She received the hand sized portrait two years ago from a pigeon sent by the prince. It was a magical portrait of him with a sepia hue just like she had asked for. She watched the portrait which had the prince in a seated figure. The background behind him was moving swiftly, giving the impression that the portrait was taken in his limo. His emotionless, enigmatic eyes would blink once…And then the picture would flicker and starts all over again just like a movie.
"How do I preserve this?" the princess had asked him. He never told her but she soon found out that the rapturous rays of the moon provided energy for the portrait so that it could keep reeling. She had the portrait for two years now and she would survey it sentimentally because it was all she had left of her beloved prince. He died in a war and his small kingdom was demolished. The ruins were cleared away and the grounds were planted with trees. Journals and scripts that contained records of the prince were burned. The ashes of the historic pages were scattered into the oceans so that all evidence of the existence of this twenty year old man was completely finished.
However, the vanquishers did not know about the portrait that belonged to his fiancée. The sudden death had shattered the princess into many shards that could not be mended. Her dreams were filled with torment and anguish where she found herself running through the corridors of a sepulchral palace in search of the prince. In her dreams, she always saw him walk out into the wilderness. She called to him but he never glanced back. The princess would wake during the middle of the night when there was no luminosity in the room except the light from the stars that penetrated through the large glass doors. She was fascinated at how easily the light slipped through the glass just at how easily the nostalgic tears slipped from the edge of her vision. She would remain sitting in the inconspicuous darkness until her vision grew softer and softer until everything faded to black.
The princess woke up late the nest morning and stepped out onto her balcony. The sun's rays shone onto the kingdom innocently. She stared into the forlorn distance where many trees were growing and recalled the days where she once saw tall buildings standing proudly in those lands. She never understood why the other monarchs wished to destroy the prince's country. A nervous maid called to her. The princess felt her crumbling conscious sink back into reality. The young woman dressed into extravagant gowns of silk ivory which were embellished with patterns of diamonds. She followed her father out into the palace gardens.
"I hate to see you like this, my little one" he would tell her as always and then he would find himself feeling ancient as he watched how beautiful his daughter was. It broke his heart to see her with so much grief. The princess was lost in a daydream. Her thoughts were occupied by her beloved prince. The features of his flawless face were blurred in her memory. She was unable to remember how alive he had looked during their moments together. She felt she was torturing her mind because the more she tried to remember what the prince really looked like, the more unfamiliar his features became in her memories. She hated to look at the portrait to aid her because he was not smiling in the picture. His elbow was resting against the window of the limo; his knuckles gently tipped his cheek. He seemed to be brooding.
The sound of metal crashing against lumber disturbed the princess from her reverie. She turned to face a new soldier training with a large sword. His exceptional skills at handling the vengeful weapon were admirable. He was very fair with his flaxen spiky locks and large blue irises that resembled the colour of a ferocious ocean. Each lash protecting the irises was like a dark storm cloud floating about a restless sea. His posture, his nonchalant behaviour intrigued the princess. The king introduced the two. The soldier gazed at the princess in a quiescent way and merely nodded. He placed his sword onto the long grass as the shimmering heat enlightened his effeminate features. Then the soldier turned his back to them and took in a deep breath of the fresh air that surrounded him. As he was turning to face them again the princess felt her hands tremble because the soldier's features were morphing. His hair changed in length and bled into a dark navy, almost black colour. His eyes stretched into and almond shape and were now the colour of a starry night. His skin turned from a soft peach to a moon-like glow. The princess glanced at her father to ponder if he was watching this transformation too but the old king seemed unabashed. Perhaps she was the only one who was observing this and then he stood before her, no longer a soldier but the prince she had loved so dearly. The princess clasped her hand over her mouth. She ran from the view with sudden fear and excitement.
As days passed, the princess would seek the soldier often. Every time she looked away from him, he seemed to change shape and look like the dead prince. The princess knew that his transformations were hallucinations but the soldier reminded her so much of her beloved that he appeared to have no personality of his own. It was as if he had breathed all the effervesced molecules of the prince and took his form. Something did not feel right to the princess. She should be treating the soldier as an individual human being but she was so convinced that he was like her prince that she did not care about who he really was. The soldier took her to the gardens one misty night, dressed in a lavish tuxedo. Then he led her into a waltz in the moonlight. As he twirled her with empathetic gentleness, the princess saw him change shape into her prince once again. Her heart was suddenly filled with delight. The moonlight caused the prince's skin to glow. She thought he looked so angelic in the forgiving darkness. His lips twisted into an awkward and forlorn smile. He whispered three words that meant the whole world to the princess. She stopped dancing. Her prince never told her those words when he was alive…
The prince's features slowly turned back to the delicate features of the soldier. The princess understood from there on that the two men were completely different people but she knew that the soldier cared about her more than a man who was once alive. She was finally ready to move on in her life and not be yielding to sentimental memories. The soldier slipped a beautiful silver ring onto her finger and they announced their engagement.
Her blissful days did not last too long. Her father declared was on a neighbouring country. To prove his loyalty, the soldier agreed to fight for the king. The princess was distraught as haunting memories flooded back into the wounded hallways of her mind. She argued fiercely with the soldier not to join in the war but he was adamant.
