Pet Lady-in-Waiting

 

Pet Lady-in-Waiting

 

 

Part 1

 

 

             It was the season when fresh spring flowers warmly painted the world with their beauty. A time of new life and birth, when the world was aptly filled with bright young flowers. Yet for the brunette girl with brown eyes the world was always quiet and monotonous.

             “…..”

             Hidden somewhere deep within the forest of the Sharque region of the Kingdom of Floran was Fay, standing at second floor window with her head down and wearing a sullen expression.

             She had waited for so long and still hadn’t received any food. She hadn’t eaten since the previous day and her hunger had transformed into sharp stomach pains. It seemed as though the food wouldn’t arrive until sometime close to sunset or possibly even the next day.

             Fay had attempted to satisfy her hunger by filling her stomach with the water from the well in her front yard.

             I’m hungry.

             Being starved was not an unusual occurrence for Fay. Very few knew about this place, and it was a place where no one could hear her. The place was intended to serve as a prison for Fay, the bastard child of the family.

             No one cared for an illegitimate child. Her mere existence brought shame to the family. 

             Would it at least have been a little bit better had I not been mute as well? she thought to herself.

             She pressed down on her own chest out of frustration. She didn’t desire to be recognized as a real daughter. All she wanted was a little bit of attention, but she knew that even such a tiny desire was foolish.

             Her father usually visited her once every six months, though sometimes she waited up to a year. During these visits, he would tell her that she would have never been born had he not been drunk one night, and that the reason why she had been kept alive was to be sacrificed in place of her sister in the case of danger. He would tell her tens of times that her mere existence was horrifying to him. Had she not been useful in the protection of her sister, she knew she would have been thrown out and abandoned a long time ago.

             She knew this to be true, and yet, You never know….., she thought to herself.

Again and again, these uselessly hopeful thoughts filled her head. Maybe if she hadn’t been mute, he would have visited her just a little bit more…

             She hadn’t been born mute. It had all begun when her mother passed away when she was eight. Since then, she would sweat profusely and be unable to breathe anytime she attempted to speak. She began to fear being unable to breathe and so she chose to stop speaking entirely. As time went on, she began to forget how to speak. She barely gave this any thought as there had been no one she could speak with.

             When her father would get frustrated with her muteness, she would scream and cry. Yet still, every time she tried to speak she would gag and her vision would spin.

             So, she taught herself how to communicate simply by mouthing the words, though she felt it would never be useful as she would most likely never leave her prison….

             No, I need to stop thinking so negatively.

             The longer she thought about these things, the sadder she became.

             With nothing in particular to do, she decided to lay on her bed. Suddenly, she heard noise in the distance.

             Father?

             She quickly ran to her window. She saw several female servants entering the building with things in their arms.

             What is going on?

             There was only one servant who would bring her meals to her every day. This was the first time she had ever seen so many people headed her way. Fay looked at the door with an anxious gaze. After only a moment, several female servants burst through the door and changed Fay into new clothes. She was dumbfounded, but everyone was too busy to explain to her what was going on.

             Fay realized something unusual had happened.

             It can’t be…

             She hoped that her mind was simply blowing it out of proportion, but when she saw her father, she knew that “the day” had come.

             “Fay, the Imperial Army has arrived. You know what you are to do, correct?”

             She knew.

             She knew that she had been kept a prisoner for this very day.

             But…

             As she looked at him with a stunned expression, her father put a dagger in her small hand.

             “You must kill yourself before you are captured,” he ordered.

             She opened her mouth to sincerely plead and yet…

             Father.

             The word that had been the source of so much of her hurt could not leave her mouth. She hated herself for being unable to speak, even in a moment like this.

             “Father!”

             Her sister Chey called out, clearly uncomfortable with the arrangement.

             “It’s the only way to avoid being attacked. There’s nothing else we can do,” their father spoke without hesitation.

             “Darling, let’s go! We don’t have much time!”

             Noticing her daughter looking at Fay with sympathy during such a critical moment, her father’s wife shoved Chey into the carriage before getting inside herself and slamming the door.

             The carriage carrying her “family” sped away quickly into a dust cloud of its own making.

