"As long as you can grab a breath, you fight. You breathe... keep breathing."
The shoes were next to be thrown. She swiped them from beside the bed and threw them towards the lounging room. The pair vaulted in a broad arch, spinning and twirling until they clopped against the distant portion of floor boards. She grabbed one of Rodderick's slippers and tossed it vaguely towards pair of shoes, but it landed nowhere near it. Katriane turned away from the archway leading into the bedroom from the lounge room, facing the bed itself. She stomped over and smacked one of Rodderick's law tomes off of the comforter. A weakened, strained cry left her lips, a somber wail that only exerted further exhaustion.
She crumpled. Her form lowered until her knees smacked onto the wood paneled floor, her arms and head flopping onto the bed. A mess of ginger hair draped over her shoulders and curtained around her face, which was quick to shield itself behind the safety of her crossing arms. Tremors riddled her shoulders and danced down her spine. The weight of everything crept further onto her like an iron curtain, like whispers in her ear from ghastly soot-like spirits.
"My Lady!" a servant had exclaimed, to no avail. Katriane's cries flooded her own ears, rattled her senses, and shook her equilibrium. The platform of balance threatened to tip. The edges began to haze. The sound of clacking servant shoes intermingled with the shrill sounds of Katriane's wails.
How long? How much had really happened?
The separation from her brother, the isolation that followed it. Never having her father. The uncles she adored so dearly were never close enough, out of reach. Percival's supposed death; and, the grief that followed it. Being pushed away by Vulmar, by her mother's husband--the man she was supposed to see as a father, by Rodderick, by the so-called noble teens everyone looked up to.
Dismissed, rejected, ignored, belittled. Bullied, betrayed, abused, scarred. Those she thought she could trust turned their backs on her. Her own family disowned her--whether figuratively or literally. The hopes, the dreams, and ambitions that she clung onto as a child were destroyed. So much of her free-spirited drive had been buried into the ground, knocked dead. She had become fragile, the glass menagerie amidst the jagged weaponry. A figure of naivety, of timidity. A mundane among legends of both brawn and brain.
Now it all made sense to her. Her life had never been easy, had it? Since day one, she had been destined to be alone, for failures. Katriane pieced it all together: how she had been a doormat all of her life. When was the last time her voice had been heard? Properly heard? Conversations had run so dull, so empty-minded. The words she spoke were no more than the beat of bee's wings: soft, unheard by the ears. Even the rustle of leaves had overpowered her voice.
The servant's hands rested on Katriane's shoulders in an effort to console her mistress. Katriane's soul, however, had dampened. Her heart ached and yearned to be discerned; it wanted the bonds to be mended, to be restored. Yet Katriane had learned long ago that she could not have what she ever really wanted. Luck was never truly on her side. In haste, Katriane curled her shoulders forward to escape the grasp of her servant.
"Let go of me!" she exclaimed.
"My Lady --."
"Leave me!"
The maid withdrew in a clutter of steps, stumbling over herself and her skirt. Katriane lifted herself from the bed, disheveled, somber-ridden, and streaked with lanes of black and red on her cheeks. Her hands balled into fists, and before she had a chance to second-guess herself, she stormed away from the only help that came to her. Her feet padded across the long pathway of flooring until she eventually reached the stairway leading into the babies' room.
Alferic and Oswald lie in their cribs, both awake from their mother's cries. Little Oswald had wept with her, his rounded cheeks as red as a cardinal's feathers. Katriane lifted both of them, one at a time, and held them to her frame. Her form threatened to give out again, but she held steadfast and strong, embracing her infant sons.
"You'll see," she whispered to them in the midst of her dribbling tears, "that this Realm is unforgiving to any and all. I promise you that I won't succumb to the snakes anymore. Not anymore. And one day, I will teach you... so you will not be like me. Like I was."
Clutched by two pairs of small, soft hands, Katriane lowered until she sat upon the ground, her back against Alferic's crib. With both of her sons in her arms, her spirit steeled minute by minute, hour by hour. The resolve in her eyes overcame the sadness that lingered, sending it into the depths of her wearied heart. And, by the shrapnel of strength remaining in her mind, Katriane said farewell to the persona she grew up knowing, casting it to the depths of past. The flame that barely held on began to rekindle.
