Queen's Light

Rhiannon's Letter

The first time she'd incensed blood petals was in a backwater den after her third promotion.

She'd wandered through the streets that night. It was raining, heavy droplets splattering against cobblestone roads. There were others she knew who dabbled in a myriad of drugs, but she'd never felt the need to take part in it herself. She wasn't exactly certain what drew her feet towards the lightless alley, but she found herself meandering through all the same. A woman, wrapped in ragged clothing, shivering in the cold rain, dark circles beneath her eyes, leaned against the wall. As Rhiannon passed, the trembling woman grinned unnervingly at her, stretching a hand to her side, towards a door so small Rhiannon wouldn't have seen it otherwise.

"Refuge for the wanderer," she croaked.

Curiosity piqued, Rhiannon paused. Whatever the reason, whether it was her weariness, the strange woman's knowing glare, or the shift in the rain, she turned to the small door and crouched to enter.

A man, looking to be older than his demeanor would have indicated, stooped behind a wooden counter. The air was permeated with a slight haze, giving it the feeling of an unearthly dream. The sound of rain became muted and distant.

The man glanced up at her entrance, his eyes sporting the same smudged circles below them. "Ah," His voice was low and gravelly, "a new customer. Come, come." He waved her in.

Shaking water off her short black cape, Rhiannon came forward cautiously, scanning every corner and studying every detail.

Seeing her wariness, the man waved her over with increased fervor. "There's no rank nor title in here, miss. Now, what is it you're looking for?"

Rhiannon's hand rested upon the hilt of her dagger underneath her cape. "What is this place?"

"A haven," the man said, "if you're interested."

"Interested?" Rhiannon's hand lowered. "In what?"

The man shrugged. "Depends on what you're looking for." He looked expectantly at her.

She thought for a moment. "An escape."

The man's lip curled into a smirk. "Then you've come to the right place."

A moment later, and she was sitting in a corner in a back room by herself, breathing in the smoke of a burning stick of dried incense.

That was the day she met the shadow.

She'd never had another name for it. It always came when she lost herself in blood petals, but rarely in the same form. It became a sort of companion for her on lonely nights, when the silence became too deafening and her dreams kept her awake.

Most nights, in fact.

Towards the end of the war, while she was gradually trying to quit her abuse of the wretched incense, she fell into the practice of writing down her waking experiences as well as her dreams. After some time, she found she enjoyed writing, styling her daily experiences as stories rather than just a detailed list of events. She wrote poems as well, even going so far as to keep a separate book of her poetry, each one having been scratched out, reworded, and revised numerous times.

It was easier to write than to speak. Her thoughts were more organized when written down, reality became more real. But some nights, when her nightmares would be worse than they'd ever been before, her shadow would return. Though Rhiannon knew she was long past her days of incense, the hallucination never truly left.

When she became queen, she found she had less and less time to write for herself. She grew to accept it, and began to write only during certain periods of the day.

The shadow failed to reappear. She'd almost believed she was rid of it.

Until...

Why would it have come? Was it the inevitability of Damien's war? Was it the heaviness in the deepest reaches of her chest? Was it the sensation of a strange loneliness in her chest that grew day after day?

Whatever the case, she wrote of it. Wrote and wrote and wrote until her hand cramped and her head whirled and she wanted nothing more than to think of something other than her own haunting.

So she turned the page and wrote a letter.

To my beloved.

I am a lark singing in a meadow, I am a deer prancing in a forest. I am the sunshine coaxing wildflowers to bloom, and I am the wind blowing through the trees. I am the snow falling gracefully on a cold winter's day, amidst the beauty of temperature's death. All this and more.

I could search for all eternity to find the right words for what I feel and still not come any closer to accurately phrasing my love for you.

I know it is difficult to love again after having one's heart broken so horridly. Given that, I am so unimaginably grateful for your care for me. It is nigh inconceivable to me that a person would come to love me in the way that you do, even after seeing every iota of who I am and who I have been.

When I am with you, I feel like singing. When you touch me, I feel my heart flying through the air. When you kiss me, I never want to pull away. And when you are not with me, and I am not with you, I cannot think of anything but you. My mind is consumed with thoughts of you, and I am anxious until I get to see you once again. I long for your hesitant but fierce smile, for those moments when you forget yourself and radiate the purest of joys. The things I would do to keep that smile on your face would bring chills even to your rigid spine, my darling. You tease me and laugh with me, rare parts of yourself shining through that I wish I could capture and put into bottles, so that when I find myself aching without you, you would never be more than an arm's length away. You have opened yourself to me in a way that I know you have never opened to anyone else. Know that I am fully aware of the honor I have received in that, and I treasure what you believe to be the most hideous parts of you that you would rather I despise.

Likewise, I have shown you the deepest reaches of my being, and instead of turning away from them, you took them with gentle hands and breathed life into me once more. Your words echo in my ears on the darkest of all days, in the most sleepless of all nights. I cannot keep the smile from my face when you are with me, and I cannot tell you how relieving it is to be able to smile with meaning.

In short, my love, even if you took a dagger to my chest, I would go down singing your praises. For it is not darkness nor light which love is founded upon, but a humility in understanding both.

I love you.