             She had always known it would end this way.  Her father had always made it clear that she was not her sister’s equal.  She had always known this and yet…

             A sob spilled out of her already open mouth. It still hurt. She still wanted to be loved. She would have been grateful for even just sympathy. Though she was used to being alone, she was not okay. She knew everything had come to an end for her, yet she couldn’t get herself to move until the carriage had completely disappeared. She didn’t want to believe she had been completely abandoned.

             Every day had been the same. She would look out the window and wonder when her father would be coming for a visit, then run to the front door if she would hear any noise at all, only to drop her head in disappointment when she realized no one had arrived at her door. ‘He will visit tomorrow,’ she would always think to herself. She waited for him tirelessly.

             It wasn’t that she loved her father so much that she didn’t know what to do. Rather, it was just that it was the only thing she could do while being locked away by herself. After waiting day after day, her father eventually became a special person in her heart.

             “Hmm…”

             Fay, who had fallen asleep after returning to her chambers, awoke after sensing an unusual presence.

             “…. A young girl. I’ve hit the jackpot! How much time do we have left?”

             “Around thirty minutes, sir.”

             “That’s enough time. Let’s have some fun for the first time in ages, shall we?”

             Fay, still not completely awake, didn’t understand the situation she was in. Perhaps she was dreaming, she thought. A person? Here?

             “But sir! If someone finds out, we could find ourselves in a very difficult situation!”

             “Stop worrying. The commander in chief will probably only look through the main building. He would never think to look in a storage room like this.”

             “That’s true… Then, I’ll go after you!”

             The older soldier grabbed at Fay’s thigh with a strong grip. She let out a scream. In that moment, she realized something absolutely terrible must be happening to her.

             “You must kill yourself before you are captured!”

             Fay thought about her father’s command.

             “Ah…”

             She felt the soldier’s wet breath, the weight of his heavy body against hers, and his sticky hand grabbing at her. She wondered what waited for her at the end of this.

             It doesn’t matter now, she thought.

             The days of looking out the window, waiting for her father, felt like it had been so long ago. Maybe today or maybe tomorrow…  She had thought there was a possibility that her father would someday finally accept her as a part of the family.

             She closed her eyes and remembered a phrase she would repeat to herself in her mind whenever she would get scared.

             Momma loves Fay. Momma loves Fay…

A tear rolled down the side of her face.

             Swoosh!

             Suddenly, tens of birds entered the room through an open window and began flying around them.

             Flap flap flap!

             The younger soldier, who had been waiting for his turn, began waving his arms frantically at the birds surrounding him.

             “Sir, I think we should just go!”

             “Come on! They’re just birds!”

             Had they been normal birds, they would have been able to take the younger soldier’s advice and escape the room, but these particular birds were determined to surround them and seemed to have no plans of letting them go. A chill went down the younger soldier’s spine.

             “But if we stay any longer we may get caught-“

             The younger soldier didn’t finish his sentence.

             Thud!

             His head had fallen on the floor.

             In that moment, the birds began to fly out of the room.

             “Your, your honor!”

             With an astounded look on his face, the older soldier began to get up. Then, a strange man with blindingly shimmering blond hair spoke in a spine chilling tone.

             “Disobeying orders, huh. Then, you must be ready for the consequences.”

             “Please forgive….!”

             Before the old man could finish his sentence, his body was sliced vertically, causing a bloody mess to spill out of him.

             The blond man turned his back to the old soldier without displaying much emotion.

             “Ah…B.Ba…..Bah…”

             Fay got up from the bloody floor. The blonde man turned to her, looking like the silhouette of her beloved father whom she could never reach. She knew that this man wasn’t her father. She knew this and yet…

             Fay managed to move her shaking legs to walk towards the strange man. Being alone was too scary for her. She didn’t want to be alone again. Maybe if she had reached out and held on to her father the way she was reaching out to this man, he would’ve taken her with him. With these thoughts roaming her head, Fay grabbed the man’s cloak and opened her lips.

             “Take me with you.”

             She had regretted not even pleading to her father, so now she was pleading to this strange man over and over. She said to him what she couldn’t say to her father.

 

***

 

             Two men entered the estate, now filled with evidence of an escape.

             The tall blond man with pumpkin-colored eyes— known by many as the Lion of War— was Marquis Max Warren. The corner of his lips twisted up at the sight in front of him.

