A/N: Not really much to say here. Enjoy!
Chapter III: Come Back
Her servants inhabited the walls of the castle. She could hear their weeps clearly now; and stare at the cruel, unbreakable fate Mother had reserved for them.
But it was not enough. It couldn't fill her sorrowful heart, it could not fill the darkness in her soul. She needed the Cursed, but he was long gone. She herself cast him away, she murmurs, not to make him part of her suffering reality.
If only she had been a little more selfish…
She comes back to the stone sofa. She's become taller, she notes, and as such, she cannot sit as comfortably as she did before. A silent tear stain her ethereal visage at the realization of what she casted away, of who she killed in order to be whole. She traces her dark arms in the stone, lingering for his warmth, for his voice, but nothing remains but painful memories of a joy casted away. Her still ethereally white visage tries to find rest on the hard stone, but her figure towers too much, and she cannot find rest like she did. Not without him.
Him.
How was him? Did he save himself? Was he alright? Was he still alive? Did he change, victim to the concept of time that she, too, would like to understand?
She did not know. She only hope. She only cried.
She only missed.
Since the Castle fell once, there were no sacrifices. No more horned children were given to her realm, no new shadows lurked under the stone.
Her horned child, could he really come back? Could he really come back and fill the emptiness left in this existence?
She looked at the horizon, but she saw nothing. The mist in which she was engulfed separated her realm from reality, from anything, and the sea made this depth even more painful.
The shadows seemed to dance around her, maybe joyous about her fall, happy for her sufferance. Mother did not leave a face on those fallen spirits for them to weep; it wasn't meant for them, such a luxury. Such humanity.
That she would have so dearly discarded.
There's a library in the castle. Time has been clement with the paper; it's black letters are still readable, the knowledge still obtainable.
That's how Mother knew the boy's tongue, she realizes; those books aided her. If only she was allowed to read those before, maybe she could have been able to voice her heart to him. Maybe things would have been different. Maybe he would have stayed- no, he had to go, there was no place for him in there, she knew and sent him away.
In that frail boat, small, in the big blue sea.
In the white engulfing mist.
There's a water pond in the courtyard. It's big enough for the sun to reflect on it, and the water is clear. She gazed at it out of curiousity, under the big stone windmill.
Her eyes widen on her figure. She knew she changed, but she never gazed at herself before; there's no mirrors in the Castle, she notes.
Her short, gray hair are now long and dark- blueish, she notes. Her visage looks tired and that she can understand. The dark robe that blends her body is one with her new dark arms, a shadow of the purity they used to be.
She's her Mother now, she thinks. One way or another, her will had been fulfilled, she bitterly remarks. What would he say about this? Would he still hold her dark hand? Would he still guide her inside the big hallways of her Castle?
Ripples forms on the pond beneath her, the reflection one of a crying ethereal visage hidden beneath clouds of darkness.
The library holds secrets. Many of them are not well-hidden; the wind told her so during one of his songs.
Other, instead, were obtainable only as Queen. Black books towered over the others, without a title nor finely decorated covers. They were just closed books, until she touched them.
There were horrid writings inside. Rituals, beasts, the Castle's truth laid bare in all its gruesome existence.
Sacrifices of the horned ones for his comeback.
Suddenly, her mother's actions acquired a sense. It was not for power she slaughtered, it was not for authority she condemned; no, no, it was for him.
The boy whose name seemed to be Wander, the first of the Horned children.
She saw those curses, recognized those doings. But she would have not called Wander back.
She would have called Ico.
There's a single whisper in the mist, but for once, it's not the wind's desperate sing. Her sweet voice engulf the mist. She's calling.
And the cursed shall answer.