Chapter 4
She liked him tremendously.
Not to say that she didn't like very many people - in fact, it was the opposite. The Princess miraculously found almost anyone and everyone likable, but not necessarily to the degree she liked Prince Demando.
How the poor prince managed to be the receptor of this unwanted affection was beyond him. He clearly aimed for the opposite. Never did he give the young woman any chances or excuses to find him endearing. But the Princess, he soon learned, was relentless.
"Prince Demando!" Walking down the gilded hallway in the Moon palace, he turned reluctantly toward the source of the call.
A silken-garbed maiden, golden hair rippling behind her, came dashing up to him. He waited. Once caught up, she fell in step with him, remarking about how she was heading in the same direction and would like to walk with him. Serenity went on to chat pleasantly with the White Prince about various topics: how there was a new baby in the palace, born just yesterday, wondering at the supposed rising rebellions on Earth, and laughingly retelling him what he could only assume must be humorous events.
If the young man was in the least puzzled at her, the Princess didn't notice. Her eyes smiled at him brightly, and she spoke to him in a way that would make an onlooker assume they were old friends.
In the recesses of his mind, Demando wondered at her. Needless to say, each moment more he spent near her, the more he grew accustomed to her nearness. It had become almost expected. Almost every day, the Princess would ask after him, inquiring about his health and making efforts to get him to express his own views in their one-person conversations. She smiled at him in the hallway, waved him down in the courtroom, and nearly tackled him trying to corner him in the gardens.
Quite to his dismay, Prince Demando found that he failed to put up much of a fight. But what could he do? She was a woman and a princess no less. If she had been a man, it would have been easy for Demando to simply tell her to get lost, if the sheer abnormal heightening of testosterone and tension at her presence didn't do the trick. But anyway, it was against Demando's nature to care so much - to go so far as to drive her away. So in his usual manner, he simply let be.
Now Princess Serenity wasn't so clueless that she didn't notice Demando's indifference to her. But through her uncanny intuitiveness and ability to connect with other human beings, she perceived although the prince's flawless exterior was icy and disagreeable, underneath the surface something real stirred. She couldn't have been more right. He was the frozen surface of a lake, slippery and wet, but she knew that as long as she held on and gained her footing, she would be able to break through the ice and find the refreshing life-giving water beneath. She could feel it, ever so vaguely. And what she felt, she liked.
* * *
Queen Serenity stood straight and slender like a living statue. She had received unsettling news from Prince Endymion on Earth. Small rebellions had risen up here and there on the vast planet for the past couple of years, but recently their appearance had become more frequent and on a larger scale.
Nevertheless, the prince still intended to come to the Moon Kingdom come midsummer. The Queen secretly pondered whether or not this was a wise decision. Endymion had expressed his intention to leave the kingdom in the care of his most trusted generals. For right now, they would observe the rebellions and try to determine their source. Serenity nodded to herself. It seemed the best course of action.
* * *
Princess Serenity peered inquisitively at him over the cover of her gilded- lettered book. Recently, she found she could now interpret his nearly undetectable, though only the shallow, emotions, and was eager to test her newly found skills. He was discussing something with her mother at the end of the long room. Light poured in around them from the opened double doors, allowing the warm summer breeze to drift softly over them and onto her like breath. The princess became aware, as she saw him standing there with the queen, that the two of them must have looked similar when they were together from a distance. Only Serenity was much shorter and far less elegant than her mother.
The White Prince crossed his arms and appeared to be thinking. Then Queen Serenity moved across the room, a rustling breeze herself, and descended upon the loveseat where her doting daughter now sat reading.
Serenity took her mother's hand as she sat and patted it fondly.
"I must tell you something, my dear."
"What is it, Mother?"
The older woman brushed sunny bangs out of her daughter's pretty eyes, then let her fingers trace around the length of her tender cheek, coming to rest underneath her chin. "Prince Endymion is tied up with some unpleasant work at present. It can't be guaranteed that he'll make it here by midsummer, but he wants you to know that he certainly will try."
The girl's eyebrows creased in worry. "It's nothing terrible, is it?"
"No, I don't think so, but to be careful it must be looked into."
"What is it?"
"Never you mind, dear." The mother placed a kiss on her child's brow and rose like a flower unfolding. "I'll see you at supper this evening." She glided away.
Princess Serenity's face was momentarily marred by a slight frown. Then, she realized that Prince Demando had not yet left the room. He was looking at her expectantly.
