Battle of the Darkness

The One and Only Part

Stage 1:

"Dad NO! No, Dad come back, please," Willow cried sobbing into the sleeve of her mother's beautiful silk dress. He lay there motionless, his face pale and skin cold. King Harrison of Comagicus had just passed at the young age of 30, leaving his eleven-year-old daughter Willow and his wife Queen Lucinda to rule the kingdom. No one knew of what killed Harrison, but what they did know was that it was likely to kill anyone who was infected.

"Hush, hush" Lucinda said trying to soothe her daughter but was failing to do so herself, tears were streaming down her cheeks and doting her daughter's strawberry blonde hair. Queen Lucinda herself had the same colored hair, but unlike Willow's gray eyes, she had cold, icy blue eyes that just got colder with the death of her husband. They wept until they could no more. From that night till dawn they stayed and watched, watched to see if maybe, just maybe there was a mistake and Harrison was still alive.

But things like that just didn't happen, not with the best healers in the kingdom, watching over him.

"Tell me! Why? Just why did he die? You have told me nothing!" Yelled the queen, face red from fury.

"Majesty, I- we don't k-k-know if we don't know what it is then we couldn't've healed him. We know nothing, nothing I tell you! We couldn't see if it was affecting his heart, his lungs, or his brain, nothing! It is just as if blackness took him,"

She stormed away and said nothing more of the king. Willow had watched this, multiple times her mother questioned and refused to take the answers, that the doctors had given her. Yet this time it was different, Willow now saw the breaking in her mother, the defeat. But, Willow was too numb to notice.

"Your Highness?" a servant asked, waiting for the invitation to come in.

"What do you want?" Willow asked, tartly not raising her eyes from her embroidery. These days 7 years after the death of King Harrison she really didn't care about anyone but herself and her mother.

"The Queen has asked for me to give you these parchments," he said, showing them sealed with the royal stamp.

"Put them there," she said, her gaze still not lifting.

The servant scrambled to the desk where piles of parchment lay.

This servant was around Willow's age and had dark, almost black eyes and slightly lighter hair. Willow never noticed, she didn't care, and nor did anyone else think she did.

He left almost at a run and didn't look back. Willow didn't move; she stayed there with the needle in her hand steadily stitching, and thinking. I just want to be left alone, I don't care for nothings such as him. The needle was still stitching, but with not much of a steady hand. Why should I care about whatever is in that pile? Why couldn't someone else do it for me?

"Your Highness?" the servant asked.

Willow took a deep breath, fighting for control, "What."

"The Queen has asked for me to give you these parchments," he said, showing them again with the sealed royal stamp.

"Put it there again as I told you last time," Willow said, trying to undo a stitch, but her hands were shaking.

He scrambled to put the parchments on the stack ever-growing higher and almost ran out the door.

Willow took yet another breath and undid the stitch with trembling fingers. I want to be alone! In peace, without the likes of him! How many times do I have to tell Mother?

Stitch, stitch, stitch.

"Your Highness?" the servant asked.

"Just put them on the desk like last time and the time before. Is it really that hard to grasp?"