A/N: Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, c4 - poetry collection centered around a specific character
Faces of the Witch
4. Beatrice
She is the queen in a castle that can't see its queen.
Is it the tar, she wonders, that has grown so thick over all the windows and doors?
Is it the song of water-birds that are so loud and lying and beautiful?
Is it the sea itself, that calls the elves home when she's no fair elf
and carries her stories: her lies, her truths, her tales, her plans
wayward…and would they ever find their way?
She is the queen of a castle that glitters gold
and yet what use is that gold?
What use is the castle?
She'll turn it into her stage instead: the grand finale for this cursed life of hers and she'll be the witch-queen: the witch no mortal man can kill, the queen to fair to look away from and too powerful to resist. She'll be the dark queen of the dawn that Galadriel herself turned astray from and she has the One Ring already: those golden bars that lie in slumber and let them dash around like mice in a cage, let them try and solve her little puzzle and see if they can spare themselves their fate.
She already knows how the tale will end.
Blood will dance with the waves that lap around the shore once more, no matter if they pass or fail.
The first die will be ignored. She'll roll. Six people will die the first night and there's no escaping that. they'll scream to the gulls in the morning and then they'll move:
Toward her?
Away from her?
There are many winding threads in the tale she's weaved
but she's the witch, and there's never a happy ending
for the witch.