The Butterfly Crown

Out Of The Ashes - Keeva

I cannot make you understand.

I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me.

I cannot even explain it to myself.  - Franz Kafka (the metamorphosis )

Keeva

What I do remember from that night is that I woke up towards four o'clock in the morning. Maybe I had been laying awake during the whole night, but I clearly remember the tower of Melar chiming four times. Every chime felt like it pierced marrow and bone.

Three hours to go.

Three hours till...

In hindsight I alway claimed my escape had came out of the blue, that that very last fourth chime had sent out an impulse which coerced me to run away. But I must have had my eyes wide open the entire time for a  moment like that.

Nobody gets out of this city with not much more than a nightgown and two golden earrings. Nobody makes it past the streets of Melar to the gate without further knowledge. Nobody is able to find a safe passage across the harbor without knowing a sailor or two.

No, my escape cannot have been an impulsive decision. I must have taken the decision a long time ago. I must have planned it day by day subconsciously.

I shivered, stood up and glanced over the city that I called my home. The dense smog turned the city of iron into a city of emerald under its greenish shadow. Oh, how deceptive things could be.

I traced over the windowsill with cold, lean fingers. In three hours they would put a crown on my head. I had been drilled, trained and arranged for the moment like a swine before slaughter. Something inside of me had ripped, something similar to a sinew which contained all hope. The sound of the rupture was high and loud, like sirens screaming, beautiful but dangerous.

I casted a last glance out of the window and my feet moved me out of my chambers as if I had fallen into deep trance. I was barefoot, with each footstep the coldness stung my squeamish body.

On the third floor of the northern wing, there was a hidden passage leading outside of the castle. The guards started drinking at noon, falling into a deep drunken slumber by nightfall. By the time I approached them, their snores could be heard through the corridors. I passed by, unnoticed, and squeezed through the gap Edan and I had once hidden with a flowerpot. Nightly excursions were included in the repertoire of a princess who had a thirst for adventure.

Usually, I felt the rush of adrenaline, pumping through my veins and thumping heavily in my chest. Usually, I wasn't using the route to escape my fate during moonshine. The gap led into a tunnel made of soil and stone. I crawled through it on all fours. 

Normally the voyage trough the tunnel was accompanied by my swearing about the dirt that had gotten on my clothing, soft torch light and Edan who gently tried to reason with me. But Edan was sleeping; waiting for the day his best friend was going to rule the kingdom. The thought of a sleeping Edan, the thought that would haunt me till the end of my life, caused me to stop in the middle of my way out.

I closed my eyes despite the fact that I couldn't see anything anyways. I huddled up and toyed with the notion of staying here forever. In the darkness, me and my thoughts alone, covered in soil like a worm.

I remembered a reading, which I had been obliged to read during my lessons, about a man who woke up one day and had transformed into a large insect. Nobody did understood him due to his change into a monstrous verminous bug, his own family feared him though he escaped the monotony of his life as a salesman. I didn't recall the details, but I reckoned the book ended with his death.