(Prompt 13 was a forum drabble.)
Thanks to all re[ad/view]ers! It was intended to be the door from the end of Prince Caspian, but I think I put in too many ideas and not enough hints, oops.
I like open-ended prompts like today's, where you can put all sorts of different interpretations on them.
Prompt: Blue
Chered missed them.
The slain brother he could barely remember, yes, but more than that, the vanished sister whose face filled all his early memories.
"You were but a child then, and now you are full seven years and have begun your education," his father would say. "It is not seemly for a Calormene man of any age to continue weeping over a woman's follies. Mornoz was a valiant warrior of the Tisroc and far worthier of your tears."
"You are the eldest now," his mother would say. "You have no sister. It is your duty to be an example for your brothers, and teach them how a Tarkaan is to act."
Chered disliked his mother.
He had ceased to be the only (remaining) son the moment Abisheh was born, and had never regained Shareth's favor despite being Kidrash's heir. Far back in his mind, he cherished the blurry image of a face that was not hers looking down at him and making soft, sweet noises. No one had ever said as much, but by the time Shareth had produced two boys, Chered had come to understand that she was in fact not his mother, but rather his stepmother. He did not know what had happened to his real mother, and he dared not ask his father, who seemed well content for Shareth to be considered mother to all three of his sons.
Aravis would have known. Wherever she was. If she still was.
He scrubbed stubbornly at his face with his sleeve. If crying made him a milksop to others, then so be it.
He missed her.
("I missed you so much," Aravis would say to him later, when he was a youth and she nearly a princess, and Chered would huddle into her arms like the child he still was and weep freely in a country where no man was scorned for doing so.)