Princess Willow Grace was fifteen years old. Fifteen years of being prepared to one day replace her mother, Queen Gwyneth, and regent of the kingdom of Amoria.
Fifteen years of lessons and schooling, of traveling with her father and hearing stories from her mother, and meeting clerics and mayors and members of all professions. And in the past year, days and days of etiquette and decorum training and the occasional dress fitting for a formal occasion she no doubt dreaded.
After these fifteen years, Grace was so very bored.
She had squeezed her way out of the castle after morning lessons by taking the back exit near the kitchens, sneaking a spoonful of soup on the way. Her mother wouldn’t expect her back for the final dress fitting for the Firefly festival until nearly an hour past noon, and now she had the hour to herself.
She’d stopped halfway between the castle and the stable. Her original intent had been to saddle her horse and go for a ride, but a fit of laziness had found her lying on the grass in the meadow alongside the woods. She plucked a yellow flower and twirled it between her fingers.
She really wasn’t sure how much more of this she could take. It was different when she was younger, when she was still in school, when it still seemed like she had time to herself, when everything wasn’t falling on her shoulders. When her mother had been her age….
When Gwyneth had been Grace’s age, she hadn’t been a princess. When Gwyneth had been thirteen years old, the royal family had been ousted by the Order of the Old Ways and scattered. It had been nearly ten years before she could return to the castle. She had lived with a merchant family aboard a ship, with a traveling circus, and for a long time in a house constructed by her own hands in a willow tree- Grace’s somewhat embarrassing namesake. By the time she had taken the throne, she was a seasoned fighter, well read on politics, and had traveled nearly every inch of the kingdom.
Gwyneth had known exactly who she was and where she belonged.
And she had met Grace’s father, a humble dairy farmer, and made history by being the first queen of the land to marry a true commoner.
Grace wanted that more than she could say. She wanted adventure, romance. She didn’t want to spend her whole life ruling a kingdom, she wanted some part of it to feel like her own life.
She had just rolled over and plucked another flower when Grace first noticed the other figure in the meadow.
It was about two hundred feet from her on the edge of the forest. It was almost as tall as the trees themselves, covered in green scales tinged with blue. It was lounging on it’s back, eyes shut, chest moving slowly as though lulled asleep by the heat of the summer day.
And it was definitely a dragon.
At some point, Grace had stood up and approached where the dragon lay. She was disbelieving, at first thinking that the hot day must be playing tricks on her eyes. There were no dragons in this land, hadn’t been in many years. Before she knew it she was close enough to see a tiny puff of smoke come out of one nostril.
The one of its eyes opened and it let out a very human sounding “oh!”.
Grace is so surprised that she stumbles backwards onto the ground.
“You- you can talk?”
There’s a single blink, and then a second one, the beast seemingly as uncertain as Grace.
“Yes?” the same voice from before.
“I didn’t know dragons could talk”.
“I’m not always a dragon,” The voice comments, “I look like a girl sometimes”.
Grace is somehow even more confused than she started out.
“When is that?”
“When I want to”.
With that word, the dragon disappears in a puff of smoke. In its place sits cross-legged a girl about Grace’s age. She has light brown skin and dark hair that comes a few inches past her chin. She wears an ordinary linen shirt and a purple overdress much like the green one Grace is wearing. Sitting next to each other on the grass they might be any two girls in the land.
“I’m Violet”. The girl says. The voice that had seemed so wrong from the great beast seemed perfectly ordinary now.
“I’m-”
“Princess Willow Grace”.
Grace feels her cheeks color, both with a bit of embarrassment at her given name, and the still unfamiliar frisson of people automatically knowing her and her title.
“How did you-”
“I saw you last year at the pantomime during the spring festival”.
“In the north last year”, Grace interjects suddenly, remembering, “Papa took me with them for the first time.”
She had been excited too, the spring pantomimes were always so much fun, the theater troupe from the capital spending the season traveling the land doing puppet shows and short plays and poems from Amoria’s history. The king attended one every year, introducing the players to the village of his choosing, it was a great honor to the people there. Grace had gotten to introduce the show on stage, though of course she had to go home for the rest of the tour.
“I snuck out for the night because I wanted to see it- Mother never let me go before”.
“Why not?” Everyone went to the pantomimes, they were a great celebration being as they marked the end of the cold, snowy season. True, children who had been naughty might be barred from the festivities, but she had never heard of someone who had never been allowed to go.
“I’ve never been allowed to do much. We live in a little cottage in a ravine in the mountains.”
“In the mountains- what, above the Eternal Valley?”
A nod of the affirmative.
“But no one lives up there!”
This was true. The Eternal valley was at the very northernmost point of Amoria’s borders. It was a deep valley of the thickest of forests, enchanted so the trees could never be cut. The only known magical beasts in the land that remained lived within the valley. No human had set foot there in generations, much less the mountains to the north.
“My mother’s a sorceress, and nearly everywhere else would have people after her for what she’s done with her magic before.”
Grace doesn’t really have much to say to this. She’s only met a few magic users in her life, they weren’t common in Amoria. Her parents had no court mage, there were no magic studies at the university. Only a few hedge witches remained, living ordinary lives in their villages, certainly no one who would be persecuted for using their powers to do evil.
“So why are you down here now, by yourself?”
Violet flops on her back, picking a piece of grass and tearing it to bits while staring straight up at the sky. It’s nearly a minute before she responds.
“Mother kicked me out this morning. Called me a disgrace.”
Grace is astonished.
“How could she do that?”
For all the complaints Grace had this very morning, she was always very sure that her parents both loved her.
“I spilt a potion ingredient while she was mixing something else and set the floor on fire. She stamped it out and then grabbed the broom and shooed me out the front door. Said to come back when I was worthy of being her daughter.”
“What are you going to do? Do you have any relatives, did you even go to school at all?”
Violet shakes her head.
“I’ve barely met other people- I snuck out a few times, but I never went to school. Mother taught me herself, but I don’t know if I know everything other people know. I guess I could try and do something with what I do know- maybe something that could actually make her proud of me a little and let me come back”.
“What kind of thing would impress her?”
Violet shrugs, looking a bit lost.
“I could poison someone’s well and then charge them for the antidote. Or maybe enchant someone’s sheepdog to destroy all their crops. Or kidnap a noblewoman and ransom her”.
Grace feels her eyebrows shoot up.
“She wants you to do things like that?”
“All of those are things she has done, and told me about. She can’t set foot in Besk because of the thing with the noblewoman”.
Grace is suddenly a bit disturbed. The whole situation is surreal, and the heat of the day is beginning to make her feel stupified.
“Do...do you actually want to do something like that?”
“No. Even if I did want do, I doubt I could pull it off. I was never good at anything.”
