just could not stand even the smallest waft of it so the fact that she is sat sprawled uncomfortably in the corner of an alehouse with a cup of ale before her was a perplexing sight. She did not drink it, she could not have. It just sat there on the table an arms length away from her. The nattering of conversations and slamming of ale cups resounded through the thick air, darkness had completely draped the once blue sky a black canvas now expands the azure filled with specks of stars messily cluttered throughout.

The candlelight in the room illuminated her forlorn figure as the cold emerged beyond, a chill that wrapped itself around her. A bite that chewed at her skin, her mind was too consumed on Dahlia's words as they continued their torment she could not heed to anything else, her surroundings blurred together into a haze. The truth of it, her truth, quickly unfolded, each corner presented itself as clear as the dawn when it paints the earth in the vivid colours of the morning light. Lynette did not want to believe she could ever ponder on such a thought, the peak of a mountain so sharp and cutting, yet it had drawn closer as if it were slowly awaiting to arise, to show her what she can be, what she truly is.

A sinner. Her lips trembled as she whispered it to herself. Lynette did not want the babe, the child, she knew that to be wholly true no matter how much she had wrought to rid the thought from its place in the depths of her mind it had already embedded itself into her soul. It is a sin and a grave one, the thought that had exposed itself. God would surely condemn her now. She had been nothing but purely devoted to him -day in and day out- the creases in the palm of her hands were now ingrained with the words her lips would mutter forth, each inch of her body knew worship yet she cannot but feel as if the years of it had meant nothing, that in the end she had abandoned it as quick as her mother had done so.

A hatred for her mother swells between her crevices, the gaps in her teeth, as it soaks itself into her flesh like morning dew drenching itself into the blades of grass on a misty morning. It was her, was it not? that had refused to acknowledge Lynette for the first year she was born, when her eyes had opened and the sight of her mother was bare, vacant from the surroundings. It was then that the universe had decided her fate.

She cannot be a mother, she knows nothing of such a role, a mould she is too large for or perhaps too small. She is no good, she had tried, but in actuality she wishes not to shape her child into the reflection of a hungry animal craving a mother's love that which is foreign to her, a language she does not know the origin of nor how to utter.

Lynette knew not how to inquire, what is she to say? How is she to explain herself? They will all scorn her, how dare she think such a thought? She is no woman but a rabid dog feasting on the flesh of evil with so much voracity she had become the vermin herself. Its impurity stuck between her teeth and no matter how much she could have tried to cleanse herself of it she had now become sullied with the truth, at last peeled down to her sinews and bones so she can recognise the villain she is. Without knowing what her child may become she had already decided its fate, without her husband knowing that she carries his child within her she had made firm her decision, believing it best for the unborn child but she knew, deep down, it was for her own-self, selfish and cruel.