She ascended and crossed the length of the long chamber, placing herself directly in his line of vision. "What?" she demanded of him, eyebrows slightly furrowed. She had spent enough time around him these past few weeks to at least learn a little of his indecipherable expressions. Somehow, she interpreted that he was now giving her "a look."
Like always, she expected nothing from him. As had happened only twice before, he surprised her with a sufficient answer. He turned his head away and responded curtly, "You haven't the slightest idea, have you?"
"Begging your pardon! Of what?"
"Of the world outside your own." His words stung, although she did not completely understand why.
"What - what do you mean?" Her voice sounded pitiful, a plaintive bird call. He almost felt sorry for speaking so harshly.
"Never mind," he started to walk through the doors and away.
"No, wait!" she cried. Then lowering her voice as he stopped and turned round again, "tell me what you mean."
He narrowed his eyes at her, and for the first time she could plainly see some tangible, deeper emotion alight his face. It was . . . pain? She shivered in her concern for him. His lips parted and she thought for sure he would say something, that he would finally talk to her. Her disappointment was staggering when his mouth closed and he walked away.
* * *
How could he tell her? He had never told anyone. How the responsibility was smothering him, the pressure overwhelming; how his nation, his people, his younger brother depended on him to make things better; how he had grown up with the fear that he just wasn't good enough, that no matter what he did, he would still fail. As long as he could remember, he knew something of suffering. It was always there, it hung around him like the stench of death, there on Nemesis. Even here, it seemed to have followed him, though it seemed less prevalent. How could anyone wonder at the bitterness of his people? The conditions in which they lived could have turned anyone vengeful . . . perhaps even wicked. For sometimes the Prince wondered, if the chance did present itself, whether he would take the opportunity to invade and exact revenge on the people of the Moon and the Silver Millennium.
* * *
Serenity discovered through her connections in the palace what the situation was on Earth. She slightly resented her mother not telling her. Feeding the Gobi fish in a pond on the terraces, it dawned on her what Prince Demando had meant when he said she had no knowledge of the world outside her own. He was in anguish - and he resented her for her ignorance of the experience. Still, she couldn't blame him, and she even managed to feel guilty. Perhaps it was true . . . perhaps she was unfairly fortunate. Yet what could have possibly happened to the man that had called forth such a fleeting, yet prodigious expression of pain the other day?
Her chest tightened in anxious contractions as she worried for him. There was one thing he could not accuse her of - insincerity.
* * *
She found him near the lake as she had the evening of the festival, as she thought she might have. In fact, he was still in possession of the now dried garland she had given him. He had placed it on a dresser in his guest chamber and had not moved it. Once he had entered his room to find a servant lifting it from its place, probably to dispose of it. Out of nowhere, he had instructed her to leave it. The servant cautiously replaced the garland on the dresser top, and it had remained there ever sense. Now seeing her at the lake again reminded him of the incident.
Serenity skipped the formalities. "My mother was telling you about Endymion, wasn't she; the other night? About the skirmishes on Earth?"
Demando looked at her steadily. She wasn't used to his continuous gaze. Always before he had moved his eyes, never letting them rest on her for long periods of time. Now she felt herself shift uncomfortably under them. She simply understood, rather than made out his consent.
Her voice was a low hum. "I'm sorry . . . for not having the slightest idea of the world outs -."
Before she could finish, she was stunned into silence as the calm prince reached on and lightly brushed his fingertips against her cheek - so softly, she could have mistaken it for a butterfly's kiss if she did not possess the sense of sight to witness it. "Don't be," he said, so faintly as to be almost imperceptible. "It's not your fault." Then he moved his hand down and away, before Serenity could even react to his touch. It was as if it had never happened.
"What is it?" she asked carefully, her throat tightening painfully.
"I'm tired," he said, looking away finally. Unlike anyone he had known, this woman truly sympathized. Whether or not she comprehended was irrelevant. He now realized that.
When he turned and started walking into the flower gardens, the princess silently followed. He felt he wanted to get away from the lake. It enchanted him, made him vulnerable. But as he lengthened the distance between the inanimate body of water and himself, he found it offered no solution.
This time, when he reached the foot of a stone staircase leading onto a veranda in the private wing of the palace, it was Prince Demando who made the effort to interact with her. He stopped and allowed the princess to go before him. But she lingered and he understood she wanted to walk with him. They went through the exquisitely crafted halls together unspeaking, and when they arrived at the Princess's chambers, he left her with a solemn, yet sincere "sleep well."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------
@.@ Another chapter! Woo-hoo! I'm on a roll . . . let the populace fall to their faces in fear!
Either that or review . . .