That Grace can relate to. An inattentive student, none of her work was ever up to the standards set by her teachers or tutors. She was neither elegant nor poised, nor to invoke her namesake, graceful. She had no particular talent for art or music or sport. She was not drawn down the path of a religious life. She had long wondered what she could do to distinguish herself.
“Do dragons still kidnap princesses?”
Grace jerks at Violet’s sudden continuation.
“Well they did in the stories for sure. But there’s really no way to know if there was really any truth to them”.
“It was foolish anyway,” Violet replies, suddenly sounding very shy and a touch bashful, like she can’t really believe she just asked what she did.
The sun is beating down overhead. Grace doesn’t have long before she has to return to the castle.
“What did dragons usually do with kidnapped princesses anyway?” she muses, “Kept them in caves with treasure right? Fought knights who came to try and rescue them?”
“What are you saying?” Violet asks, carefully.
“I’m saying I’ve spent most of my life doing my best to make my parents proud of me, and to be frank, I could do with a little...excitement in my life. Some adventure.”
Violet looks at Grace long and deep. She isn’t sure what to make of any of this, her outburst suggestion or the unexpected response.
“There’s a group of caves up in the mountains…” she starts, “Isolated ones. I’ve been up there a bunch, I can fly there easily, but it’s not easy to get to on horseback.””
“And you’re sure your mother won’t be involved in any of this?” Grace asks, a tiny cold spot sitting deep in her stomach.
“No,” Violet says firmly. “I don’t think she wants anything else to do with me”.
Grace stands, against the will of her body to stay on the warm grass. She doesn’t quite look Violet in the eye.
“Come back here tomorrow afternoon, before the firefly festival starts. I’ll make up my mind by then.”
Then she turns and walks back to the palace, entirely unsure of what just happened.
Grace barely makes it back to the castle before she hears her mother calling her name.
“Coming mama!” she yells back in return.
Queen Gwyneth had been tall even as a young girl, and as an adult she was still quite the imposing figure even in her soft pink gown and and her neatly tied up dark hair. Never a single hair out of place, the Queen, even with her belly currently swollen with child. Grace came up to her shoulders already, and still felt like a toddler in her presence.
“I wish you would stop running over every time you can, there are only so many hours in a day. After your fitting we have to go to afternoon devotions and after supper your father wants you to sit in when he goes over the trade agreement with Besk”.
And Grace is swept back up into her regular world.
The seamstress who does her fitting is well known. It’s an honor to dress a royal, isn’t it? And the dress is beautiful- dark blue with sleeves made of delicate lace.
But when Grace looks in the mirror, all she think is that someone else would wear it better.
Her mother pats her head, fingers twisting in the strands that stick out from her braid.
“I’ll fix your hair before the festival”.
By the time the dress is fitted, it’s time for devotions.
The weekly trek to the church takes about fifteen minutes through the wood to the capital city proper. Gwyneth walks by her side on the well trod path.
The wooden church is beautiful in the clearing, steeple reaching up towards the sky as the treeline breaks.
Grace takes a deep breath as her and her mother take the opposite paths to the church’s ends. On weekly devotions, you only made the signs to the altar you pledged.
Choosing Sun soon after her thirteenth birthday had been one of the easiest decisions of Grace’s life. The lessons of the sun had meant something to her, stories of strength and heroism and birth and fire. The lessons of the moon had crept under her skin, supposedly full of the importance of rest and comfort that had always seemed to involve death. Even a glance at the mural of the moon on the other end of the church brought back the creeping memories of the first time she heard the tale of the hunter who tried to outrun the moon.
Grace approaches the altar, gleaming blonde wood awash in afternoon sun from the southeast facing windows. The offerings upon it betrayed the summer season; early fruits, straw dolls. The soft pink flowers that grew in fields. It was still before the times of abundance. The intricate carvings along the edge, telling the same stories she had learned in Morning Hour.
As she steps, and turns, and bows before it, Grace begins to wonder. What would the sun say about her predicament? How would it advise her to make her choice?
The warriors and others blessed by the sun, who lived in its name throughout history… Brave men and women who lived life to the fullest and never backed down when others needed them...the sun favored change and growth.
The sun would definitely tell her to take a chance.
The monk in that day dusts Grace’s hands and she waits for Gwyneth to finish and they leave.
By the time they get back to the castle for supper, the sun is beginning to set.
Supper is a light and quick affair, barely any conversation.
The trade agreement didn’t take much time but to Grace it felt like it took more than a whole day. Lumber for sheep, paper for wool. Numbers and lists on endless pages that swam together. Papa went over every inch while Grace felt like her brains were melting out her ears.
“Grace”
She looks up.
“I asked if you remembered what invention ended up giving us such a trade advantage”.
“I didn’t think there was going to be a test.”
“Grace”. There’s a touch of exasperation in his voice.
A long moment and then she shakes her head.
“The printing blocks. That meant the university could print books and put out more than any other kingdom on the continent.”
King Matthew was still a comparatively young man, but every time Grace was around her father she felt like she could see the lines forming on his face when he looked at her.
“I know this is hard for you, but you need to pay attention. Diplomats won’t respect a queen who can’t even remember her country’s own affairs.”
Grace tosses restlessly in bed that night. She finally sits up and looks around her room. The stone floor is covered with rugs in an array of colors. The curtains on her window let in just a hint of moonlight. She has a shelf full of books printed in the capital, and a trunk at the end of her bed holding some of her childhood toys. The sheets and covers on her bed are soft and a delicate shade of blue linen.
Comfortable. Familiar. Grace had spent a great deal of her life within this room. She likes it, to be sure, but right now it feels like if she doesn’t leave it now, she’ll be stuck in this comfortable room for the rest of her life.
She goes to the shelf, picking up the first book she touches. It’s a partial memoir of her grandmother, Queen Susannah. Susannah had been a social crusader, had made her mark on the land at a young age. She expanded the university, the state hospital, and most memorably had nearly completely dismantled the stranglehold the nobility had had on the common people of Amoria.
But her early memoirs were deeply romantic and adventurous stories of her times spent as a girl with the other daughters of nearby kingdoms and noble children.
Holding the book in her hands, Grace presses it to her chest and wishes deep in her heart that she’ll be able to write her own someday.
The day of the festival is very warm again. Grace is sweating through her riding clothes when she goes out after lessons to help tack the horses. The stable boys and girls are preparing for the festival themselves, hitching the best to the carriages to carry food and other things into the capital’s square.
When the late afternoon finally comes, Grace sneaks out into the meadow again.
Violet emerges, wearing the same clothes she was yesterday, dark hair swept back off her neck.
What a pair they must make, Grace muses. She wonders how someone outside would see them. Violet’s bare feet and wrinkled dress contrast with her skin, which though it is darker than Grace’s, is free of sun spots, scars or blemishes. Her feet too, are unmarked, and Grace realizes she must spend very little time walking as a person. Her eyes were dark, serious, and seemed to Grace very lonely. Dress her up a little, and she would look more the part of a princess than her sunburned, befreckled self in her deer skin riding trousers.
