Episode 19 - Disappearance

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I’m at the point in social distancing where writing and working on projects is surprisingly difficult. Which is a point that I’m pretty sure we’ve all hit at one time or another, and I’m pretty sure this was never going to be a one time thing, given how much time has gone by.

But this might make sense to you, I guess. This might seem like an inevitability, something far short of a rational and reasonable observation simply because of how obvious it was. Like, seriously, think of the times we’re living in. Simply existing in a state like this has to be exhausting. It has to pull all the energy right out of you, and you need that energy in order to do creative things. So, A + B + C. It should be so simple. But at the same time, it’s not. Or not for me. 

For me, storytelling has always been… Well, in general, experts recognize that it has a therapeutic potential. It’s not just a way of relaying events that are bothering you to either your therapist or confidante or the equivalent. There’s… Well, rather than conveying the details matter of factly. You can always convey meanings. You can convey the feelings of the moment that haunts you in the exact way that it haunts you. It’s not the color of the walls that matter or the content of the words spoken to you but the way they landed. It’s the way they docked against the moor that is your soul, the way the pier inside of you was built, that might matter.

Because it’s not always about the craft, the vehicle as it were, but the landing.

I don’t know how to feel about all this, and I don’t how to directly express it, so you would think I would need stories now more than ever. You would think that I would be pouring myself into stories to clear my head or to make sense of something or to escape. Or any of the thousands of reasons why people write. But I’m not. I’m not doing that. The irony of that isn’t lost on me. I mean… I mean the irony of being unable to write while trying to tell you this story is not lost on me.

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Grief did not leave the prince, but in time, he left his stupor. In time, he came into his senses, but what awaited him when sadness departed was anger. His anger was born out of the knowledge of what had happened, of what--or who--had killed his beloved. It was not a secret, merely a truth that could not be spoken aloud under any circumstance. The sort of declaration that--if it were to come to pass--would wreck everything. Not just the lives of the royal family but the lives of every person in the small kingdom, or so it was feared. 

And yet, the prince was still ready to plead his case, justice was justice, after all. Justice for his bride he loved with all his heart was certainly a worthwhile endeavor in and of itself. But more than that, his citizens needed to live in a just world. There could be no murderer about, particularly not one in the royal family. 

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The GiftedDuckling came into my life around the time the Funhouse Hallway level changed, around the time of yet another move--the move that landed us in Phoenix. She was always on Symbolic Myst, and she always commanded the sense of authority that she did. Some things never changed, after all. But though I had been on the site for a while already, I didn’t know her. I hadn’t encountered her until my account went dormant for a bit longer than it usually did. For the length of our move, as it were.

Now, this wasn’t a violation of the rules. Partially because I had announced this hiatus before I left. Giving everyone a warning was the sort of due diligence that was expected if you wanted to get some sort of exemption from rules because--yeah--life happens. But more than that I…  I had a pattern of disconnecting for a few days every so often, but I had been a great site member in every other way, so whatever, I guess.

But not whatever. The GiftedDuckling was concerned about my absence. She was concerned about this pattern I was showing. Not because the pattern was bad but because patterns normally have some sort of meaning behind them. And I told her the meaning: that my family moved around a lot, but she felt fairly confident that this was not the whole story. And she wasn’t wrong, per say. I mean obviously there would have to be a reason. No one moves for fun. It just wasn’t a line of conversation worth pursuing. In my opinion.

She disagreed, but she was nice about it. Never demanding. And our conversations had enough of an established rhythm and cadence that she could read between the lines when she approached a red zone with me. And unlike the Queen she would not try to push through it. She would not try to encroach upon spaces where she was not welcome. And I appreciated that. More than I ever said.

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The royal family was a sacred institution, the king said to his son. The queen was there with him, but she was the only one. They met in the secret corridors of the palace, out of everyone else's sight and hopefully out of everyone else’s mind. There could not be spies about. These words needed to stay between them, and yet that was challenging. Rumors were running rampant. They always were, but that sentiment seemed to ring out especially true in a time like this when they needed and wanted so desperately for secrecy. When what they needed was secrecy least the royal court and the kingdom itself be pulled in two.

The royal family was a sacred institution, the king said again to his son. They were selected by the gods to be the focal point around which the kingdom oriented itself. In that sense, they held the world together. It could not be torn asunder now.

And yet, the princess has already torn the world asunder, the prince argued. Was my bride not meant to be queen? Was she not chosen?

The queen lowered her eyes and stared down at the stone floor. She knew what the king’s answer would be. She knew what it absolutely had to be.