She liked him tremendously.
Not to say that she didn't like very many people - in fact, it was the opposite. The Princess miraculously found almost anyone and everyone likable, but not necessarily to the degree she liked Prince Demando.
How the poor prince managed to be the receptor of this unwanted affection was beyond him. He clearly aimed for the opposite. Never did he give the young woman any chances or excuses to find him endearing. But the Princess, he soon learned, was relentless.
"Prince Demando!" Walking down the gilded hallway in the Moon palace, he turned reluctantly toward the source of the call.
A silken-garbed maiden, golden hair rippling behind her, came dashing up to him. He waited. Once caught up, she fell in step with him, remarking about how she was heading in the same direction and would like to walk with him. Serenity went on to chat pleasantly with the White Prince about various topics: how there was a new baby in the palace, born just yesterday, wondering at the supposed rising rebellions on Earth, and laughingly retelling him what he could only assume must be humorous events.
If the young man was in the least puzzled at her, the Princess didn't notice. Her eyes smiled at him brightly, and she spoke to him in a way that would make an onlooker assume they were old friends.
In the recesses of his mind, Demando wondered at her. Needless to say, each moment more he spent near her, the more he grew accustomed to her nearness. It had become almost expected. Almost every day, the Princess would ask after him, inquiring about his health and making efforts to get him to express his own views in their one-person conversations. She smiled at him in the hallway, waved him down in the courtroom, and nearly tackled him trying to corner him in the gardens.
Quite to his dismay, Prince Demando found that he failed to put up much of a fight. But what could he do? She was a woman and a princess no less. If she had been a man, it would have been easy for Demando to simply tell her to get lost, if the sheer abnormal heightening of testosterone and tension at her presence didn't do the trick. But anyway, it was against Demando's nature to care so much - to go so far as to drive her away. So in his usual manner, he simply let be.
Now Princess Serenity wasn't so clueless that she didn't notice Demando's indifference to her. But through her uncanny intuitiveness and ability to connect with other human beings, she perceived although the prince's flawless exterior was icy and disagreeable, underneath the surface something real stirred. She couldn't have been more right. He was the frozen surface of a lake, slippery and wet, but she knew that as long as she held on and gained her footing, she would be able to break through the ice and find the refreshing life-giving water beneath. She could feel it, ever so vaguely. And what she felt, she liked.
* * *
Queen Serenity stood straight and slender like a living statue. She had received unsettling news from Prince Endymion on Earth. Small rebellions had risen up here and there on the vast planet for the past couple of years, but recently their appearance had become more frequent and on a larger scale.
Nevertheless, the prince still intended to come to the Moon Kingdom come midsummer. The Queen secretly pondered whether or not this was a wise decision. Endymion had expressed his intention to leave the kingdom in the care of his most trusted generals. For right now, they would observe the rebellions and try to determine their source. Serenity nodded to herself. It seemed the best course of action.
* * *
Princess Serenity peered inquisitively at him over the cover of her gilded- lettered book. Recently, she found she could now interpret his nearly undetectable, though only the shallow, emotions, and was eager to test her newly found skills. He was discussing something with her mother at the end of the long room. Light poured in around them from the opened double doors, allowing the warm summer breeze to drift softly over them and onto her like breath. The princess became aware, as she saw him standing there with the queen, that the two of them must have looked similar when they were together from a distance. Only Serenity was much shorter and far less elegant than her mother.
The White Prince crossed his arms and appeared to be thinking. Then Queen Serenity moved across the room, a rustling breeze herself, and descended upon the loveseat where her doting daughter now sat reading.
Serenity took her mother's hand as she sat and patted it fondly.
"I must tell you something, my dear."
"What is it, Mother?"
The older woman brushed sunny bangs out of her daughter's pretty eyes, then let her fingers trace around the length of her tender cheek, coming to rest underneath her chin. "Prince Endymion is tied up with some unpleasant work at present. It can't be guaranteed that he'll make it here by midsummer, but he wants you to know that he certainly will try."
The girl's eyebrows creased in worry. "It's nothing terrible, is it?"
"No, I don't think so, but to be careful it must be looked into."
"What is it?"
"Never you mind, dear." The mother placed a kiss on her child's brow and rose like a flower unfolding. "I'll see you at supper this evening." She glided away.
Princess Serenity's face was momentarily marred by a slight frown. Then, she realized that Prince Demando had not yet left the room. He was looking at her expectantly.