Sucking up all of her courage, Grace starts straight off with “Let’s do it”.
“Are you sure?” Violet has an eyebrow raised, like she can’t quite believe where she is or what she’s hearing.
She gets up and turns. She points to the smallest tower on the castle, the one which houses her bedroom.
“Meet me there, before midnight tonight. Be careful, lots of people still go out after the Firefly Festival into the woods to be alone, they will probably see you”.
And then, she turns and leaves. She doesn’t look back to see what the other girl does. For what may be the first time in her life, Grace feels like she might lose her nerve.
That evening the capital’s square is alight, a wash with people. The bounty of the early summer is set upon long tables; melons the size of fat hogs, fish fresh caught from the river abed beds of cooked oats, nuts and berries fresh picked spilling out of their dishes. In smaller tables between, several cooks from the town proper sell balls of oat dough fried crisp and sprinkled with honey.
In the center, were the musicians. Pipers and fiddlers, of all ages, all walks of life. If you had an instrument, you brought it here. The lazy summer nights that the festival always fell on were always filled with the sound of the notes, old songs and new. Folk songs and love songs and children’s nonsense rhymes, danced through the air in time with the fireflies in the dark above.
And in the space that remained, everyone danced.
Grace danced some. In groups, with the boys and girls from the town that she had gone to school with when she was younger. But mostly she wandered. In her lovely lace dress and neatly braided hair, she felt as though she was floating apart of the world around her.
Two hours before the festival, her mother had spread her head with oil and brushed it into her hair until it rendered it soft and manageable. It had taken more than half an hour.
“If you would do this yourself occasionally, I wouldn’t have to make such a production of it for every special occasion” Gwyneth comments.
“It’s such a fuss though,” Grace responds, a bit petulantly. The oil smells medicinal.
Gwyneth sighs. Ever since she started to grow up, Grace had begun to believe sighing was going to be her mother’s primary method of communicating with her.
“The people of this country are going to judge you if it looks like you don’t care about your appearance. It used to reflect on your father and me, it’s going to start reflecting on you instead.”
“Can’t they just judge me based on what I do instead of how I look?”
Gwyneth wraps her fingers in the longest bits of Grace’s hair, pulling gently.
“They’re going to do both. The sooner you accept it the better. This is the part you have some kind of conscious control over”.
This is what weighs on Grace’s mind as the people of the capital pause in the dancing to release their lanterns. In the center are the fine glass ones from the university’s collection, but nearly every child in attendance has constructed one out of paper. Strung up on wire, they are raised above the square in the sky of the early night opened and brushed with honey-water so that they might attract and be filled with the fireflies that light the way to travelers in the summer forests.
It is tradition for them to remain lit throughout the night, and Grace can still see the light from the square through her bedroom window as she gazes out in hopes of making out Violet’s shape in the sky.
She’d listened enough to her mother’s stories of her youth to dress appropriately, having changed from her thin linen night clothes back into her riding trousers and good boots. She’d also taken a rucksack and filled it with an extra shirt, a cloak, an old canteen and hunting knife that was only a little stiff.
Prepared she was, to run away with a dragon.
Not runaway, be kidnapped. That was the story.
Still, Grace is taken by surprise when the stillness of the night is broken by Violet’s arrival. She walks through the treeline as a human girl, quietly coming up to the bottom of the tower.
Grace pulls herself onto the windowsill and swings a leg over, but before she can attempt to climb down (it would hardly be the first time), there’s a poof of smoke and suddenly-
Suddenly, Violet is taking up a great deal more space. Next to the palace tower, she nearly comes to the window. And with a single movement of her wings, she’s hovering right next to it. At night, rather than the sky blue tinge on her grass green scales, she simply appears a solid dark shade, making her a much more imposing figure than the one in the daylight.
The voice that Grace hears is the same gentle one that she’d heard earlier.
“Are you ready?”
Her voice is breathy. Grace finds that hers won’t even leave her throat. She nods instead.
“Climb and hold onto my neck. Try not to slide too far back, or I won’t be able to move my wings as well. And DON’T grab my ears.”
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Getting on easy enough, Violet’s barely broader in the shoulder than a horse, and her neck is easier to grip and more stable than the bridle. Despite this, Grace still feels her thighs quiver, even before the rush of air and the feeling of weightlessness when Violet raises her wings to take off.
**
Princess Gwyneth Lynn was forced out of her palace home at the age of twelve. Her mother, the Queen Susannah was seen as a radical by many, and a reformer by others. She had started the state hospital, she had passed the law making schooling until the age of twelve compulsory.
But it was the law that forbade land owners to demand labor in direct exchange for rent that caused the backlash that resulted.
Gwyneth had spent the moon of her thirteenth birthday huddled in the cargo hold of a merchant family’s ship. Gwyneth had always been clever and when the time had come for the ship to set sale, she disguised herself and bullshitted herself into a role as crew. She suffered through, her mind and body toiling, longing for the day she would retake her rightful place.
**
The north of the capital was increasingly mountainous. The south of Amoria had many towns and villages among the forest but the further north a traveler went the thicker the woodland and the more treacherous the terrain became. Human population had already dwindled by the time a rider might even reach the Craxlin range.
The center of the Craxlin’s was formed by the countries two highest peaks, and between it lay the valley of the Eternal.
But the dragon and her rider headed west that day, away from the valley.
Grace shivered from upon Violet’s back. It was very cold at the altitude, and her thin tunic didn’t provide her with much protection. She would have removed the cloak from her pack, but she feared falling. For the time, she was grateful for the deerskin of her trousers and the balance her years of riding were giving her.
The forests they’re flying above begin to thin, giving away to stark, harsh mountains where vegetation became more and more scarce. When they pass a gorge that looks especially nasty, Grace asks.
“Do people come up here much?”
“Not really”, the beast below her answers, “I suppose that’s why mother practiced so much of her magic here, less chance of getting caught. She taught me to fly here. Said the heights were give me incentive not to fall”.
Grace’s opinion of Violet’s mother has already been sorted neatly into the “negative” pile and nothing she’s said has swayed her in any way.
The cave they reach isn’t terribly noticeable, a mere blip in the wall of red-orange color of the sun baked, nearly barren rock. The ledge outside is is barely wide enough to stand on, and Grace side steps carefully, waiting for Violet to transform back. The cave opening is wide enough for the two to enter side by side, but Grace is forced to duck to do so.
The two walk side by side for a few hundred feet before the cavern opens up. The entrance had been very dark, as it was still not quite morning, but as soon as Grace finds she can stand back up straight again, it seems like the cave has become awash in light.
