Don't worry, my next chapter is actually ready, I just wanted to post this one first because I love VivaldixKing so much. They make me happy, so I wanted to post a bit from the Vivaldiverse at this point in time.
Oh! And hello again! It's been quite some time, hasn't it? I've missed you guys :D Happy to be back. Hopefully for a long time.
As always, read and review!
One day, she looked in the mirror and cried. Her parents pounded on the door and couldn't figure out what was wrong with her. She didn't dare tell them— even she didn't know what was wrong with her. The dark spaces where her eyes were supposed to be now housed bulging red orbs. She had hair on her brow bone, and her face, which had always been a smooth peach color, now was pale with ugly blotches of pink. Her mouth was a disgusting cherry red, like someone had glued a chili pepper onto it overnight and her hair was so curly that she couldn't even shove it into her usual ponytail. All she could do was cry into her teddy bear. Until the next morning.
She must have done something wrong. She knew that she must have done something wrong, because the cards that she used to work with broke down her door. She kicked and screamed but they hauled her away, ugly face and teddy bear and all. By the time she was reduced to weak, coughing sobs, they had taken her past the gardens she loved, through the palace she once dreamed of approaching, and into a room that she immediately decided she hated. Upon trying to escape the torment, she was locked in with a horrendously beautiful dress, like the kind she dressed her dolls up in on her birthday. Then she remembered: it was her birthday. She was ten years old.
When she tore the dress to shreds, they didn't take her back. They didn't even scold her. In moments, she was simply supplied a new dress, just as magically pretty as the first one. As if a fairy waved her wand and gave her an ugly face, a cute dress, and an enchanted castle. She hated it. She hated it and cried but maids walked in and dressed her and dragged her to the dinner table.
She had never seen the king before— he never seemed to walk by her part of the garden— but he was kind and said she was cute and praised her on her bravery. And congratulations, she was the new queen. It made her cry again. But once again, she wasn't scolded, but no one comforted her or took her back to her home. When she had returned to her room, she overheard the maids talking.
"Poor little girl, made a role holder at her age."
"Poor king. He so loved the last queen."
But that was the last she heard about the old queen. And as the days passed, she slowly stopped crying and screaming and kicking. She began attending lessons. She even learned to wear the offensively beautiful dresses. She hated it, but she was ten years old. What could she do? The only pleasant parts of the day were mealtimes, when she would see the king and he would talk to her about flowers and birds and springtime. She liked those moments. She liked him.
One night she was plagued with another bout of homesickness, and found herself wandering the halls— after a week or two, the maids unlocked her doors. Walking and wandering with her teddy bear, she heard crying from a room down the hall. A small light flickered underneath the cracked door. Peeking in, she saw the king clutching a picture and crying. She opened the door and he started, wiping the traces away when he saw it was her. He asked her if she was feeling well. Silently, she climbed onto his bed and hugged him. A moment, two moments passed and he began crying again, holding her and the picture in a crushing embrace. She started crying, too. That night, they slept curled around each other. Two lost souls in desperate need of a friend.
From that point forward, they were inseparable. She learned to study on her own so she could stay in the room where he worked. She showed him the section of the garden that she used to groom with her family. She played the piano in secret so that she could show him one day. He took her on walks around the castle. He taught her, stooped over, how to dance. He gave her a name: Vivaldi. For springtime. She couldn't make the connection, but she loved the name all the same. They still cried sometimes, but when they cried, they cried together and the more time they spent together, the happier they became. She found that she stopped hating the dresses and the face and the lessons. They all meant that she could stay with the king. And that's what mattered.
The year he kicked her out of his room was the year that he found himself a concubine. She was a pretty little faceless with hair and a figure that looked like the old queen. Vivaldi understood that the king wanted a partner, not a child, but she watched every day as the concubine took her place beside him. It was the concubine he took on walks, it was the concubine he taught to dance, and it was the concubine who invaded the room where he and Vivaldi cried a short four years together. It was still four years. But in a matter of months, those four years were dashed to pieces as the king disappeared from Vivaldi's sight and she from his thoughts. Vivaldi was alone again. And she couldn't help it. She was a princess, not the queen, and certainly not the old queen. Even at mealtimes, the only time they had alone, they rarely spoke. He didn't talk about the flowers or the birds or the springtime anymore, and she didn't talk about her lessons and the piano and dresses. She had to stop herself from hating the dresses and the castle and the face at times like those, when the air itself was so apathetic it sucked the words from your mouth. So he said nothing and she said nothing as they cut into meat that she could have sworn was her heart.