The Pirate and The Piper

I Can't Tell If This Is Good Or Bad

I Can't Tell If This Is Good or Bad

Akila's door was locked while the king figured out how to deal with him. There were two guards outside, both to keep the defeated former prince from escaping and to

shoo away the curious onlookers who wanted to see him. This went on for about a week, until they brought him his breakfast one morning.

They found him lying dead on the floor, a vial half full of poison next to him. It was a few hours later that they found the note.

Dear Shitty World, it read. I told you I would have my revenge. You don't know what I've done, and I don't plan on telling you, since I'd rather see you suffer trying to find out. Not that I will see it, since I just drank poison (you shouldn't have refused to kill me, you half-blind rat turd), but whenever you look at the Night, I'll be there.

Just you wait till you see my revenge.

Everyone in the court was gossiping about it, wondering what Alika's revenge could be. It couldn't be him enacting it, since they had just buried his body without a ceremony, so what could it be?

I couldn't tell if this was a good thing or a bad thing. On one hand, Alika was a monster and a bully who the world was probably better off without. On the other hand, suicide was a terrible fate since everyone blamed you for it, but being in a state where it seems like a good solution isn't to do with you at all.

Oh, yeah, the mysterious revenge probably made it a bad thing. I wasn't looking forward to finding out what that was all about.

Kade was pretty shaken up. After all, his brother had just committed suicide, no matter how horrible a brother he had been. What bugged him most was that there had been no ceremony. Alika had been a prince for most of his life. The fact that he lost that title two weeks before his death shouldn't have stopped him from having a few prayers said over his grave, in my opinion. I voiced this thought to Kade. He scowled.

"My father was ashamed of him. By our laws, he had to be stripped of all titles. My family is stupidly bigoted against commoners, so he's more ashamed of that than of what Alika did to deserve that. The shame, in his opinion, was enough of a reason not to give my brother a ceremony."

"We could lay flowers on the grave," I offered. "I don't know if you do that here, but it's a common practice in Lil."

Kade snorted. "He hates-- I mean, he hated-- flowers."

"Then we could light a candle for him," I offered.

"That would be nice."

I fetched my flint and steel from our room while Kade found a candle. The one he came up with was dark red, lumpy, and perfect for someone like Alika's grave. We dripped some melted wax from it into the gravestone, then pressed the base of the candle into the makeshift glue.

Kade sat in the grass of the graveyard, looking at his brother's final resting place. A single tear rolled down his face, then he started sobbing uncontrollably.

"It's not right," he sobbed into my shoulder while I held him close. "He was a horrible person! Why am I crying like this?"

I didn't know what to say. What's the proper response to someone who is struggling over whether or not he should be grieving? What do you say to someone who is grieving, when there's nothing that can be said that will fix what's wrong?

"He was your brother," I came up with at last, knowing as I said it that it might have been the worst possible thing to say.

Kade sobbed harder. I decided that Alika's death was a very, very bad thing for making myboyfriend this upset.g