The cavern’s first opening is about the size of her bedroom. Though the rock maintains its natural shape and color, there are stairs carved out of it, several sets, heading in varying directions, sometimes off to where she can’t see. The top comes to a point, high above their heads, dotted with specks like crystal catching and reflecting the moonlight, from several small openings above.
"Mahkita crystal", Violet comments, following Grace's eye gaze. "Natural deposits, the opening was dug to allow in enough moonlight so it would be light enough to work at night".
“You’ve been up here before?”
“Mother uses a lot of these caves. Extra storage, or things she thinks inappropriate to keep at the house. She’s been doing it since before she settled to have me, I can’t even say what all is in here.”
She gestures off to the side of the section there in, where there’s a tunnel heading off, even with the ground. When Violet moves to lead, Grace follows.
The next “room” they come into has no openings, and is lit by a single oil lamp. There’s a small bed covered in a quilt and a trunk at the end. The trunk is partially covered by an old fashioned gown in a soft pink shade draped haphazardly over it.
Grace’s heart picks up its speed. She tries for flippant, hoping to hide her tiny fear.
“You don’t have a habit of this do you? Taking hostages up here?”
Violet’s face twists.
“I don’t know what all has gone on here before. But as to your question, I guess right now you’ll just have to trust me.”
There’s a bitter tone in her voice, and Grace supposes that her words probably hurt. But didn’t she have a right to be suspicious? It suddenly hits Grace that this would be the exact sort of plan that a villain in one of the old stories would use to ensnare the naive, thoughtless princess who dared stray from her duties?
Grace always hated stories like that, but she had even less of a desire to become part of one.
She tries to reason out if she could run quietly enough to make it to the opening of the cave without being heard. Her reasoning doesn’t get very far. She doesn’t even get to the point of what she would do to survive in the barren mountains. Because suddenly the only thing in her head is Violet’s dark eyes, which had first looked to her so lonely, suddenly looking very betrayed.
And so Grace changes quietly back into her nightclothes and slips under the quilt and tries her best to sleep.
When she wakes again, she’s not sure how long it’s been. The lamplight is the same gentle golden tone it was before. She feels rested, but doesn’t really know what that means. So she pulls her clothes back on (they’re obviously worn and she notices, and bristles a little at the fact that she notices) and leaves the chamber.
The main cavern is awash with sunlight, and Grace realizes she’s alone. Staring down the winding paths leading off suddenly feels very daunting.
Her first choice feels lucky, though she supposes it might just be the natural pick, but the first parth she takes leads her into an even larger section of cave. This one is lit by a single opening in the top, though it seems to have no crystal. In the center is a small lake, and off to one side, Violet is seated, stoking a small fire.
Violet looks up, and meets her gaze. There’s silence for a moment and Grace is suddenly possessed by the urge to say ‘I’m still here’.
Instead she settles for, “What time is it?”
“A few hours past sunrise”.
Rather than continue, Violet merely breaks apart the piece of bread she’s holding and offers half to Grace, along with a small jar of blueish purple jam.
“Oh! I love crystal fruit”, she comments, taking the bread, and hoping that her tone seals it as a peace offering.
After she eats her share of the bread, Violet extinguishes the fire.
“Where did the food come from?” Grace asks. This area is desolate, nowhere really to obtain supplies.
“There’s all sorts of things in these caves. I found a hole dug out full of preserved food in that chamber”, Violet gestures off “last night after you went to sleep”,
“But no one lives here,” Grace points out.
“I couldn’t tell you why Limena did anything in particular.”
Limena. It’s the first time Violet has referred to her mother by name. It’s not a common name to be sure, and Violet’s words are tinged with bitterness.
“Well what else is here then? I thought you said you thought it was used for storage?”
“I should probably find out sure I guess.”
Grace jumps up at the thought.
“Let’s get to it then. It’s not like we have anything else to do today”.
When she was a child, Grace’s favorite game had been running through the woods with the children from the local school. Older children hunted for berries and nuts and wild oats for their families, the younger and less responsible often simply play acted the stories of robbers and hunters from days gone by. Grace had favored playing the role of explorer, deep into the deepest of woods where no one had gone before, every turn or drop or cave a mystery to be solved.
When Violet leads her back to the main network and down to the cave she’d pointed to before Grace she feels a jolt go through her heart, like she was still playing at being one of those great explorers.
Violet returns the jam jar to a hole dug in the ground underneath a rock. It’s deep, and full of what appears to be the sort of food one would store in a cellar...along with loaves of fresh bread and ground porridge and other things which should not keep. Grace reaches out to briefly touch the rock, which feels cool, cooler than seemed...natural.
There is a second opening past the hole, smaller than the first. Grace feels a small bounce in her step when they cross through to it. The threshold is low enough that she must again must duck, but when she stands straight up again, it’s as though the whole world has exploded.
Grace had been with her parents to the university in the capital on a few occasions, for some sort of ceremony at the library. They had spoken to her about the work being done by the brightest from around the land who had all come. She hadn’t paid a lick of attention, and had just been taken by the enormity of the place. Stepping into this section of the cave, she is again taken aback.
The room, for there is no other way to put it, smells strongly, powerfully of wood. Her kingdom being a wooded one, Grace is very familiar with the smell, could at time even differentiate types, but this room had additional smells atop it; ink, paper, and something vaguely ethereal that she could not place.
Violet brushes past her, stands near the closest bookcase, looks up at the others that line the entire interior, the smaller ones that are topped by items encased in glass, the tables topped by bottles and scrolls, and sighs.
“This is going to be so much work”.
Violet does not seem to share Grace’s enchantment as she approaches the first bookcase. Grace runs her hands down the row of spines, selecting one at random. The cover is soft leather, the pages actual parchment. With the wood obtained from the forest at the foot of the Eternal Valley, the country had never wanted for inexpensive wood pulp paper and Grace had only seen a scarce few books not made of it before.
The interior seems to be a manual on different kinds of plants. The writing is small, and intricate, more difficult to read than the carved block print letters Grace had grown used to. She was glad not to have any of her own handwriting to compare it to.
Violet finds a blank piece of parchment and a charcoal stick and as Grace tears her way wildly through the room, moves carefully, occasionally marking things down.
“Are you thinking you’ll find something in particular?” Grace asks, when she writes down the title of a particularly old looking book.
Violet shakes her head back and forth. It looks like she’s just saying “no”, but the movement has a note of almost desperation to it.
“I keep thinking that if I go through everything she has, there will be something here that could teach me better than she could”.
Grace can certainly relate to the struggles of being a poor student, but the tone in Violet’s voice catches her heart. She sounds as though in her mind her entire worth is based upon her learning her mother’s magic.
“Well I mean, you could always run away and become a baker”. She says it with a smile and a laugh. Whatever Grace’s social weaknesses, she could always put people at ease.
