For quidditch league, round eight.
There's a big stone castle on top of the hill. The bricks are crumbling, the portraits in its halls are fading, and the suits of armor in the drafty hallways echo eerily through the night.
It houses madmen.
The townspeople tiptoe around the castle, repelled by an invisible wall of prejudice and superstitions. It is not the way a kingdom should operate but it is how the Black family rules.
They're so busy looking up, that everyone beneath them is lost in the equation. It's not only peasants, though. Sometimes princesses fall out of grace too.
Her life is awash in silky rustling gowns, diamonds thrown around like pebbles, blood-shot eyes, and hierarchies. She's on a path where everything is good, if you can learn to look past the bad and appreciate the pure. She is pure. Royalty suits her.
The townspeople starve and the rulers laugh, standing on the balcony and glaring down at the ground. The people have no bread. The solution is distressingly obvious. Let them eat cake.
Some nobles rant, some rave, some sigh. The Blacks make their way back into the castle, bemoaning their subjects.
Only one girl remains outside. She's slight, with wispy black hair and a sense of confidence far greater then her judgement. Holding out a knife, she beckons to a boy in the crowd. They stare at each other, unblinking. Then the gaunt boy looks away, buries his face in his tattered clothing, and cries. The woman staring next to him closes her eyes and pushes him forward. She has no choice but to say goodbye to her firstborn, knowing that he was sick and going to die anyway. Wishing that it wasn't at the hands of a teenager.
He doesn't die, though. She carves an intricate line on his arm, paper thin and shallow, but bleeding. An unnatural silence falls over the crowd as they watch the pool of blood grow, the boy faint, and the little girl go mad. The girl does not hear the silence, nor the shout that rings out over the castle of her angry uncle, demanding back his knife. All she hears is a ringing in her ears. Watching the blood drip down his arm, she launches herself onto the ground and cries. His blood is not riddled with filth. It is just as red as hers.
There is an unbridgeable gap between noble and not. If someone takes a step down, they fall, never quite regaining their balance. There are no comforting whispers of "Kids will be kids." There are no hugs or explanation of why everything she thought she knew is a lie. There are only shouts, that will echo in her head for the rest of her life.
Brat. Filth. Deranged. Unhinged. Besmirching the honor of our forefathers.
Years pass, and the little girl grows. The balls have slowed to a trickle, the marriage proposals never came. Her wispy hair is dull and the crown that rests on it slides off frequently, as if it, too, knows that she doesn't belong. Royalty hurts her.
She marries Orion, in a whirl of tears and rejection and gold that cannot solve anything. If she knew better, she might think that this isn't what a wedding should be.
They take their vows, her sadly and him sullenly. Peasants are crowded around the courtyard, forced to watch but unable to enter. She sucks in her breath before her "I do." This is the moment that will decide her fate. She should stand up tall, and accept the responsibility of her bloodline. After all, she has a heritage to uphold. She cannot. The insults still echo in the back of her mind.
Three words come out of her mouth, instead of the two she was looking for. The minister calmly skates over the faint "I don't know," and moves on with the service. No one ever told her that she doesn't have all the answers, and it is okay. They live in a world where no one asks. Without questions, what is there to respond to?
Blood purity takes over her life. If she cannot convince herself of its truth, she is determined to hide her insecurities. She yells about pure blood and mud-bloods, about peasants and filth and a Black's position in life. No one notices when she loses her voice. It's all just noise to them. No one notices when the obsession with blood-purity turns into an obsession with bleeding.
Red makes her sick. Black makes her nauseous. It's a constant battle between truth and lies, pain and unwanted opinions about a cause she doesn't believe in.
Her son runs with the peasants. Running home, he sings of rags, riches, power, and crowns dragged into the dirt. The part of her heart that agrees with him horrifies her. She yells louder, hoping to drown out his cries.
Blood-traitor. Filth. Besmirching the house of our forefathers.
The turmoil worsens. Even the older Blacks, adept as they were at tuning out everything the didn't want to deal with, have to pick up their heads and listen. The whispers are spreading. The earth shakes. Whispers turn to shouts and they're yelling from the rooftops now. Revolution.
She commissions a painter. If her marriage cannot hold, if her life is really a lie, she will remain. She will be strong because she doesn't care anymore. (She'd like to pretend.)
The quaking peasant refuses to paint the portrait in her blood. After refusing to use his own, either, he is almost killed. Somehow, his head is saved. They sit for hours, and he paints. It's a hideous portrait because she is not a pretty woman. Royalty destroys her.
Orion hits her. At night, they roll away to opposite sides of the bed, each lost in their own thoughts. And when he comes close, he leaves bruises that connect with her scars, destroying her. It is picture of her pain, more accurate then any portrait. She suffers silently because she know that this is what happens to disgraced girls. One night, he hits hard and the picture is becoming too graphic for her. This cannot be an accurate description of his love. Her life is not that wrecked yet, is it?
This time, she does not yell. She pierces him with whispers. He has learned how to drown those out yet. Her whispers mingle with his disbelief at being opposed.
If she really is this upset about their marriage, he asks, why don't they take off their rings? He is mocking her but she agrees because the diamond is weighing her down, showing her flashes of light that aren't really there. Tearing off Orion's ring, she hears a sickening rip of skin. She cannot look up, so she looks down, trying to ignore the bloodstains on the canvas.
She will paint the kingdom red.
The revolution takes her.
When they find her body, she is splayed next to a peasant. A crude, stone sword lies on the ground. They look away as she bleeds but have no qualms about jeering at him. They pretend not to notice that it is impossible to tell the difference between the pools of blood on the ground. They both bleed red.
sorry this was really disturbing and not all that good. leave a review, if you made it to here?
Nina xx