It went on the same way forever. Royalty was calculated in careful routines and heavy tradition that caked The Queen and King's faces white. The pair would wake up, eat breakfast, attend to business and from there Elizaveta would go outside, tend to her garden for an hour, and read. Until her husband gave her something to do. Then there was lunch. And eventually dinner.
The days followed a formula of similar chemicals. Sometimes, there would be additional oxygen. Sometimes addition hydrogen dioxide and acid. But those were all pieces to be clicked into place by the careful, wrinkled hands of the all mighty God.
And so slowly, as was a piece of the grand reaction, the summer changed to fall.
That day, The Queen was dressed in dull grey.
And instead of tending to the plants, to keep their thick veins and skin color healthy, she sat in her rocking chair and wore her heavy silver crown. While her eyes darted in no particular direction, but certainly into those impossible grey bricks.
Most of the butterflies had gone. But one remained, with glorious spots like a leopard's coat and radical blue-green eyes written on either side of its wings. They were outlined in heavy black liner, like pretty coal.
And this butterfly collected its pollen and stole part of The Queen's garden. But it was allowed to, because it was rainbow spotted and impossibly beautiful.
"How dreadful."
Then, a large black crow went crashing from the sky. Huge, ugly wings leaving a spatter of greasy feathers on the grass. There was its wretched noise—an infernal cawing that wrote out infidelity as the beak crushed the butterfly's head.
After the murder, it tore back into the sky, leaving shredded remains of luminescent wings with one or two of its oily feathers.
That must have been the last butterfly either one of them saw for a while.
"Gilbert." The Queen said.
"Yes, My Lady?"
"Don't call me 'My Lady' anymore." And she stood up on her tired knees and walked back inside, that long train of silken grey following closely behind her, as if it were a needy child. Even in those comparatively thin castle lights, The Queen's crown of metal roses glowed like a halo.
Now Queen Elizaveta was sitting in her royal purple chair in her royal purple parlor with whom else but Gilbert at her side?
"Gilbert." The Queen said.
"Yes, Queen Elizaveta?"
"You leave here every night. What is it like?"
"The town?"
Then there was one of those long, heavy pauses that forced Gilbert to breathe in the dust of the room. There was just one window crammed into the eastern wall, clouded up by purple and golden curtains.
The whole damn place smelled like a library.
"Yes. The town."
"It's fine." Gilbert had to string a few sentences together. It was hard to know exactly what to say to one of the owners of the entire world. "It's nice around here. There's a bunch of super expensive stores and everyone lives in a huge house."
"How about where you live?"
"It's still nice." There it was again, that mute gasp for air. And just for a moment, his eyes got caught in the froth of Queen Elizaveta's dress. Now, it was a frowning blue that looked like an angry patch of ocean. Where the froth spits on top of the water and the waves are at least ten feet high.
"You can be honest with me."
But before Gilbert could say anymore, Queen Elizaveta spoke again.
"My husband is a cheapskate; I know. I've seen him wear patched underwear, and it was cheap in the first place."
The servant grinned his crooked grin and it made The Queen grin as well.
"No; there must be trouble out there somewhere. This kingdom can't be prefect because we own it. Well—because my husband owns it. Sometimes I wonder how I became queen. My family was high class, but not anywhere near the level of royalty. But I met Roderich—I'm sorry. The King. And somehow, for some reason, he decided he loved me dearly. Even though he was surrounded by women twice as intelligent, twice as beautiful, twice as well versed—and the worst part is—"
But that was where Queen Elizaveta stopped. Before she ran herself off that cliff of no return. Words didn't come tied to receipts. You couldn't give them or get them back.
This was like screaming into a gorge.
The clock ticked gently near the door. Then there was the smell of dust again.
"You're the most beautiful, intelligent, well-versed, well-dressed queen there ever was. Just because those other tarts had richer parents or more royal blood or whatever doesn't mean they would have been better. That's why The King chose you in the first place."
Queen Elizaveta laughed. "Thank you, Gilbert."
And then she laughed a little too long.
"Well—I think I'm going to drown myself in cake and coffee. Thank you for speaking with me. And thank you for calling me Queen Elizaveta."
With that, the morose statue of The Woman moved out of her chair, with joints popping and muscles stretching to leave Gilbert where he was in the chair across from where she sat. Then, she did something she wasn't allowed to do and stared softly at her servant. The way a cat would when it looks at something lovingly. Her hand rested on the door knob and after several seconds too long, she finally opened it and left.
From the outside, her dress shuffled away. It sounded as if she was stepping on fallen leaves.
Gilbert's brows actively furrowed.