As the two continue making their way through the room, Grace gazes at all the titles. Herbs, potions, transformations….She almost feels like if this were what her parents and teachers had told her to learn she would have been more eager to learn. She opens a tome on magical theory and tries reading a few pages. She quickly decides, maybe not.
After the two turn a corner to face another bookcase, Grace bumps something and knocks it over. She yelps, wondering suddenly if anything here could be dangerous, but is reassured when she realizes that the object is merely a painting.
The subject of the painting is a young woman, with golden blonde hair and huge blue eyes.
“That looks like Princess Dora of Besk,” Violet comments.
“Besk” Grace mutters. She’s had extensive schooling on the subject of their neighboring country, today she’s just hoping to remember. “Was she the one who ate the enchanted fig and was then ransomed to the family of the prince who tried to rescue her?”
“It was an apricot actually. Mother won’t set foot in the country of Besk now for fear of someone recognizing her from the prince’s description. She regretted letting him see her so clearly”.
“But...Dora was wed when my grandmother was just a young child...how old is your mother?”
Violet gives her no answer. Grace spares the portrait another look before setting it back. The gown Dora is dressed in looks familiar, but she doesn’t give it another thought.
The room is so huge that as the day passes it becomes more clear that if the two hope to search through everything it will take several days or even weeks.
When the light inside begins to change in hue, telling the two that the day was dragging into night again, Grace’s stomach begins to rumble. She turns at the end of the row of books she’s in to ask Violet how to get back to the pit that had all the food in it when her foot catches the corner of a trunk and she topples over it.
“Are you alright?” Violet asks, reaching to grab Grace by the hand and pull her back to her feet.
“Fine,” she replies, brushing herself off, and then turning to right the trunk. It’s a simple wooden one, and has fallen onto it’s hinged back, popping open and spilling its contents.
Grace freezes and feels her stomach still and quiet from it’s earlier hunger when she recognizes the wolf pelt for what it is. It’s not a garment, made for surviving the cold, but a full skin. It’s eyes are glassy, clearly artificial, and it’s snout and paws stuffed for shape. It looks like it could have been alive minutes ago.
Violet makes a disgusted noise, and reaches to slam close the trunk herself.
“Should have known she would keep her first tries around just in case”.
Grace’s head swims as her stomach drops.
“First tries? Just in case? Wha-what is this?”
Violet shakes her head. “Classic. People all over the world of people who sought to transform themselves into beasts by first taking their skin.”
Grace is silent the near rest of the night. Their skin. When she crawls back into the unfamiliar bed at night, she tries to put it out of her head. But she’s awoken twice by visions of the wolf as it was, whole, before collapsing into a pile.
She remembers the story of the huntress. In the days of old she had tracked and stalked a great stag. But she was not alone, for a lone female wolf also walked the forest, the last remaining of her pack. The winter had been long and both were hungry. The night of the full moon, the hunt came to a head and both the huntress and the she-wolf lunged for their prey. It depended on who was telling the story whether the huntress’s arrow or the wolf’s bite had taken down the stag. But in the end, it was dead, and the two hunters still stood.
And when she could have taken the kill for herself, the huntress bowed and gave the wolf the first bite. And as the story went, when she hunted alone in the forest alone, she was never alone.
In the following days, she tries to put the image out of her head. She won’t touch the trunk, but the memory of what it contained sits in the back of her mind.
On day four of their searching the cavern stores, Grace finally sucks up enough and asks
“Does your mother have a dragon skin around here? One that looks like you?”
“I do not transform,” Violet replies stiffly, “I am me.”
“Then...now….”
“In order to gain her power, my mother slew my father’s mate and took her skin as her own. It was a clever disguise. She gained a new form, and she also gained me, for whatever advantage that gave her”
Grace’s stomach twists. What Violet’s describing is nearly unimaginably cruel.
“Do...do you ever think of trying to find them?”
Violet looks at her.
“Would you know where to find the dragons?”
No. Of course the answer is no. Hasn’t been a dragon in ages. Or a unicorn, or a great witch. Magic was whispers from the Eternal Valley or history.
Grace looks around herself. The whole cave is full of it. Magic, knowledge. Objects enchanted, potions that could do almost anything. It was like opening up a storybook. When she thinks back to her old life, nothing seems like it would fit there.
By end of their second week in the cave, Grace’s skin starts to itch. The space almost seem to be closing in on her. Every day is more books, more shelves, more boxes, more disappointments. Her hair too, begins to itch, and one day, she lags behind when Violet leaves after breakfast. It was porridge today.
A slow glance around the cavern reveals another small entrance the two hadn’t previously explored. Just a small dipping shadow from the top reveals its existence.
The rock here is low enough she has to duck, so she slips into the new cavern slowly, and is hit in the face with a sudden blast of heat. The rock path tapers downward here, almost like a smooth staircase, and Grace treads carefully to prevent herself slipping. It’s narrow, almost like a hallway formed in rock, and, curves around after a dozen or so feet, before opening up again.
The top of the rock here has only a small ray of sun shining through, on the other side of another small lake. Unlike the one they eat breakfast by every day, this one is steaming. Grace bends by the edge, and reaches her fingers in. It’s hot, like water heated on a stove. This mountain must have a few hot springs inside. She looks up at the small opening. And not much way for the heat to vent either.
Still, it would be good for a bath. Grace slips off her boots and leaves them beside the water. Her tunic comes over her head and her trousers off her feet. Her linen underclothes add to the pile before she steps in slowly to gauge the depth. After assuring herself that she’s unlikely to drown herself, she lets her whole body sink beneath the water.
There’s no soap obviously, but the hot water does it’s fair share of making Grace feel refreshed. The lake is large enough that she can swim from one end to another and back and feel as though she’s been running in the woods. She learned to swim in shallow rivers near the castle, and the lack of a current makes her strokes glide as though through air. She floats on her back, taking deep breaths, feeling any stiffness fade out of her.
“Grace!”
The voice flooding the cave makes her jump, and the quiet reverie is broken. Her flailing earns her a mouthful of water, and she coughs and spits trying to clear it.
Violet is standing at the close end of the lake, looking cross.
“I don’t care if you don’t want to help anymore, but don’t run off and not say anything, I thought I was going to find your body in the bottom of a gorge”.
Grace feels her face go red with embarrassment.
“It’s not- I just wanted a bath.”
Violet’s face is hard to read.
“I could do with a wash too. I found some scouring potions the other day. We can use it to wash our clothes”.
She turns and leaves the cavern. Grace climbs out of the water, and pulls her trousers and tunic back on, not bother to tie either tightly. She should retrieve the rest of her clothes if they’re going to clean them properly.
It’s easy enough to pick up her nightgown and extra tunic. Grace pauses, before trading her regular clothes for the dusty pink gown atop the trunk.
