Time for the Truth: a story of a sleeping beauty

time for the truth

"I love you." his dark words echoed in the caves.

"And I, you"

"How much? "

"More than a summer's breeze, and an evening's rain."

"You may go." A third voice broke in between our ritual, cutting it short. I turned sharply on my heels, ignoring the way his rich voice cast shivers of pleasure and fear down my spine.

"Enyada." I stop, clasping my hands for warmth. Nothing else is said, and my eyes blur against the deepness of the dark. This is my name now. My hands shake, and I can feel my head swimming.

There are tinny sounds, and my knees sting as they buckle and fall on the rocks.

Ππππππππππ

I scratch my nose, drifting awake. It is all the same state anyways, so why should it matter that I am frozen? These people who took me, they take my name, my identity, and my warmth. I curl into myself, fading to sleep.

"Wake. Enyada." One of their luxurious voices catches my awareness. They must have beautiful singing voices -if they were ever free enough to use them. The person is hidden in a robe. I cannot see any's face but my betrothed until I am married. The only room I see him in is a darkened chamber, each night where we say the most meaningless words that could be said.

If they meant something like they are supposed to, would I be happy?

I hold out my arm and the robed figure comes forward, pressing their lips against my hand. The flames from their lips rush their way into my blood, singeing their way to my heart before I faint again.

Πππππππππππ

I can sleep for days here.

This is one of the many ironies of my current life.

I had vowed to never sleep again after I was poisoned by a needle while I was spinning the thread to weave the tapestry as a gift for my sisters after I was to leave on my wedding day.

The wedding day I didn't know would be so soon.

The man -or seemingly a man- who saved me from the sickness made me reliant on the antidote, so that I must swear to be with him until my dying breath.

They forced me to relinquish my loud, colorful home for a place of darkness and cold. But those were dreams... They say I was poisoned by Maleficent's curse, that it wasn't a fairytale, that someone had kept the poison from the queen of hundreds of years ago, to slowly poison me before my family's eyes, to prove something. Something that only the poisoner knows, because I was not killed, I was rescued by the golden man on a horse, literally the man of my dreams, but I am betrothed to the prince- a man without face or true voice, a man I do not know, dreams or otherwise.

They named me 'Enyada' which means freedom in their language, while I am trapped here, possibly forever.

I am to be married in a year to a man that I have only heard say a dozen words to me, since he arrived.

Because there is a story of a girl who gets a disease from hundreds of years ago who is fated to love the king, be the downfall of the most powerful in the kingdom, and to make their race great once again. 

Only once the girl is cured and married of course. How bothersome that they should think I am the girl holding all this power when they let me have none. 

He cannot even be bothered enough to give me the antidote himself.

I like to pretend I sleep, even when I do not.