The Realm of the Sun

Clothra and the Sea

                 
         They lay in the soft lush grass, drying in the sun that peeked through the canopy.

          "Just wait..." Connor whispered, his arm underneath Eirainna as they looked up at the cloudless cobalt sky, "every day at this time, the sun moves over the clearing and makes a circle of light."

          She smiled and closed her eyes, feeling the warmth of the sun as it stopped directly over them, sending uninterrupted beams of light all the way down to the forest floor. Suddenly, everything was bright. They sat up to find they were encased in a perfect ring of light.

          "It's beautiful," she murmured in awe. It felt as though the light was protecting them in its singular embrace. Soon, the sun passed over them and the momentary brilliance subsided. Eirainna watched the blades of grass in between her fingers as they turned from yellow to a shadowy green. When she turned to smile at Connor, he was already looking at her.

          "I think you'd make a fine queen," he said.

          "Me?" she laughed, "Never. What makes you say such a thing?"

          "You know what the people need and you help them first hand. That is perhaps the only necessity for being a ruler, after all. Knowing what must be done and doing it."

          "I'm not a very commanding person. I think that's necessary, don't you?" Eirainna looked adoringly at his thoughtful expression.

          "Perhaps," he said with a quizzical brow, "But you have something rare. And Maeve does not, nor will she ever."

          "What's that?" Eirainna said with an amused smile, finding it funny that he was so adamant about this.

         "Every time someone approaches you or speaks to you, no matter who, you respond with kindness and grace."

          "How would you know that?"

          "I've seen you. I've seen it. Even in a few days at Tara. When someone speaks to you, anyone, you listen. And you care."

          "You only think that because I was kind to you," she averted the weight of his genuine sentiment with a playful laugh.

          "Yes, I the enemy," he argued. Eirainna's smile marked her surrender. Connor placed his hand on hers and kissed her shoulder, which had reddened in the sun.

          "I wouldn't like it though, being queen. That is where Maeve and I differ. And Clothra—my eldest sister—she was so gentle and sweet, but she was brave, and such a born caretaker. She would have been a great queen. Oh, you'd have liked her, Conn, you really would have."

          "Would she have been queen if..."

          "Yes," she said, looking past him as she attempted to understand something distant, something too far away to grasp, "Perhaps we would not have been at war."

          "If you won't think me intrusive for asking, how did she die?" he asked, carefully. Eirainna's heart began to beat slightly faster and she could feel it somehow in her fingertips.

          "It was an eerie day...foggy, but silent. There was no rain. Everything was sort of still. Like a dream. Clothra had said to me that she was going to the sea to bathe and of course with her being eight months with child, I had offered to go along...but she said she didn't want to trouble me in her usual selfless way," Eirainna trailed off. She had not spoken of this day since it happened. Eirainna's hand separated from Connor's and began to grip the grass on the forest floor. She ran her fingers over the tickling blades at first, then plucked them one by one from the soil as she spoke.