When she returns to the pool, Violet has shed her own clothes and taken Grace’s spot in the water. There’s a large bottle of blue colored potion and a ball of string beside the bank.
“Just dunk everything in the water, then pour on some potion and rub it.”
Grace drops her clothes in a pile, and reaches to grab Violet’s where she’s left them.
“Oh, you don’t have to…”
“I worried you, this is the least I can do.” Grace feels a tinge of the heat return to her cheeks.
The whole pile goes into the water easily enough. Once they’re soaked through, she pulls them out, rolls them into another pile, and opens the bottle of potion. Once the liquid inside makes contact with the water, it becomes a soft foam, and soon it expands enough for the entire load.
Once she finishes rinsing everything thoroughly, Grace stands back up and picks up the string. The air up here won’t let anything dry, so she plans to string the line up near the pantry lake.
Violet has swam closer to her as she goes to exit. When Grace stands, she suddenly hears a snort from her direction. When she turns back, Violet gestures at her.
“Not exactly dressed for the ball are you?”
Grace glances down a herself. The gown is lovely, a soft rosy pink silk with delicately embroidered sleeves and a full skirt. It would look good on someone...someone it wasn’t several inches too short for. The sleeves didn’t even come all the way down her arms and the waistband pulls against her chest.
She shrugs, and then twirls.
“What can I say? The royals in my family are quite tall. “
“I guess not all princesses can be built like Dora. Or maybe the painter took licence.”
It hits Grace suddenly. The embroidery gave it away. The painting had shown it in all it’s detail. Apparently Limena kept trophies.
Grace clears her throat and then starts to step away. No reason to dwell upon it.
She keeps the dress on as she strings up their laundry. Once she nearly done, there’s a rustle and shadow moving across the cavern behind the line, that Grace realizes at once is Violet.
“Want me to find you a sheet or something?” Grace asks shyly, keeping her eyes downcast. Whether or not Violet minds, it still feels rude.
There’s a pause.
“No, I’m going to go out flying. Everything should be dry by the time I get back. “
And then she exits the cave.
Grace finishes up, and then scavenges some dried fruit and nuts for her dinner. With some more of the scouring potion, she washes her hair in the hot spring lake. Her scalp has become oily enough to itch irritatingly. Some adventurer she makes, she notes wryly, complaining already about her dirty hair.
As her hair dries, she wanders up and down the path to her room, to the library and back. She tries to look through some more of Limena’s collection, but without Violet there, she is aimless.
Once enough time has passed, she changes back into her own clothes. After she puts away the others, she folds up Violet’s things and decides to go to the edge and wait for her to return.
It’s later than she would have thought. The sky has taken on the gold tones of late afternoon, even if the sun is still fairly high. The peak they’re on is higher than the mountains on the horizon, and if Grace shades her eyes and squints she can just make out a strip of green, as far as her eyes can see.
The sun has begun to set when Violet finally returns. Grace begins to avert her eyes when she transforms back, before she notices that Violet’s wearing trousers and a tunic like hers. She also has an animal slung over her shoulder and another object under her other arm.
She gestures at the animal. “I brought supper.”
When she realizes that Grace’s gaze is still upon her, she comments, blushing slightly.
“It’s too hot here to wear a wool dress all day.”
“Where’d you go?”
“I flew east, back home”.
Grace is shocked.
“Weren’t you worried your mother might see?”
Violet shrugs.
“Even if she did, I’m not sure she would care. She wasn’t home anyway, she used to leave me alone there all the time, for weeks, even more than a month once. “
There’s a long pause. Being left alone is something Grace really doesn’t have a lot of experience with. Parents, servants, teachers, tutors, classmates, friends. In her previous life she may have even craved some solitude like Violet says.
Solitude is pretty much all they have now. Solitude and each other.
“What’s that,” Grace asks, gesturing at the package under Violet’s arm, as she sits down beside Grace on the ledge.
“Oh!,” Violet puts it down between them and pulls off the cloth she has it wrapped in. It’s an egg shaped piece of wood about as big as a wash basin, with a knob on one end and several strings stretched over.
“It’s my auto-lute. I grabbed it when I was getting my clothes. It’s one of the only things I really missed.”
Grace eyes it oddly.
“I’ve never seen a lute without a handle. Do you play?”
“A little, Mother was classically trained,” Violet comments, plucking a string and then fiddling with the knob. “But that’s what makes this one special. It was carved from a tree in the Valley. All I have to do is give it a tune-”
She slowly plucks some more strings. It sounds familiar…
She twists the knob a few more times, and then sets the lute down and lets it go.
Suddenly, the strings begin to stretch and vibrate on their own. The tune Violet played begins to speed up and keep in time, and suddenly Grace recognizes it. Every birthday or birth announcement, every sun festival, whistled in the woods by hunters and gathering kids.
“The song of the sun!”
Violet nods. “I only know a few songs, and most of them are Beskian”.
Grace snorts. “So they’re all about sheep?”
“And longing, the hard road, the lonely life of a shepherd…”
“See? Sheep”.
“Do you know anything?”
Grace can’t help but laugh. Her parents had hoped so hard for her to be talented. Gwyneth was a gifted painter with an eye for color and form, and Grace’s father had a deep and fine singing voice (as a child he had sung to himself in the fields with the cows). She, herself, had not been so blessed. The music master had been the only of her tutors who hadn’t even been able to last a month. Perhaps he had thought educating a princess would be an easy job. Perhaps he thought her breeding would make her a natural.
“Just one”.
She reaches across, looking closely. It does seem to be a big bigger than the lute’s she’d been shown, but the strings seemed them same. She shuts her eyes to try to remember. Once she plucks the first string, the others fall in line, even if the result sounds out of tune and a bit out of rhythm. Grace hadn’t had the lungs for pipes, the fingers for strings or the ear for voice, but she had genuinely been disappointed when the master had declared her unteachable.
Violet closes her eyes halfway and nods her head to the tones. After a moment her eyes open wide in recognition.
“The Flower of the Valley!”
Grace nods. “I always loved it. It was the first song I even tried- the only one that the music master had the patience to teach me”.
It had struck her even then, the lonesome tune of the first flower that grew on the corpse of the razed land of the valley after the war had long ended. Perhaps she had hoped to someday be that flower.
After that day, any time Grace gets stir-crazy, she comes out to sit on the ledge and look over the horizon. The weather has remained good, for the country has always had hot summers. The sun glowed golden every afternoon. It was so much easier, seeing all of this, than just the inside of the cave.
And the next few days are actually incredibly fruitful for them.
One day, Grace find a roll of cloth that’s sort of filmy and shimmery. When she unrolls it over a nearby table, she lets out a yelp as the table disappears.
When she hears her, Violet jumps.
“Grab that! Don’t lose it.”
“What is it?” Grace asks, gingerly removing it from the table and doing her best to fold it. Violet leans over and takes it from her, tucking it into her sack, unrolled.
