Perhaps it was an oversight on my part that I’d missed the resemblance or maybe I just hadn’t been listening back then, but I felt the hardened edge of the girl’s gaze when I’d admitted my lack of knowledge for her existence. Somewhere within I felt a pang of sadness, one that reacted to my own ability to ignore vital facts about another’s life… It was a weakness, a downfall- selfish greed. Whatever one needed to call it, I knew that I hadn’t been there for Elsa and I hadn’t been the friend she’d undoubtedly needed. For shame, I looked away into the trees hoping to hide my own embarrassment and regret. More than anything I wished that I could go back and be the kind of shoulder the new Queen had been wanting to lean on, but of course I’d been distracted… unavailable.

But wasn’t that the story of my life? Wasn’t I just the glass wall that stood between my heart and all the others? Was there really any point in reaching deep to find caring that didn’t exist? As far as I was concerned, I didn’t feel, not really. The only love I harbored in my chest was solely for Romul… all else was cold, blackened stone.

Yet somehow it made such a pretty picture, one that outsiders liked to fancy in passing, but never touch. Beyond the walls of crystal and the glinting of ash, I was just a girl, a child waiting to be taken to a home that wasn’t mine. All of it was an ugly tale that I hoped never passed my lips, not for Auriel, not for anyone.

She was one of the ‘good ones’, I could tell, and yet not the one. Her pretty smiles and practical concern were for naught, at least in my case, and though she seemed all too sincere, there was something darker just beneath. We all succumbed to self-preservation when it came to the sensitive parts of ourselves that were reserved for family and the like, but I had no family… not really. “Good… She’ll make a fine Queen if you ask me, a fine Queen indeed,” I mused halfheartedly. “Perhaps it’ll distract her from thoughts of the Falls.”

I wasn’t certain how much Auriel know of the Hidden Falls or if she’d even been there at the time, but with the object of freedom at our core, I decided to let the details fly. It was her mother after all- children were supposed to care about their mothers right?

However, any news I’d been hoping for about deaths in the Edge was moot. I’d chosen the wrong victim to interrogate when it came to the gathering I’d witnessed at the borders of the World’s Edge. Maybe I had no right knowing anyhow. “It looked… like someone had passed- a funeral of sorts,” I informed vaguely. There wasn’t much else I could offer on the subject and so I turned my head toward the open walk before us, unable to conjure anything other than thought. 

 Essetia & Romul