             “Pathetic.”

             “Nobility without honor and pride is no different from an animal,” the other responded sternly. He was Carl Jayden, a leopard-human hybrid with black hair and black eyes.

             Ten years ago, several nations came together to bring down the Kingdom of Florite— a kingdom that held power over the entire continent. Their efforts were futile. After a long period of war and violence, Florite came out as the winner. The kingdom was in the process of punishing those nations that had plotted against it, and the Kingdom of Floran was the last of its targets. The Florian Royal Army, which had gathered with the hopes of protecting their nation, was defeated in a week, and soon after all of the nation’s nobles escaped and took their fortunes with them.

             Now, those in the way of the Floritian Imperial Army were not Florian knights, but rather everyday civilians without any leadership who had taken up arms to protect their country. They say that even dogs fight robbers to keep their homes safe, and so it was truly pathetic for the Floritians to see that the nobles of Floran had escaped without a second thought.

             “Sir, it smells like blood.”

             Max looked at the portrait of the viscount’s family before him before walking into the bedroom with his sword. Inside, a man and a woman resembling the viscount and viscount’s wife were lying on the floor, each with a dagger in their heart.

             “How clumsy.”

             How could the perpetrator have gotten the couple precisely in the chest when they were not even a knight? None of this amused Max anymore. He had seen many an aristocrat’s attempt to avoid pursuit by leaving the bodies of others in their place to be mistaken for them by the opposing forces. The bodies before him were definitely substitutes for the aristocrats who had fled.

             “Put the owners of this estate on the list of those to be chased.”

             “Yes, sir.”

             Max looked around after leaving the estate. The breeze was sweet and there were flowers in the air that he had never seen in Florite. He began slowly strolling, as if he had dropped something.

             “This place would be such a shame to lose for those who have escaped. The sweet scent becomes thicker the more you walk.”

             Max nodded in response to Carl. As they got further and further away from the main building, the colors of the flowers became more naturally vibrant, and their scent became more aromatic. This was odd considering most aristocrats put more effort into adorning the main building of their estates. The two men began traveling deeper and deeper into the woods of the estate.

             “This is very unusual.”

             “Yes.”

             A swarm of different kinds of birds was flying through the window of a small house that looked abandoned and nearly in ruins. Driven by his curiosity, Max jumped through the window himself, easily and fluidly like a feather.

             “Look at what we have here.”

             He saw two white legs flapping about in the air, an old man between them, and a younger man waving his arms to keep the birds away from him. First, he cut the neck of the younger man without preamble.

             Thud.

             “Your… Your honor!”

             The older man recognized Max far too late and his face went pale with shock.

             “Disobeying orders, huh. Then, you must be ready for the consequences.”

             Looting was an effective method often used to boost the morale of soldiers, but this method was not to be used in Floran. The battles hadn’t been brutal enough to create a need for such a method. Max cut the body of the pleading old soldier with skill. He didn’t feel like he was creating a violent mess, but rather that he was creating a work of art. He knew this feeling wasn’t normal. His heart was crooked somewhere and was slowly being wrecked. To have to see blood while processing these thoughts dampened Max’s mood.

             “Sir, I can take it from here. Please go ahead and step outside.”

             “Leave the bodies of these men outside the door of the estate so that everyone may spit and step on them.”

             “Understood.”

             Max caught a glimpse of the young girl, now panting without even trying to hide her bruised thighs and turned his back with indifference. Carl would do the rest of the work.

             “Ah…B.Ba…..Bah…”

             Max turned his head and looked down at the floor. A shaking hand had grabbed his cloak.

             “…….”

             Normally, he would have broken the hand that touched his cloak. Yet, he didn’t do such a thing this time. Instead, he slowly moved the small hand away from his cloak.

             “Ah, ah!”

             When Max moved her hand, the young girl grabbed onto his waist without knowing that she had put herself in an even more dangerous situation. Carl felt that she would surely be killed now.

             “I can take care of the child, sir,” he said nervously.

             “No. Wait just a moment.”

             Her soft strength, the repressed sobs spilling out of the corners of her mouth, her shaking body and the heat that resonated from it…

             Max’s eyes fluttered with curiosity.