No, the king explained. If she were chosen, the gods would have saved her.

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I’ve always wondered how easy it would be to figure out my family’s scandals. Maybe not now and not after all the years that I’ve spent manufacturing a sense of personal distance from it all. From things that weren’t my sins. After all, I was a child during this. I was baggage getting passed around from place to place. Or I was until I was not… I was about sixteen when that happened. When everything changed. But we aren’t at that point in the story yet.

That was a few years away at that point.

At the point in the narrative though, where we actually are, it wouldn’t be too hard to have pieced it all together. Maybe newspapers weren’t so knee-deep in the online space at the time, maybe not every single news story made it online, I don’t remember either way, but I do know that my aunt’s name would have been all over the place. Even if the value of clicks was not fully established yet, this was the sort of thing that had to go online. It just had to, and she had the same surname I did. For all the marriages she had, she never gave up the surname her father gave her.

And I wondered if the GiftedDuckling had looked into it. I wonder if she knew the scandal, for lack of a better word, that followed me wherever I went, and I wonder if she tried to draw her own and faulty conclusions to make it easier to interact with me. That was one way of handling it.

But all the same, I am relieved. I am relieved about what I had, questions notwithstanding.

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The king knew his words would not sit well with the prince. He knew there was nothing he could say that would truly alleviate the hurt the prince was feeling. It was well-known that the prince had his doubts about the old beliefs, as many a young man did, but it was how things needed to be. The young girl was gone; the divine did not intervene for her. Therefore, she was not meant to be queen. 

The prince asked if the king would feel the same way about his son should his son die in a similar manner. The answer was not well received. 

The queen could not bear to lift her eyes. A weight pressed down on her shoulders as the two men argued before her. The young man rejected the older man’s attempts to console him as consolation. Mentally, she pulled away from the argument as she tried--aimlessly and once again--to find her own answer. After all, though she hated to admit it, she knew what her daughter was. She had carried the girl in her womb. She had fed her at her breast. And yet, she found her daughter to be an unfamiliar being. 

Now the queen had known many different people, it should be added, but before her daughter she had never known malice quite like that.

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If you wonder where Aishi was in this, they were around. I should say if you were hankering for more details in terms of Aishi’s comings and goings beyond posting fiction under their handle that was written by my pen, once again they were around. Aishi did not care much for Symbolic Myst. They mostly cared--no value attached to that verb in this context--about what I was doing and my comings and goings. To them, time on Symbolic Myst was time accounted for. So it was fine. An approved activity, if you want to take it that far. 

And on the other hand, the conversations between the GiftedDuckling and I just made sense when you consider how quickly she had caught on to the grift, for lack of a better word, between Aishi and I. A scheme that was meant to give Aishi access to the platform. And here is where I should admit that Aishi didn’t just linger. They did comment on stories in an unnecessarily abrasive way. Not outright mean, but there was a certain bite to everything Aishi commented. 

And maybe you who like following rules on sites or understand the importance of them are appalled to hear that, but let me assure you that I as the enabler got ripped for it, indirectly of course. Justice was essentially served when the stories under Aishi’s name were torn to shreds in retaliation, so you can’t get too mad at me for that. 

Or you could. But the GiftedDuckling did not, and this was her website we were talking about. At some point, she just accepted that Aishi had to be around or lurking in the shadows if I was to be able to participate in any meaningful way Apparently this low level mutiny was something she could accept. The system was working, after all. We were just willing to all accept the consequences that we had earned. 

You know, Aishi could not begin to understand why I loved that website so much, and that’s okay. I didn’t need them to get it. In fact, I was kind of happy that they did not.

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Unable to reason with his father and unconsoled by the promise that another bride would be found for him soon, one fit to be queen, the prince stormed off. He could not bear to look at his parents a moment longer. It did not matter to him that he did not have their permission to disengage. It did not matter to him that some semblance of protocol was supposed to follow them into this dark hallway, even with no one to witness their interactions. It did not matter that he still owed his father a degree of respect and civility. The prince’s heart was seized with a fury he could not ignore. 

It was best for all of them if he left, and so he emerged from the darkness to a quiet palace hallway. He thought no one knew where he had been and that no one knew where he was in the moment. But that wasn’t the case. There was a set of eyes following him about. Eyes tipped off by someone excluded from such a conversation.

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Aishi Online is a production of Miscellany Media Studios. It is written, edited, produced, and performed by MJ Bailey. With music from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. If you like the show please consider leaving a review or posting about it on a website that might not be around in five years. Make the post vague and somewhat mysterious but still compelling if you want. Up to you.

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