Diary or the Dead

All His Pride

Even though he didn't sleep much after waking up from the nightmare, Dew dragged himself into the kitchen. Charles had already lit up the fire and put a pot filled with water on the hook above the flame. To his surprise only Josephine was in the room, sitting on a small stool and potatoes. As she saw him she smiled and patted the stool next to her. "Where are the others?" Dew asked after taking a seat. The woman pointed towards the ceiling. "Tiana probably overslept and Fred went upwards to get some recipes, you know, for the feast." He nodded but furrowed his brows. She chuckled and explained: "The overseas visitors?" He still didn't remember so Josephine was about to enlighten him as the door swung open and two figures entered. Tiana threw a pile of thick books on the table and almost made him fall off his stool out of shock. The action was immediately followed by Frederick, who was walking closely behind her while holding his left arm, exclaiming in both worry and anger: "What are you thinking? Do you even know how precious these are?" Tiana rolled her eyes and muttered a halfhearted apology before walking up behind Dew and pulling him to his feet. "You'll have to deal with this mess now. I will not volunteer to go all the way up there again" she commanded and shoved him over to their chef. "Can you not be a little more sensitive?" Josephine shot back before anyone could say a word. That exact moment Charles suddenly decided to go into the pantry and Frederick took Dew's hand with his right and led him outside. This was one of those moments where he was glad not to be around the gentle woman who he'd usually felt so safe with. He remembered the first time he witnessed her and Tiana get into an argument just because one of them had a bad day. His head had rung for the entire rest of the day.
"You'll have to be my hands today" the short man told him as they had reached a safe distance between themselves and the heavy kitchen door, "I missed a step and tripped, luckily Tiana was there and lent me a hand or four. Sadly we can't switch arms because this piece of flesh now has a broken foundation." Just like anyone else, Frederick lived on the top floor but he was located a little further from Dew's room, so he knew. In fact they had to take a turn all the way to the northern part of the castle. He thought about how sad it must be not to see the sunset during clear weather whenever he finished his work. Then the realization struck him that if it wasn't for Avery, he might have had to live over there as well.

Tiana was right with what she said: Their chef's personal chamber was a mess. First of all a cloud of dust smelling like one of those liquid cheeses hit his face and when he walked in he almost tripped over a box overflowing with crumbled papers and strange black powder. The man kicked it into a corner and walked straight towards a shelf that was placed so inconveniently between the messy bed in the right corner and the window in the center of the room that it almost blocked the little light that came through. And probably the handle to open the window as well, Dew thought to himself. With his working arm Frederick reached for the books and pressed them into the helper's arms or pointed towards them but harshly corrected him whenever he couldn't immediately guess which one was the right one. With seven or so books of different thickness and sizes in his arms and one of the biggest ones in Frederick's they went back downstairs but taking a different route this time.

"What are these even for?" Dew finally asked after he successfully turned his head without losing a book. "You don't know? Tsk. We've talked about that just four days ago!" he criticized him. Dew was about to open his mouth to remind him he had been sent away for the whole day to look for the white cat with black, gray and brown dots that usually kept mice away from the provisions but Frederick was already talking: "We have high visitors from the north! The king and queen of Havn are coming to sign another peace treaty and they're even bringing their son and some of their highest officials. When done we will have a great feast and it's my honor to pick out what ends up in those privileged gold-suckers' stomachs." Then he leaned over to him and whispered mysteriously: "A little bird also told me that there will be an engagement between princess Alba and the prince of Havn. What was his name again? Jonathan? I heard he isn't the brightest star on the night sky but how much worse can he be?"

They went along a corridor with wide windows and dark blue curtains that revealed the oak forest outside. The ground was covered by a black carpet with silver star flowers in the center. It was as if it was a whole different building to what Dew knew of the castle and its smooth stone surface or the wooden floor of his room. "Are we even allowed to be here?" he questioned while gazing at the opposite wall. There were drawings of people every couple of meters. The first one he saw was a broad man with tusks emerging from his lower jaw. The light reflected strangely from his pale skin. There was a dark blue satin robe over his shoulders and a golden crown with colorful stones inlaid in its surface on his head. Dew continued through the corridor and lost himself in all the paintings of kings, all with rare features such as fangs, scales, slit pupils. There was something so grotesque about it but he couldn't put his finger on it. There were several hybrid people out there and the public cherished them as if they were descendants of Bota herself. He stood still before the last two paintings. The first showed a man with scaly brown skin, barely any sign of a nose, yellow eyes and instead of ears he had what looked like fish fins on the side of his head. Just like every other king he wore the robe and the crown but the blue center of the latter had been replaced with velvet satin. On the right hung the portrait of a young woman with similar yellow eyes, black hair tied to a tight knot and brown skin with the faint pattern that reminded him of a corn snake. Even though he had never stood close to her he knew that this was the depiction of the young princess Alba who would ascend the throne once her father would be no more.

Too late he noticed that the top book was slowly sliding off until it was too late and it hit the ground with a soft thud. "You had one job" he heard a groan a few steps ahead of him. He had to kneel down for his chef to put the book back on. "In case of doing your job with your whole egg shaped head present you're doing a worse job than Claws!" To be compared to that grumpy and dement cat seemed a little too harsh to him. "What is it this time? The princess? You know you can't marry her" Frederick sighed. "No, no. Not that. I just noticed that his majesty Rufus the second isn't here," he tried to explain himself and it was right, the man on the left wasn't the current king of Bota. "Why would he be? This is a collection of rulers that people think are honorable and good representatives for our goddess and Alba's painting is just here as a placeholder until she proves herself worthy." "Why isn't he?" Dew wondered while continuing to follow Frederick back to the kitchen. "Oh, that's a long story. But in short: He is a human. Great shame, that's what the royal family thinks. Not only that but his wife passed away before creating a potential heir to the throne," he explained but there was something within his tone which felt off. "But there is one," Dew replied. "Yes but she was born after his wife died. There are only speculations on who the mother might be but just by the act of having a second so called 'relationship' he loaded much shame upon himself. Besides all of that he's a failure as a ruler. Just look at the management! Keep holding on to old traditions and rules as if he couldn't change them. Not keeping up good relationships with most people in power, his head advisor always did most of that, that dirty fat slug!" Dew was taken aback. Frederick made a spitting sound. They arrived at the door. "And now inside with you, we have a feast to plan!"