Title: The Dead of the Night
Game: Seima no Kouseki/The Sacred Stones
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Fire Emblem: Seima no Kouseki is owned by Intelligent Systems and Nintendo
Word Count: 1655
SPOILER WARNING: Chapter 14 Eirik.
It was dark. He could hear no sound in the hallways, and could see only what was lit by the moon and stars. He could feel no breeze brushing against his skin, yet the night was freezing, chilling him to the bone.
He remembered asking his mother once, during the many times she tried to coax him to sleep, why the nights were so cold and the days were so hot. His mother had smiled that smile he loved and said that it was because of the sun. This little revelation confused him, because when the rare storm clouds gathered and hung heavily over the horizon, blocking out all traces of the sun, it was still hot. He was going to ask her why that was, but before he could ask, she crossed her arms and said, in a somewhat reproachful tone, that he should be getting to sleep now or she would be angry with him the next morning, and he had complied, even though he did not think his mother would really be angry, but he didn't want to make her sad.
He never could bear the thought of making her sad.
He walked carefully along the corridor, almost afraid to break the silence with the sound of his shuffling feet. Along the way, he passed a room with its door tightly shut and barred. That door, he knew, was locked, and had been for many years, as if to prevent the memories of what had happened in that room from escaping and overwhelming the palace with grief.
It had happened in the middle of the night, he remembered. A night similar to this one, cold and dark, but different, with the sound of whispering voices instead of still silence. Although, before the whispers came a loud bang that woke him slightly, but he quickly returned to sleep, thinking that it was only something that had fallen to the floor. Instead, it had been the whispers that roused him from his bed, and unable to get back to sleep this time, he wandered out of his room. There was a soft light coming from his father's study, so he walked there, thinking that if his father was still awake he could tell him about his day: the new technique Carlyle had taught him, how boring his history lessons were, how he made his mother laugh when she tried to get him to sleep. His father liked listening about that.
But he didn't see his father at first when he entered the messy room, just a lot of the old men who were always with his father and Carlyle and his mother with their backs turned to him. It wasn't until one of the old men saw him and cried out something he didn't understand that everyone then turned their faces towards him. Some of the faces looked shocked, some looked uncomfortable, some looked sad. He saw that his mother's eyes were rimmed red with tears. Another old man murmured something about how a child his delicate age shouldn't see such things, but he did see: it was his father sleeping on the bed he used when reading all the papers made him too tired to even move. Carlyle gently took him aside and told him that something bad had happened to his father and that his mother was the Queen now, but he didn't quite understand what he meant; his mother had always been the Queen.
He remembered wondering why his mother was crying so much when his father was only sleeping.
He was halfway though the corridor now, in his mother's study. In the middle of the study was a desk, made from the finest pine in Rausten, its varnish diffracting the light from the moon and stars. It was a beautiful desk- everything his mother owned was beautiful- but whenever he looked at the thing, he could not help but feel an intense dislike and revive that moment years ago when he realised everything had changed.
It was a week after they had laid his father in the musty, dark crypt underneath the palace, a day after the old men and his mother had took part in some strange ceremony that somehow made his mother a queen that was different from the one she was before. There were no lessons that day, so he had wandered around the palace, alone and bored. At nightfall, when he came near his mother's study, he realised that he hadn't seen her all day and decided to go find her, talk to her about the ceremony, tell her how beautiful she looked and ask her what exactly that ceremony meant. The study door was shut, so he opened it just enough to poke his head in and see if she was there.
She was sitting behind the desk, writing, a stack of books on one side, papers on the other. The old men were with her, gathered around the desk, watching her write. One of the old men saw him, and told him without moving away from his mother that his mother was busy with very important matters and that he shouldn't bother her and be a nuisance. He remembered staring at the old man, taking what he said as an insult. Of course his mother had time for him! He was never a bother to her! But when he opened his mouth to tell the old man that, his mother looked up from the papers she was writing and said that she really was busy right now with these papers that needed reading and signing and she was very sorry that they couldn't talk but a later time, or day, would be all right, wouldn't it?
It wasn't until that moment that he understood what Carlyle had meant. That his mother was no longer 'Mother', but now 'Her Majesty the Queen Ishmaea'.
He took something from his pocket, placed it tenderly in the middle of the desk on top of a pile of papers where his mother could see it, and left the room. It was a letter he had written and re-written for the past month, at night under the weak light of a lamp, when he wouldn't be interrupted or intruded.
Although there was a time, he remembered, when this wasn't always the case. In the first few late nights when she was 'Queen' instead of 'Mother', while he was sleeping, his mother's light footsteps would approach his room. She didn't try to wake him when she entered though, just stood near the door and watched him. But he was only pretending to sleep, and if he opened his eyes ever so slightly, he could see a faint smile playing on her lips, as if she knew that was exactly what he was doing. To see her smile, to know that only he could ever make her smile that way somehow made him feel satisfied and comforted. That not being able to see his mother whenever he wanted didn't matter so much anymore.
As the weeks passed, when he and his mother played their little nightly game, he could see small changes in his mother. She still stood at the doorway, watching him at a distance, but slowly, the smile that he loved faded away, the corners of her mouth gradually dropped, her forehead became more lined and furrowed with worry, her face became more pale and gaunt, her eyes seemed sad and tired and distant.
Until one night, she just stopped coming.
He was at the end of the corridor now, the moonlight illuminating the stairs to the left. He crept down the stairs and made his way to the kitchens. To his relief, the kitchens were empty, and he tiptoed across the room, for the door to the passage the food merchants used to unload their wares. Cook was forgetful sometimes, and on some days, left this door unlocked. He had made sure that today was one of those days, but still, a feeling of dread rose when he pushed against the door, a feeling that disappeared when the door easily parted from its frame. At the other side of the door, he eased it back. A few footsteps into the passageway, when he was sure that no one could hear him and knowing the passage ran in a straight line, he bolted.
As he ran, he wondered how everyone would react when they found he had disappeared. His mother would be sad, he knew. But doubt seeped in as he came closer to the end of the passage, to the door that by some extraordinary means could be opened from inside, but not outside. His mother hardly noticed him now. How could his mother be sad that he was gone when she barely saw him? The resentment that had built up inside him since his father's death finally surfaced. She didn't care about him anymore! Why should he care if she was going to be sad! She deserved it! His stride became heavier and his breath more ragged as he fought the urge to cry.
He stopped running as the passage sloped down. The total absence of light in the passage suddenly occurred to him as he began to feel for the door he knew was close by. People didn't know where they were going in the darkness. Something about this should have scared him, he mused as he found the door handle, but instead the unknown of it all thrilled him. He pushed the door handle down, opened the door just a crack and looked out, at the stars and moon shining clearly against the dark and cloudless sky, the endless sea of sand, all of the unpredictability and freedom they had to offer. The unpredictability, the freedom that he was never going to get here.
He opened the door and ran into the dead of the night.