“Mom said it was her first big spell. She enchanted a bunch of silk spiders to produce the thread and spin it under a full moon. It renders people and things invisible.”
Grace stares.
“Silk spiders are nearly impossible to catch and train. Your mother could have had a monopoly- trade with Etriu is difficult as it is. If she had ones controlled by magic, she could have made a killing and never had to work again. “
Her awe at the power of the cloth has been dwarfed it seems. The gown for her sixteenth birthday was being made of spider-silk. She had never even touched it before her mother and the designer from the capital had brought it in and asked her about the cut and style. Just the fabric, her mother said, had cost more than the materials for all her other clothing combined. The economy of Etriu was based around it, though Grace couldn’t have told you more than that if she tried.
Her mother had been excited. Said that this was a special dress to mark a special day. Grace remembered how she’d held the sky blue fabric against her cheek, and suddenly feels her eyes grow warm. She brushes her hand across them, and tries to steady herself.
She almost asks Violet if she can touch the wrap again, but she’s tucked it deep in her sack. Violet’s been stashing things as long as they’ve been here, but the last few days she’s been doing it more and more.
Unfortunately, as the days go by, Violet seems to be getting more and more frustrated. One day, after a morning of finding nothing either girl could even read, she sits down flat on the stone floor and hangs her head. Grace sits down beside her.
“Maybe I should take your advice. Leave all this behind. Transform human and stay that way. Become a baker.”
It’s a heady comment. Before this Violet had seemed almost single focused.
“I think...you should do whatever you want to. Your mother threw you out. She kept you from any other family you have, kept you from having an ordinary childhood. You don’t owe her anything”.
There’s a long pause. Violet doesn’t raise her head, but she reaches a hand over and grasps Grace’s own. It’s soft and warm, Grace didn’t expect that.
“Besides,” Grace adds, “Do you even know how to bake? My understanding is it can be terribly complicated”.
That is what makes Violet laugh. It’s a beautiful sound.
Grace gestures back up to the front of the cavern where they leave their tiny bags of personal things when they start searching every day. Grace’s consists of primarily the rucksack she’d brought, and Violet her autolute.
“If you ever have to go out and make your own way in the world, become a musician. That way you don’t have to get up before the sun.” She taps Violet on the shoulder. “Come on, it’s nearly dinner time”.
When they’re returning to the start, Violet comments.
“I suppose that’s not a choice you’ve ever gotten to entertain”.
Grace doesn’t respond, but it’s true. She was born a princess, and until her mother announced she was with child again, it was a certain thing that she would be queen one day. Even now, with the if, Grace still isn’t sure what she wants. Even if she didn’t get crowned queen, she would still be a royal, still have expectations, still be seen by the entire country.
The responsibility of it all...
It nearly makes her keel.
The rest of that night, she’s distracted. Violet later finds a stack of sheet notation for several songs she didn’t know and spent the entirety of the time after they ate their dinner trying them out of the auto-lute.
One of the last ones she tries is a long bit, which she tells her is based on a story. She says it’s called “Strawberry Child”. She tries at one point to sing it, but her voice is husky and just results in both of them breaking down in giggles.
But the beat gets into Grace’s skin. She jumps up.
“Do you know how to dance?”
Violet shakes her head.
“Never had any one to dance with.”
And with nary a word, Grace pulls her to her feet, and begins showing her the simple steps. Never even knowing how to dance, what a childhood indeed! Grace had danced since she could walk, thanks given to the servants children, and she could scarcely think of what the children from the capital would think of someone who couldn’t even join them in a festival.
“It’s easier if you have a big group,” she tells her, while teaching her to hand off, “But there lots of dances you can do with just two people. They can be a bit boring though.”
It makes Violet smile though. Grace is beginning to think that there’s a lot she would be willing to do to keep making that happen.
But then the music ends, and as Grace ascends the stairs to her bed, the feeling in her stomach from earlier creeps back into her mind.
What in the world was she thinking? Her parents must be terrified. It’s been- she stops to think- nearly a month since she’s been gone! Summer would be almost over, her birthday was coming. There were things to be done, expectations...and her mom and dad- did they genuinely think she’d been kidnapped? Or did they realize she must have run away of her own free will. That made her worry too. Maybe they were even glad she was gone.
Tossing and turning, Grace thinks of Violet and is hit with another wave of guilt. Could she be in danger for being complicit? She’s a princess for heaven’s sake, it would be easy for this to be treated as a real kidnapping...that was what they were aiming for wasn’t it? They were both apparently beyond the pale.
And yet once again, the image of Violet smiling enters her mind. Whatever comes of this, it was worth it.
The next morning, Grace eats her breakfast slowly, as her stomach is still ill at-ease. Violet on the other hand, seems more light-hearted than she’s been recently, and scarcely seems to notice Grace’s state.
When they start the day’s search, Grace lingers when they pass Dora’s portrait. She runs her fingertip over the brush strokes. Struck down at sixteen with a poisoned apricot, left in a comatose state in a glen surrounded by an enchanted storm.
Trying to sound casual she comments to Violet.
“You’ve heard the old stories too...what would be the standard response to a princess being kidnapped by a dragon?”
Apparently her tone worked, as Violet barely looks up.
“They usually sent scouts to find the location. If they made it back, they would be followed by knights or mercenaries.”
Grace thinks Amoria has scouts. She’s not sure. Military organization was pretty much at the dead bottom of the things she could force herself to pay attention to. And as for knights...they were archaic. They just called them soldiers now.
Would they have sent one after her? Most of them were young men from small villages who wanted to see more of the kingdom, or who didn’t want to take up the family business, not exactly valiant champions of the crown.
After lunch, Grace takes a break outside the cave opening.
She glances down warily over the edge. No signs of anyone. No rider could approach from here, no one on foot for that matter. The animals that survived here, the ones Violet occasionally caught for supper, were uniformly of the excessively armored, thick skinned, used to the baking sun, type.
Could anyone even have been sent after her?
Grace raises her hand to her brow and gazes across the landscape.
Wait.
The furthest that she could see on the horizon was the tip of one of the first peaks in the range itself. It wasn’t nearly as tall as the one they were on right now, but it was taller than what was on the other side, in the hilly forested part of the country.
And it looked...wrong.
“Violet!” Grace calls out warily. She’s not really sure what she’s seeing.
Violet makes her way out slowly. She doesn’t spend much time out of the cave, doesn’t seem to crave it the way Grace does. She too shades her eyes.
Grace points. “Does that look wrong to you? It looks almost like…”
“Like someone tipped a glass bowl over it. “ Violet says.
It does. The mountain looks like someone tipped over a glass sugar bowl and placed it over the top. Though there are no hard lines, the distorted shape is hard to miss.
Violet stretches her arms to transform.
