One-Hundred and Eighty-Eighth Position
A week and a day; her Prince didn’t return yet. She hadn’t peeled herself from her woeful shadowy corner since she awoke, tirelessly looking for a sign of Mytho’s timely arrival. He would return and sweep her off her feet, she told herself, vociferously scream her name and take her away from this darkness.
Creature of darkness, Maestro Erik called himself that, and she was just like him. They both leeched on the light of a beloved that would soothe away their suffering. The world crumbled without them.
Rue turned off the screen and hugged her knees together, tightly nesting her head on her legs. Her eyes ached from her sobbing, dry to renew their cry, her chest felt heavy with every weary breath she took. Her heart was hurting and she knew she was losing her battle when her arms’ quivering became a full shake.
“N-No!” she uttered, crawling out the shade to warm her hands with the lamplight; the sensation was lukewarm but it was better than nothing. Hope and love, she had seriously believed she could be happy. The girl bit her bottom lip at her naïveté, to think she assumed this time things would turn out to be different and that her Prince would stay. Everyone left her in the end. She was a fool to believe happiness would last forever.
A stupid mess of a princess! she thought, furious with her former rose-colored reality. Listen, she told herself, hearing alerted to the familiar noise that been her sole companion since her Prince left. The ticking is your only company. How many times did the metronome tick? She lost the count, immersed in her prayers for Mytho’s timely return. She closed her eyes, thinking she had strength to continue crying, but she couldn’t shed more tears. Her head was beginning to hurt. She had wept for too long. She had been absent for days.
I need to see them.
Rue’s mind took a moment to remember her friends and family, worried and looking for her, she had been selfish to leave them without a note. But she couldn’t face them then without asking their sympathy and comfort. She didn’t want anyone’s pity. She had enough of this. She chose this solitude to pull herself together to avoid becoming a burden. Did that work? Rue laughed bitterly as answer to her own inquiry and for a moment she had the impression of laughing for a week and a day to balance her continuous lament.
The laughter stopped suddenly, her eyes opened in a narrow manner. There was a gleam of a darker shade of red within them. “Quote the raven: Nevermore,” she muttered with an icy amusement as she sat placidly and began to type a Network message. She knew it was a lie, she seemed to seek new ways to miserably regret her actions and choices. That was given in her name.
Hmpf. Here I am: alive, healthy and uninjured. You can stop making a fuss about me now you have forced me to relinquish my privacy.
Oh. And the less you ask about you-know-what, the less likely I would disappear again.