She ascended and crossed the length of the long chamber, placing herself directly in his line of vision. "What?" she demanded of him, eyebrows slightly furrowed. She had spent enough time around him these past few weeks to at least learn a little of his indecipherable expressions. Somehow, she interpreted that he was now giving her "a look."
Like always, she expected nothing from him. As had happened only twice before, he surprised her with a sufficient answer. He turned his head away and responded curtly, "You haven't the slightest idea, have you?"
"Begging your pardon! Of what?"
"Of the world outside your own." His words stung, although she did not completely understand why.
"What - what do you mean?" Her voice sounded pitiful, a plaintive bird call. He almost felt sorry for speaking so harshly.
"Never mind," he started to walk through the doors and away.
"No, wait!" she cried. Then lowering her voice as he stopped and turned round again, "tell me what you mean."
He narrowed his eyes at her, and for the first time she could plainly see some tangible, deeper emotion alight his face. It was . . . pain? She shivered in her concern for him. His lips parted and she thought for sure he would say something, that he would finally talk to her. Her disappointment was staggering when his mouth closed and he walked away.
* * *
How could he tell her? He had never told anyone. How the responsibility was smothering him, the pressure overwhelming; how his nation, his people, his younger brother depended on him to make things better; how he had grown up with the fear that he just wasn't good enough, that no matter what he did, he would still fail. As long as he could remember, he knew something of suffering. It was always there, it hung around him like the stench of death, there on Nemesis. Even here, it seemed to have followed him, though it seemed less prevalent. How could anyone wonder at the bitterness of his people? The conditions in which they lived could have turned anyone vengeful . . . perhaps even wicked. For sometimes the Prince wondered, if the chance did present itself, whether he would take the opportunity to invade and exact revenge on the people of the Moon and the Silver Millennium.
* * *
Serenity discovered through her connections in the palace what the situation was on Earth. She slightly resented her mother not telling her. Feeding the Gobi fish in a pond on the terraces, it dawned on her what Prince Demando had meant when he said she had no knowledge of the world outside her own. He was in anguish - and he resented her for her ignorance of the experience. Still, she couldn't blame him, and she even managed to feel guilty. Perhaps it was true . . . perhaps she was unfairly fortunate. Yet what could have possibly happened to the man that had called forth such a fleeting, yet prodigious expression of pain the other day?
Her chest tightened in anxious contractions as she worried for him. There was one thing he could not accuse her of - insincerity.
* * *
She found him near the lake as she had the evening of the festival, as she thought she might have. In fact, he was still in possession of the now dried garland she had given him. He had placed it on a dresser in his guest chamber and had not moved it. Once he had entered his room to find a servant lifting it from its place, probably to dispose of it. Out of nowhere, he had instructed her to leave it. The servant cautiously replaced the garland on the dresser top, and it had remained there ever sense. Now seeing her at the lake again reminded him of the incident.
Serenity skipped the formalities. "My mother was telling you about Endymion, wasn't she; the other night? About the skirmishes on Earth?"
Demando looked at her steadily. She wasn't used to his continuous gaze. Always before he had moved his eyes, never letting them rest on her for long periods of time. Now she felt herself shift uncomfortably under them. She simply understood, rather than made out his consent.
Her voice was a low hum. "I'm sorry . . . for not having the slightest idea of the world outs -."
Before she could finish, she was stunned into silence as the calm prince reached on and lightly brushed his fingertips against her cheek - so softly, she could have mistaken it for a butterfly's kiss if she did not possess the sense of sight to witness it. "Don't be," he said, so faintly as to be almost imperceptible. "It's not your fault." Then he moved his hand down and away, before Serenity could even react to his touch. It was as if it had never happened.
"What is it?" she asked carefully, her throat tightening painfully.
"I'm tired," he said, looking away finally. Unlike anyone he had known, this woman truly sympathized. Whether or not she comprehended was irrelevant. He now realized that.
When he turned and started walking into the flower gardens, the princess silently followed. He felt he wanted to get away from the lake. It enchanted him, made him vulnerable. But as he lengthened the distance between the inanimate body of water and himself, he found it offered no solution.
This time, when he reached the foot of a stone staircase leading onto a veranda in the private wing of the palace, it was Prince Demando who made the effort to interact with her. He stopped and allowed the princess to go before him. But she lingered and he understood she wanted to walk with him. They went through the exquisitely crafted halls together unspeaking, and when they arrived at the Princess's chambers, he left her with a solemn, yet sincere "sleep well."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------
@.@ Another chapter! Woo-hoo! I'm on a roll . . . let the populace fall to their faces in fear!
Either that or review . . .