“I’ll check it out”.
“I’m coming with you,” Grace insists, grabbing her and Violet’s sacks both.
The ledge is far too small for Violet to stand on once she’s transformed, so Grace backs into the tunnel while she does. Once she’s fully dragon, Grace steps back out into the light.
She’s far more unsteady on Violet’s back this time. She hasn’t ridden anywhere since they’ve been here, and her thigh muscles quiver. Her stomach also, swoops when they ascend. This is a big uncertainty. It’s the first time in a long time she truly does not know what to expect.
The strange phenomena starts a bit south of the big gorge. Despite having looked like a bowl from afar, it’s nowhere near as well defined. It oozes, almost like tree sap. The color looks the same as what they saw from the cave, like cloud met water, swirled in one space.
It’s rising over the top of the mountain, but not much higher, and that height continues over the rolling hills and valleys. Grace gets the feeling it would adjust to fit anything in the landscape. And it stretches as far as the eye can see.
“What is this?” is all she can say.
She feels Violet underneath her stretch out.
“I’m going to see if I can fly through it.”
Violet stretches her wings flat, and points her nose ahead, making her body as flat as possible. She drops through the air suddenly, and then.
There’s a “Thunk!” Grace lets out an “ooof.” It’s the only thing that comes to mind. It was like the two of them had hit a wall.
“You feel that too?” Violet asks her, sounding dazed.
“Are you alright?” Grae asks in return, breathless.
“Yes..yes, I’m fine. Just needed to catch my breath. I’ve never felt something like that before.”
Grace sucks in a few deep breaths. It feels like she’s been knocked silly.
“So we’ll find where it ends. It has to end somewhere.”
Despite the certainty in her voice, the fear is swelling deep in Grace’s gut. When she looks out towards the horizon, the swirling phenomenon swells and spreads like a bubble. She can’t see over it. The fear gets worse and worse as they keep flying and it hardly changes.
As the sun starts to set, Grace’s fear reaches its apex. At the height they’re flying, she can see through the top of the bubble, even though it’s contents are muddled. She would still know the shape and landscape of the castle she called home even in the darkest night.
Her father had once taken her to a lecture at the university. One of the items the speaker had shown was a flower that had become quickly encased in the sticky sap of a tree that had been cut nearby. It was still at peak bloom, as though frozen in that moment.
That’s what her home, her kingdom, looks like from above.
They still can’t see the end of the anomaly.
When the moon is overhead, the height of the bubble finally begins to dip. Violet begins flying lower. She’s been slowing down, Grace notes, she must be exhausted. This is confirmed when Grace reaches to touch the side of her neck and can feel the rhythmic pressure of her labored breathing. They’ve been flying for hours.
“We’ll camp as soon as we land,” Grace assures her. She feels Violet’s muscles slacken in gratitude.
The end of the bubble comes down in a wooded area, so the next clearing they find, Violet drops fast. When they hit the dirt, Grace slides off. She stands up and stretches out, that flight took a lot out of her. Even riding a horse for half a day could be straining, and her dragon-riding muscles were all newly developed.
Violet on the other hand, transforms back human, and immediately hits the ground. She heaves, and leans forward until her head hits her knees. Grace runs to her and puts one hand on her back. She’s dripping with sweat.
“Did you pack any food in your bag?” Grace asks. Dinner, and sleep, that’s what they both need.
“Maybe, I don’t remember.” Violet finally manages to squeak out.
Grace rummages through both of their bags, eventually coming out with a portion of very dry bread. The nuts and uncut oats get stuck in Grace’s teeth and she longs for water, but her search in the bags reveals only an empty bottle. They’ll have to search for water in the morning. This forest is green, there must be a source near.
Thankfully, she also quickly finds a large blanket, more than enough to cover the both of them. It’s summer time (at least she thinks so still), but the night air is still chilly.
Violet’s barely managed to nibble at her bread when Grace pulls up the blanket over her. She takes one corner in hand.
“You should dry off. I know it’s summer, but it still can get awful cold out here at night.”
She sits in front of Violet and roughly presses the blanket against her face, and then slides on hand under her hair to get at her neck and back of her shoulders. The other girl’s eyes are heavy-lidded and she doesn’t speak. After a few minutes, the bread falls from her hands and her eyes fall completely shut. Already sitting, she slumps forward onto Grace’s chest.
Grace picks up the remains of the loaf and tucks them back into the sack. The she sets it aside and carefully lifts Violet off of her and settles her on her back on the grass.
The blanket covers the two of them with ease, but despite the warmth, Grace still feels the night air prickling at her skin. She wishes that they could have lit a fire, but even Grace knew that a fire in a forest at night was a poor idea. Aside from it’s potential to spread unwatched, it could also attract people to them and they had no way of knowing what sort of people they were. It occurs to her that she’s never actually slept outside before. If it weren’t for her state of sheer exhaustion, she might have laid awake staring at the stars.
Before she drifts off, she turns to one side and casts a glance at where Violet lays, already sound asleep. And for not the first time since the start of this whole mess, she feels a powerful surge of appreciation for the other girl.
Morning comes quickly it seems. The sun warming her face is how Grace awakes. Much like the stars at night, she feels like she could get used to this.
Then her stomach grumbles and she’s forced to sit up and face the world.
She can’t bring herself to wake Violet, who’s still sound asleep, so she stands up slowly and carefully places her side of the blanket on the ground. She keeps quiet as she heads through the trees to forage for breakfast.
It ends up being fairly easy. In the morning sun, and well-rested, she can listen carefully for the sound of running water. The small creek ended up being barely a few minutes walk away, and like pretty much all bodies of water in the kingdom, bordered thickly by a growth of wild thrushful oats.
Digging up the roots, she remembers her first day at the village school. The other children had giggled softly, at the princess who had never even dug her own breakfast, but showed her how to open the pouch-like roots and throw back the oats that grew from the stalks above ground, so they would continue to thrive. That day she at least felt competent.
The two she pulls should be enough for them. A bit bland with no milk, honey or berries, but they really should move on soon. There’s must be something in Violet’s bag they could fill with water to boil them up.
When she returns with them stuck in the crook of her arm, Violet’s begun to stir.
“I brought breakfast! We need to make a fire, I’ll grab some wood, and-”
Her voice cuts off.
Apparently that’s enough to make Violet shoot straight upright.
“What’s wrong?”
When they had landed the previous night, the clearing was good-sized. Not large enough to hold a festival, but more than enough to camp. There had a been a good sized rock a few feet behind where they’d slept.
That rock was now cut sharply in half by the cloud bubble.
When Violet sees where Grace is looking, she voices it.
“Is it- is it growing. It wasn’t that big before was it?”
Grace nods silently.
She roughly pulls up the blanket and stuffs it in the sack, then takes Violet by the arm.
“Let’s go.”