A Clove of Fates

8. Pretty Princesses With Prosaic Existences

It was the next day and I was sort of hungover, which sucked because this feeling was the exact reason I didn't drink. It reminded me too much of being near my father, and if I wasn't mistaken, the whole point of drinking was to forget your problems. But wine was a must at father's soirees, and some idiot must have let Lord Quonod bring liquor from his own personal distillery (the drunkard), even after last month's incident. So. I was sitting in the throne room in the middle of the day, the light streaming in through my windows burning my eyes like acid and my head throbbing as if I were hosting my own midday rave in my cranium.

And there was also that sick, swimming feeling in my stomach, that light roaring in my ears, one that had been there since I learned that Aeska maybe wasn't a victim of my father's cruelty after all, that he had played a hand in stealing an innocent person from this world. I say maybe because it didn't feel real. In fact, everything around me started to feel distinctly unreal, like I was viewing the world—myself—from a distance, objective and impartial. I looked at myself and said "poor thing."

These episodes weren't anything new, and sometimes they served as a nice break from the chaotic spirals my mind was oh so prone to dive into.

 Didn't do too much for my headaches though. That was very much still something I was forced to suffer through. I breathed in and tried my best to maintain my stately posture, as I could barely tolerate my council's critiques when I was in a good mood.

Today had been particularly slow, for which I was thankful. Not a single petition. I wasn't sure whether or not that meant my queendom was in good standing, but no doubt Woodwow would find a way to spin that into one of the precursors to apocalypse. The thought made my head hurt more than it already was, so I strayed away from it.

I was contemplating the feasibility of me taking a nap without my council noticing when the door was pushed open, and in walked two people around my age, and a dog.

Now listen, I'm not afraid of dogs. I'm not. They were just so unpredictable, and far too personable. And really, whose idea was it to combine those two traits with sharp teeth and claws and a ground shaking bark that couldn't be interpreted any other way than I like to bite pretty princesses with prosaic existences? I just couldn't handle them, and certainly not in this position.

I flinched in what I could only hope was an imperceptible manner and widened my eyes. I silently sent a prayer to Ofsi, Goddess of Violence and Beasts, to give this one an even temperament and keep it from invading my five foot doggo free radius, even though I knew that prayers didn't really work for me. 

I pulled my eyes away from the canine and focused on the humans. You could always somehow manage to tell them apart from the demicreatures, the half-human children of the gods. It had something to do with magic was my guess, though I'm sure those Neskjan Scholars had already come up with a better explanation.