"I have to protect my honour but more importantly, I have to protect you" he told her. With vigorous aggression, the young woman slapped the bewildered soldier across his face. She ran to her room so peaceful solitude could heal her emotions but a feeling of guilt crept upon her.
The following morning, she ran through gloomy corridors to find the soldier in order to apologise to him but as she stood at the top of the stairs, she saw him walk out of the palace and into the eerie darkness. The princess tried to call out to him. He never looked back…
It was not long before she heard about the soldier again. Her mother wept immoderately as she explained how the young man was fatally injured during a battle. The princess felt the warm candle of hope flickering faintly inside her heart. She rushed to the room where the soldier laid sprawled on a bed. The silk sheets were stained with his blood. When the princess examined his wounds, her breathing became short and painful. The soldier's torso was riddled with bullets. There was a deep cut along the side of his forehead. She was able to see the ivory bone cracked underneath the heavy layers of blood. The battered warrior was in a solemn state of comatose. However, his eyes remained open. They stared at the ceiling piercingly as if searching for the wonders of heaven above. The princess placed a graceful palm over those eyes that she always admired and gently allowed the eyelids to cover the now drained oceans. She prayed that the lost waves would once again erode the white esplanades of the empty eyes. She grabbed his arm suddenly and shook him. She pleaded him to wake up and when that did not work; she clicked her fingers over his face and screamed his name until her lungs could not breathe anymore. Then she saw his chest heave and his lips took in the oxygen that surrounded them. His hair and face were taking the shape of the prince once again. The breath that was caught in his throat was released. It reacted with the water vapour and caused a temporary mist. Astonished, the princess went to her room. She took the portrait of the prince and walked out on to her balcony. The mysterious clouds blocked the moon-light from reaching her. Her soul was filled with a surge of emotion and she felt her mind drift away into someone else's possession. Through her despair she realised how little the prince had cared about her. He was a selfish man and she understood now that the other countries were always at war with him because of his unjust actions and irrational avarice. Perhaps the princess realised that her dead fiancée never really matched the idiosyncratic personality of the enigmatic soldier. She remembered those nostalgic memories of the moments she shared with her prince. Why was he always haunting her? He did not want her to move on. He did not want the soldier to take his place. His salient, emotionless eyes almost threatened her when she saw him in the soldier but the princess know that those who die move forward into the many portals of time. Ghosts should not have interfered with the living especially those who dared to return and walk into this world and so if the valiant soldier should wake from his coma; will he no longer breathe the vapours of a dead man?
She stared at the ring on her finger that the soldier had given to her. She promised herself to help him recover and then she left. The portrait remained reeling. A strong gust of wind blew it to the floor so that it was lying inconspicuously under the shadow of a pillar and as the feeble rays of the moon finally fell upon the balcony, they never reached the hidden portrait.
Two hundred years later, two archaeologists found a beautifully ornamented box that had belonged to a famous queen. However, they only found two items inside it, one was a silver ring, the colour was slightly tarnished, and the other was a hand sized portrait gilded with a golden frame but the portrait had a pitch black colour.
"These magical portraits always needed moonlight to keep working. It was extraordinary because movies were not invented that time but these expensive pictures moved again and again just like an old film" one of the archaeologists explained.
"But how come this one stopped working? Who was it that made this portrait? Who was in the portrait?" the other one asked. His fellow colleague did not know and they will never find out because the grief the princess had made her forget about the portrait for many years. One of her servants found it on her balcony after her marriage to another prince but the portrait had stopped working permanently. You may ask what had become of the soldier? The king did not like to see his daughter with such morose that he secretly told a few guards to dispose of the soldiers body but the guards refused to do anything heinous to a fellow warrior. Late one night, the king dragged the half dead man to the precipices of the Calm Sea and threw him down to the cold depths. He watched the perfect, angelic face of the soldier getting smaller in perspective until the young man crashed against the waves and was fully consumed by the lethal currents. After that event, the sea turned into a violent shade of blue. The Calm Sea became surrounds by dark clouds that gave rise to outrageous hurricanes and storms. When the other warriors tried to remember the personality of the soldier, they often mistook him to be a man he never was. They falsely stated that the soldier was an avaricious young man who desired power and their misleading information forced the Order of Knights to erase all records and portraits of the dead warrior. What about the princess? She moved on because anyone else would have done the same and because we never have any choice but to move on. Besides, who could allow ghosts to return to this world?
When the archaeologist left the ring beside the portrait in their research lab, they failed to notice a shadow appearing faintly in the portrait. They did not realize that the shadow was a face with two different eyes. One eye was large and blue like the ferocious sea while the other one was like the night sky. The image vanished as soon as it appeared.
This story began when one man breathed in the ghostly air around him and it ended when his existence was completely forgotten but you did not know that the existence of a prince was also forgotten even though he continued to live through someone else after his own death. When you were reading this story you did not know your were breathing in the words that I have written. You did not know that you were breathing in a work of my art. You did not know that I have indeed made you Breathe Me.