20 July 2012
I watched from the old oak near Pixie Town as the Queen's troops stormed in. She called herself the Queen but we all knew she wasn't. Not really.
People here are selling everything they have for a drop of liquid in this bone dry hell. Wild bunnies, cellos, razors, bread anything traded on the black market for a taste of water, ale or snowberry juice. These were desperate times.
I twiddled with one of my elm wood arrows high in the oak, my sole belongings held in a single threadbare blanket. This is what she had reduced us to. The blue blood of Opussia, the true heirs in hiding. Some of the troops passed below me. Staking out territory, not here to offer aid at all. Prospectors, waiting for the pixies to die off so they can have the gold. I knew there was something much too convenient about this drought.
I pushed a strand of silver hair behind a pointed ear, checking my fine features briefly in a shard of mirror. Regal features, blue eyes of truth and wisdom and high elfin cheekbones, a stem of ivy curled through my eyebrow. The sign of my house, once in the seat of power now lurking underground or in trees.
I looked behind me at my brother Pala and the once Lord Rov. They too wore the ivy emblem on their faces. They snored softly, beautifully in the bough of the tree. Such a waste. P should be a prince.
A messenger sounded her arrival below me. The sixteenth messenger today. I looked down in contempt at the silver crown embedded in her russet curls. The finest in elfin craftsmanship on a head of a half-blood. A human.
I picked up my bow. P and Rov told me not to go off on one on my own but Opussia needed a defender, a hero. And that crown would be ours again, not hers. I would once again grace our family halls, our rightful home. I would be Princess Raya once more. Holding that thought I drew back my arrow and took aim...
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The Opuss Tale Part 5 • Opuss № I