[ There is a tale, told among the itinerant camps that dot the countryside, of two boys. One, hale and strong and bright as the sun. The other, born into his shadow, slight and dark and cold. They grow into the spaces allotted to them. Years pass, seasons turn. And the younger brother, claiming to have heard a call, sets his father and brother both aflame. He is taken apart as punishment for such a crime. Not once does he cry out, not once does he beg for mercy. Evidence of evil, they say. Proof of the curse that had warped his frame from birth. His head, mounted on a spike. His foot, the one he'd always dragged behind him, buried in a nameless field. His bones, scattered and left to decay.
A fairy tale. A warning against betraying family, against what must be a curse, to mar a child so.
But that does not account for the call that wakes him, for the loneliness of a girl doomed to sadness. Her voice reaches through an ocean of time, through the veil of death, through the very dirt in which he is buried. Like the bud of a flower, straining up toward a heaven it will never reach, bringing with it the darkness beneath. His heart — empty, arid turf — aches for her. There's only her, he thinks, as he pulls himself together, only she who could possibly see him for anything other than a monster. Such profound loneliness can only bind two souls together.
His shadow is crooked, his shoulders at a slant as the black of night seems to drag like a train behind each uneven step. He'd forgotten, he thinks, how much it hurts to live. But for her, for her, oh—
The first time he comes to her, she is still a young girl. He leaves her with a flower — a red bloom, its petals laid out like the points of a star. Each time after, he brings her some new gift. Once, a bit of news. Once, a death. The head of a servant who'd dared to steal from the house. He doesn't seem to understand the gasp she lets out, then. Does it not please you? He only begins to take from her later on.
Tonight, he comes to her as he always does, a stray breeze passing through the curtains on her balcony.
In a rasp, the sound of fingernails dragging against the floorboards: ]
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ALICENT — YOU ARE MY AFFLICTION.
A fairy tale. A warning against betraying family, against what must be a curse, to mar a child so.
But that does not account for the call that wakes him, for the loneliness of a girl doomed to sadness. Her voice reaches through an ocean of time, through the veil of death, through the very dirt in which he is buried. Like the bud of a flower, straining up toward a heaven it will never reach, bringing with it the darkness beneath. His heart — empty, arid turf — aches for her. There's only her, he thinks, as he pulls himself together, only she who could possibly see him for anything other than a monster. Such profound loneliness can only bind two souls together.
His shadow is crooked, his shoulders at a slant as the black of night seems to drag like a train behind each uneven step. He'd forgotten, he thinks, how much it hurts to live. But for her, for her, oh—
The first time he comes to her, she is still a young girl. He leaves her with a flower — a red bloom, its petals laid out like the points of a star. Each time after, he brings her some new gift. Once, a bit of news. Once, a death. The head of a servant who'd dared to steal from the house. He doesn't seem to understand the gasp she lets out, then. Does it not please you? He only begins to take from her later on.
Tonight, he comes to her as he always does, a stray breeze passing through the curtains on her balcony.
In a rasp, the sound of fingernails dragging against the floorboards: ]
Awake.