Love comes in many forms.
Speaking about it, imagining it, and melting at the mere prospect of it can leave you giddy with its richness.
But defining it, expressing or experiencing it - that's a different game.
Elijah - the heir to the throne of...
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"I will stay."
I shot my head up to look at her, taken aback.
I stood in front of the doors of my chamber as she came closer to me, stepping over my still shadow.
"I will stay until the coronation...because I gave you my word. I gave the Prince of Yandestine - the future King - my word. That is all you are to me, and I understand that. I respect that. That's all I came to say, your highness."
She released a light breath and turned around, plainly walking away from me, as even the edges of her shadow refused to touch mine as it left.
I wanted to grasp her wrist. I wanted to grasp it, pull her back to me, and playfully tell her that she was the one being 'awfully dramatic' this time.
I wished I could do that, make her laugh, and continue as normal as if nothing had happened. Nothing that caused her to hand me such empty words of meaningless respect, with a face lost of emotions like she had been forced to sacrifice something.
I shut my eyes, pushed the doors behind me open, and entered my chamber.
I won't break.
I quickly walked towards my art easel standing in the corner of the room, and brought it to the centre. Whipping out the brushes and paints behind them, I started working on a new piece with no fixed destination.
I blankly surveyed the various colours in front of me first, immediately choosing a biting black and a taffy pink, eliminating all the other shades.
Picking up a thick flat brush, I doused it into the pink paint and slathered it all over the white canvas board; not paying a single drop of attention to order or quality.
The paintbrush seemed like it was violently thrashing, suffocating between the tight hold of my fingers and the canvas, wanting an escape from my toxic misery. But I couldn't let go.
Dip, slather, paint.
Dip, slather, paint.
Dip, slather, pain-
Somehow, I had managed to bring the black paint into the piece as well, and when I stepped back from the board to look at the bigger picture - it was just a cluttered, dirty blend of two colours I had always thought belonged nowhere near each other.
How did that happen?
How did I let that happen?
I flicked my shoes off my feet, holding a tethered scream, as I settled on my bed.
I stared helplessly at the painted mess, and I tried my best to figure out what I could have done better. Or what I could do to change it now, if I still had the time.
A bell rung.
It shook me out of my thoughts. I knew that it was one of the first three bells to be rung, leading up to the official commencing of the pre-coronation ceremony.
