Because I Could Not Stop For Death
"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." - Kurt Vonnegut
Because we are who we pretend to be, it is quite easy to forget who we once were. Princess Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca had been pretending to be dead for two months. Already, it felt like years.
There was more than one way to die, she knew now, and there was more than one type of death. No arrow shaft had pierced her heart, no sword edge had slit her throat, but death had been kind enough to stop by anyway. An expert scavenger, he stripped her of all the things that built a life: palace, father, husband, and throne. Discovering Princess Ashelia lost and broken among the wreckage of her kingdom, he took her along with him, as an afterthought. (It would have been cruel to leave her, and Death is not cruel, just inevitable.) All that remained was a nameless, still-breathing shell that christened herself Amalia, and would later claim the title Lady Ashe. Never again would she be known as Ashelia, the pretty, pampered princess who had never been capable of anything more than smiling and waving and serving tea to visiting dignitaries' wives.
Maybe it was a good thing she was gone, because Amalia was expected to do things the Princess would never have been able to do: dress like a bandit, live in a sewer, lead a rebellion.
She surfaced from her thoughts like a swimmer from the dark waters of a deep, still pool. Unconsciously, she tightened her grip on the hilt of the sword that she did not know how to use. She had taken it from the palace's armory the night she fled; the rebels' meager stock of weapons held nothing nearly as fine. The sword felt surprisingly solid in the palm of her hand; she had been half expecting it to slip through her ghostly fingers and clatter on the damp floor of the sewer.
"Princess Ashelia," Vossler protested, although to what he did not know. Something in him - the thing that made him a soldier and then a knight, and now a fugitive in his beloved country - shuddered at the sight of her looking like a street rat and wielding a sword.
"Amalia," she corrected him. "I am no longer a princess." She pivoted on the balls of her feet and thrust forward until her arm was parallel to the floor, stopping just short of his heart. Her wrist shook, unaccustomed to the weight of steel, and the point of the sword dipped towards his navel. "Teach me," she said. Her voice held no trace of the meek, quiet girl he had once guarded. (She sounds like a queen commanding her knight, Vossler thought, and the thing in his chest quieted.)
As Vossler patiently walked her through the basics of swordplay, she felt the harsh rasp of the air against her throat and the strong beat of her heart pumping blood through her veins. Her head ached and her bones creaked and her muscles burned.
I'm alive, she realized, and dropped her sword in astonishment.
A/N: The title is taken from Emily Dickinson's poem, Because I Could Not Stop for Death.