Bitterness
Once upon a time, there was a princess...
If the few people who knew Mara wondered why she knew how to do everything, they did not comment.
And once upon a time, there was a man-who-would-be-king.
"Practice," she had said once, when asked.
And they fell in love.
"At everything?" her questioner had said.
But he could not marry her until he became the king, and so he set off on a long quest.
"Practice and time," she had said, and that was the end of it.
And the princess' father begged of her to depart their shadowed lands for safer realms, but life without her love held no temptation, and she stayed.
If anyone wondered that Mara failed sometimes to respond to her name, as if was not her own, someone else's name as ill-fitting as someone else's clothes, well, it was signed on her lease as her name, wasn't it?
And after a time, the man-who-would-be-king defeated many foes and vanquished a great evil, and he became the High King of the Two Kingdoms.
If anyone wondered why Mara never seemed to age, or where she had come from, or where she would go, no one ever spoke of it.
And when the darkness was lifted and the world made bright, the High King came and claimed his bride.
The apartment that she had lived in for three and one-quarter years and that she would continued to live in for nine more months was unfurnished.
And the princess became his Queen, and they were very happy.
There was one set of blanket on the floors, of a strange material, woven soft and warm and strong, and there was one brazier made of copper, hammered with a flowing script that no man could read.
And she bore his children and ruled at his side, and they were very happy.
If, sometimes, the neighbors wondered at the fact that no furniture arrived, nor mail, nor visitors; nothing, in fact, save bottles of a certain spring water and packets of tobacco, then what of it?
But the princess-now-the-Queen was immortal, and the man-at-last-the-king was not.
Perhaps on occasion the woman who lived below Mara complained of being woken often, by a choked-off cry, on nights when the stars were dark. But she complained of everything.
And through he lived very long, for nearly thrice a hundred years, he could not live forever.
On those night, the bad nights, some thought that they could smell, faintly, the scent of burning tobacco drifting through the air, but the city was always full of smoke.
And when the High King departed the world, the widow-once-the-Queen no longer desired life.
On the darkest nights, there floated through the air a thin strand of song in a language that no other in this world could understand. Even without the words, it was haunting and beautiful and indescribably sad.
But the death she sought did not— could not— come. And there was no comfort for her.
That night, no stars shone down upon the world. That night, the copper brazier glowed brightly with burning leaves, and the trees whispered in the west wind.
And she lingered on, until all the world was changed and she alone remained the same, bound to her grief under a dying sun.
And she wept.
And she wept.
