Reining Red

Chapter Seven

"So this princess," Mag said to Amelia, "is causing you trouble?"

Amelia was on another of her visits to see Mag, and they were collecting tomatoes from Mag's small vegetable patch, which she grew in an old wheelbarrow.

"She doesn't just cause me trouble," Amelia complained, "you should see the way she speaks to her parents!" She hesitated before continuing, "no, not her parents, the king and queen, for crying out loud!"

"I sense anger within you, child," said Mag, plucking a ripe tomato from its stalk.

Amelia's lips tightened. Mag bugged her at times like this, when she pointed out the obvious. "Yes, I am angry! She doesn't appreciate anything she has, and seems to think that everyone is completely beneath her!"

"Are they not?" Amelia's eyes widened in surprise and she faced Mag, allowing her empty tomato basket to drop to the floor.

But Mag did not notice, she continued to pick tomatoes, and she did not call after Amelia as she stormed off, and she did not reply when Amelia yelled at her, asking who's side she was on. All she did was pick those tomatoes, and wonder what irked the girl so deeply, that she would resort to shouting at her friend and teacher.

***

Amelia had not felt so alone in years. She could not talk to Timothy, he had suffered a terrible loss, and would suffer another in a few weeks when Amelia was gone, and Mag was siding with that terrible princess for who knows what reason. Isolation closed in around her, shutting her out of the world she knew, and into a dark, quiet place with no direction. Not even Timothy's arms as they wound around her could help her find a way out. She felt more numb than fingers that had been submerged in snow, colder than that princess' frosted heart, more lost than before.

Where did she belong in a world that would not accept her?

***

"Talk to me," said Timothy, gazing into the fire, "you're so mute these days."

They sat in the chairs in his quarters, the fire eating up logs, attempting to fuel it's endless hunger.

Amelia could not think. Her mind was blank and it was as if she were a shell, her brain having gone for walk-abouts, but at the same time she was thinking of so many things that they merged into one, unsolvable mess.

"I met a cat, once," Amelia murmured. Timothy repositioned himself, so he was leaning closer to her, trying to catch her every word. "Wasn't he a picture," Amelia would think, not at this moment, but later on, when she could no longer see this picture live, only in the eye of her mind. "Just lounging there, so at peace, with his limbs at those angles, and his head inclined towards me, like he truly cared, so at peace, so at peace..."

"I met this cat," Amelia repeated, "and it spoke to me."

"I'd call you mad," Timothy replied, "if I didn't believe you so much."

"It told me that it was small, and that I were too. Right now, I understand. I've never felt so small in my life."

Timothy pondered on this for a moment, and whilst he did, she wished she had spend more time soaking him in; his careless perfection, the way he lounged on an armchair made only for sitting properly in.

"You do underestimate yourself, my dear," said Timothy, a smirk growing onto his face. "You may be small to you, but to me, to my world, you are the biggest thing in it."

"Don't try to flatter me."

"I'm not, I only speak the truth."

Amelia joined in with his grin, and within moments, they went from being a supremely gloomy couple, to a pair of smirking fools sitting before a ravenous fire.