The Final Diary of Her Highness Queen Blister:
Why does vertigo never last?
Imagine hanging off the edge of a spire piercing the clouds. If you look below, all you'd see is the thin stone walls descending until they finally disappear below the sky's snow drifts.
Atop that tower, dangling from its edge, you'd forget behind your wonder and joy just how much it would hurt to fall. When you're forced from that high though, you begin to realize how much more painful it is to descend the heaven's winding stairs than to take that singular plunge from the edge.
So I ask again, as I hear my weary strides resound through this small chamber of serpentine steps, the end I fear just another few hundred paces below, why does vertigo never last? I used to be on that lighthouse, a satellite to all below me. A princess even, with those who adored me. Now though, I meander this course alone with only the sometimes scalding title "Queen Blister".
Scalding? Such a thing may seem surprising to many who know me, not that any do, not really anyway. Why would one so powerful and cruel, a heart of darkness roiling in her cold, black soul ever feel anguish at such a title? Believe it or not, I never really wanted to be a queen, not really. Loved? Perhaps, but never really a queen. I realize that now, even if I can do nothing about it.
See, as a daughter of Queen Oasis, I was trained that the only way you made it through another day alive was with a dagger strapped to your side and an eye always over your shoulder. Such a point may seem unconnected to the previous topic, though save your breath and instead ask yourself this: how could one who learned the best technique of slitting a throat before the feeling of her mother's embrace (which I might add, I still don't know) grow up feeling love? I envy Blaze in her innocence. Oasis hadn't even bothered teaching her; after all, who would assassinate one so pathetic? I also envy Burn in how she actually enjoyed those lessons.
Anyway, how could a dragonet who knew the feeling of a ruptured neck better than the ABCs ever feel love? She didn't of course. Smiles were rare in those days, and they still are. As logic dictates though, something had to fill that hole. It was desire which won, an incessant demand for power and control over others, though deeper than that ran a desperate thirst for adoration, never to be quenched.
I chased power because it allowed me to be praised, to feel like a goddess, immortal and fawned over. Eventually, my perceptions of self became dependent upon this royal doting; insecurity and rage washed to the surface if anybody dared challenge my authority. Burn hurt soldiers for insubordination because she enjoyed it; I mutilated any guard who hazarded the carefully tread trail of misconduct because I couldn't brave how weak I'd become. Through all my years as Queen, the only thing I couldn't confront was myself.
I said earlier that I had those who adored me, though now I realize that to be a lie, rather I had those who smiled because they feared what would happen if they didn't. As I take my leave to meet with the dragonets of destiny, which I feel to be the final act of this twenty-year tragedy, I understand this truth.
Make no mistake though. I will still be Queen, for like this vertigo eluding me, goodness is fleeting.
Author's Notes: I haven't written much recently and I wish to get back into it, so I wrote this short. Its only five hundred words, but still good enough to spark my imagination. Hopefully, I'll begin uploading more frequently. To anyone reading this, have an amazing day.
