A/N: This is the original prologue for "Fallen;" the revised version is in the following chapter. I made certain changes to the prologue once I was well into the writing of this story and had realized that the focus and plot had shifted from that of the story that I had originally set out to write. The prologue will likely go through at least one more revision, but for now the two different versions are temporarily posted side-by-side for comparison's sake.
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My daughter turns and looks at me in her white gown, so delicate and lovely that for a moment I can scarcely believe she is mine. Her smile is expectant and shy.
"A good fit, is it?" I say, a smile playing at the corners of my own mouth. She is the future, wrapped in a relic. "Your grandmother would be so pleased, to see you in her dress. Looking so beautiful."
The late afternoon light falls in squares on the floor as I cross the room to her, reminding me of the board for the game she and my eldest son are so fond of playing. They taught me how to play chess, once, but I never took to it. It seemed far too clean, all the captures and the deaths, the transformations and shifts of power.
She turns down her eyes and laughs, carefully adjusting the pearl-colored folds of the garment. In a few days she will marry a sweet, clever young man who works as a scrivener in the White City's hall of records; his hands are soft, and perpetually blotched with ink.
"Did you not wear this dress, Mother? For your wedding?" She looks up at me again, blue eyes large and inquisitive—her father's eyes.
I shake my head. The clouds must be shifting quickly today, for already the light has changed and the game board is gone. "There was no time, when I got married. We had to make due with what we had. This dress was locked away in a box in our house, which suffered little during the Siege, thank goodness. Your grandmother was… disappointed to learn she had missed it all, when she returned, but more than anything she was glad to see me alive, and I her." I reach out to stroke my daughter's dark hair, lightly, with the back of my hand. "But now this dress is yours, and your own daughter's, some day."
She smiles again. This is the story she thinks she knows, the story of a fierce, whirlwind love that bloomed even as our City crumbled around us. How romantic it is, love in war. These children—my daughter, her fiancé—have never known anything but peace, and I am glad of it. I want them to grow old quietly together, smoothing their fingers over their tidy black queens and white pawns.
We talk about her wedding arrangements for a few minutes more, and then she is gone, with a kiss for me and a rustle of clean fabric. I stand at the window, closing my eyes against the honey-colored light so that its afterimage floats on the insides of my lids. There was no time, when I got married. In truth, the story my daughter thinks she knows is both plainer and darker than the feverish, battle-edged love she imagines. I watch the light, remembering when they brought the dying boy to us.