𝐄𝐗𝐈𝐋𝐄 ♕ 𝐉𝐀𝐍𝐆 𝐖𝐎𝐎𝐊

𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝘁𝘆-𝗲𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁

Gaeun dreamt of her mother.

She didn't know what Lee Hyunjoo looked like when she was young, but Gaeun assumed they looked similar. She'd heard that out of the three siblings, Gaeun resembled her mother the most. She'd never, however, actively searched for the resemblance.

Gaeun dreamt of her mother in a life where she never ran into Min Yeongsu. In this life, she was bathed in light, her silhouette soft and blurred like a figure viewed through a hazy morning mist. Her hair, the colour of deep chestnut, fell in long waves down her back, catching the sunlight with a muted shimmer. In this life, her mother was loud, and funny, and bright. She sat by the lake, soaking in the sun while she and her friends dyed their fingertips orange with balsam leaves.

Here, she was spoiled rotten by her father. She snuck out of her bedroom window to wander the night markets. She broke her mother's heart but mended it each time, too. In this dream, Lee Hyunjoo was the life of the household, not Min Gaeun.

In her dream, her mother got everything she ever dreamed of. Lee Hyunjoo saw the world, met a wonderful man, and saw the world some more with him. Her life was an infinite stretch of joy. When she laughed, it was as though the world around her shifted, bending to her will. There were no gilded halls, nor golden crowns or poisoned daggers. She was simply who she wanted to be.

Gaeun sat down on the veranda, bare feet dangling over the garden grass. She watched as her mother hung windchimes in a tree. It was her grandparents' house. She could almost hear the cooks shuffling about in the kitchen. The light filtering through the leaves was too bright. Gaeun couldn't tell whether it was warm or cold. But she could feel the grass under her toes.

Hyunjoo, perhaps sixteen, leapt off the lowest branch and dusted her hands. She looked up at the windchimes, nodding proudly. She was clad in a simple, short tunic and leggings Gaeun knew would make her grandmother wave her fist and scold her.

Hyunjoo glanced at Gaeun absentmindedly before her girlish eyes cleared. Both the women straightened their spines unconsciously. Hyunjoo tilted her head as she stood in front of Gaeun. She clasped her hands over her front like Gaeun did.

"She's not worth the fear."

Gaeun couldn't remember her sounding so emotive. She sounded so alive, and unlike the husk she'd become in the final years of her life. Even in the palace, Lee Hyunjoo had adopted a wispy tune, as if she was avoiding being caught talking.

"You don't know what she's capable of," Gaeun said. "What she's done to me."

Her mouth curved ever so softly into a proud smile. "And yet, you remained kind and soft. Even with all that power, you never dared to fight back."

Gaeun didn't know where this conversation was going. Was she being praised or chided? Chided, obviously. Her mother couldn't say one good thing about her. She'd never had.

"She is the king's mother," was the only viable response. It's what the Lee Hyunjoo that Gaeun knew would want to hear.

As she uttered the sentence, their surroundings changed. They were in the forest, warm sunlight streaming through the leaves above them. Gaeun sat on the fallen log while Hyunjoo knelt in the dirt below. Under her careful hands lay Baram, the white wolf that had come long before Minha and her siblings, the one that had succumbed to injuries when Gaeun was young.

"She is my husband's mother," Hyunjoo countered sharply. Baram growled from the back of her throat, easing only when Hyunjoo caressed her marble-white fur. "I was Min Yeongsun's queen," she said mournfully, "the mother of his children and his companion for life. I was entitled to his protection, as were you. As were your brothers." She lowered her eyes, and Gaeun heard Jeonghoon in the lilt of her speech, "But he was gone for all our lives. And he remains gone."