Ch. 10 Lessons to Dearest
Letters, lovers, look a dove
Better, covers, push to shove.
Learn it all. Sweets and sours.
Yearn it all. Wish for flowers.
Teachers teach us how to teach.
She ate the rest of the candy, her eyes never leaving the printed words.
"Rain only comes when there's a wind." The cook had read his out loud, thoughtfully. It encouraged the prince to do so as well.
"Clouds don't fly backwards, but thunder is still heard from the past." This had made him wonder.
"And you princess?" The cook prompted her as well, though with words. She was still lost. Easily so.
"Hinamori-san,"
The prince had a more familiar voice, catching attention with it.
"What does yours say?"
After being alerted, she looked back down at the words, and read them plainly.
"I don't get it. I thought fortunes were supposed to be... well..."
"Something lucky?"
The cook finished her question.
She looked at him in a way that answered, yes that was the question. Now where is the answer?
"Luck is good or bad, like a solid thing. Fortunes are vague enough to make you think."
And then he added.
"I think it's more realistic that way."
That statement had imprinted itself in her mind. Nagi had a different way of going about things. That's what the palace must of lacked, because the sensation of something new was felt.
It doesn't matter. I don't believe in luck anyway. Words printed to a higher meaning? It's ridiculous.
-✖✖--✖✖--✖✖-
Lady Indigo, (Yes like the color. All her dresses were indigo.), was the princess' structor. She had been since Amu was 7, the age of which young ladies were to begin being educated. Well, at least within the castle walls it was. However, her lessons were restricted and censored by the King and Queen to only have Indigo teach what they wanted the princess to learn. Through such education, not much could be taken. Lady Indigo often remarked against it.
"It's barbaric. Restraining a child, any child rich or poor, of proper education! You can't pick pretty lessons from ugly ones. You should learn them all!"
But she was, after all, doing a job for the name Hinamori. The King paid quite the check. She'd would have to choice but to teach the princess, face to face, simple harmless things. Face to Face.
Lady indigo was born to be a teacher, and anyone could tell. And she'd do what she'd been born for.
The libraries found in palaces hold books of all sorts. So this villa would house them as well, no mater how much of its size was compared to the main Hinamori castle. Aspects of all sorts were written in these endless pages. Indigo would often "go to the restroom" and such, leaving the princess to explore the countless shelves and think, and wonder. She'd have freedom to read pretty stories, as well as the ugly ones. Without experience, or the bittersweet taste on real living, the texts on those pages were as close as she'd get to "outside".
When Lady Indigo would return from said trips, Amu would quickly do away with the story she had been reading, like a frantic child would if they had been caught in the act of mischief. The both would then sit back down and the previous lessons would continue. It was not wrong nor right. Just accepted.
"A princess doesn't need to know of ridiculous arithmetic, or sciences, or hateful things the rest of the world is blinded with. My daughter will only need to know how to speak, and write, and and act like a lady."
The queen had said those words long ago it seemed. So literature, weaving, proper pose, balance, and manners were her lessons. Face to Face. Every monday morning.
"Princess Hinamori, I am not feeling well today, though I am still here. Today's lesson will be simple postural manners."
The princess nodded as she sat on a golden brown chair, by one of the great windows of the library. There were no lights installed in the great church-like room. The moon and sun had enough fun showing off their light through those windows well enough.
Lady Indigo, stern as she was, looked it as well. She also had no expressions, unless she taught. She'd become her teachings and give them life though boring they might be. She made her way to the princess, carrying the usual bag of papers and thin sliced books of the days lessons. Her dress, indigo of course. Ruffled and thick around the waist as if to hide it. She wasn't that fat, the princess thought. Chicly serious. That was her way.
Putting the bag down, she turned to the princess as if to speak, but instead put a hand on her forehead, parting her curled chestnut bangs. With the motion, she did a long blink.
"Are you alright?"
The princess had to have some kind of concern.
"I'll be fine, now. Don't waste your time worrying about things. I must make a trip to the restroom, and maybe have one of the maids prepare tea. I'll be... just fine."
She had already began to leave as her final sentence ceased. The grand doors of the library echoed throughout as they shut.
Alone now, the princess just sat for a while, legs crossed in a delicate fashion, looking out the window beside her. There were no clouds on that particular day. It was so densely blue, the sky, you could almost touch it. Hills played tag as the rolled below the castle towers, bearing their unattended gardens and trees of different shades. The specs of buds and blooms wore their colors of the day, mostly the summer of yellow and creamy white. The winds of the elevated scenery played too, running from above its fingers through the plants. Everything seemed so lyrical. Though her eyes didn't rest out there for long, for fear of better want.
She turned to the towering bookshelves that called their places on tens of surrounding walls. It seemed like a feat to them to reach the colossal ceilings. A ladder was placed in a forgotten corner of the room. Who would climb that high for books anyway?
She made her way through one of the corridors created by the leggy furnitures, running a tender finger across titles as they passed her eyes. Those worlds made of words. The maids saw no purpose in dusting these bookshelves. They were too big, and not as important as the other antiques that prettied the palace. No one entered a palace to see the library. No one really entered the palace anyway. So she collected dust on that finger. Dust from something so imperfect, it was denied the spoiling of cleaning.
Eventually and abruptly, she stopped at a particular title. One who called its home on a thin cover. It had made a memory.
"Amu-chan! How about this one?
"Humpty Dumpty?"
"Isn't that the book about the egg?"
"Right desu~!"
That had been the first memory of her angels. With it, she stared blankly. Silently. Not even the winds outside could penetrate it. Her charas had been eager to pick books and read them with her as she learned about the world. This had been a beginning once. Now it reminded her of how easily the end had come. The end. Because she was weak.
Forever broken...
Just like Humpty Dumpty.
With a motion meant to pick the thin book from its surroundings, she caught a glimpse of something that didn't belong. It was obviously misplaced. Away from home, wherever that was. She picked it up from under the book. A piece of black folded paper. Staring at it intently, she opened it.
What it revealed. A drawing of a clock, with both of its hands sharing the place of the hour 12. Though it was not written like and hour, but as a number. 1,200.
Questions now. But she remembered her fortune first.