A Word in Your Ear
1074 words long
She was a Princess. She would be sixteen tomorrow. But tonight would cause tomorrow to move an entire world away.
Notes from the author:Tarot cards make evocative writing prompts. I pulled the 2 of Pentacles from the Rider-Waite deck. Here's what A. E. Waite has to say about it:
"On the one hand it is represented as a card of gaiety, recreation and its connexions, which is the subject of the design; but it is read also as news and messages in writing, as obstacles, agitation, trouble, embroilment."
Why, there must be a party! With laughing and dancing and jugglers! And also drama. Drama over... party invitations! Or perhaps over a message received at the ball...
Don't ask me what the message was. Ask the Princess. Maybe one day she'll tell us, and I'll finish writing her story.
It was my sixteenth birthday. It was to be a day of gifts and dancing, good food, joy, and nervous anticipation of things to come. Also a little dread, but that was to be expected. What I didn’t expect was the message that came to me and, once delivered, began the slow and inevitable ending of my world.
Yes, I know. To a teenager, all blows, however slight, herald the end of the world. But I was a Princess, and Princesses are trained to a certain measure of decorum and responsibility. I already understood that the world, or at least my family’s corner of it, rested partially upon my shoulders. I was not given to apocalyptic proclamations lightly.
Is that not how it is with young royalty where you come from? Well, then, you must simply take my word. I may have been obliged to leave my own royalty behind me, but my honor remains intact. You may trust the things I say.
It was, as I say, my birthday, and that meant a grand gala in the royal ballroom....
This has been an excerpt from the Friday Fictionette for October 16, 2015. Subscribers can download the full-length fictionette (1074 words) from Patreon in PDF or MP3 format depending on their pledge tier.
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