Episode 23 - Cast

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Well, I’m exhausted. Not that that’s a surprise to anyone, really, but at least I’m tired from trying to put cats in Halloween costumes. And that’s not a bad reason to be like this, all things considered. This is relative, of course, I’ve always been tired. Even before the year of our pandemic. Tired is my default state. And it’s not a medical condition, either, though if you are in that camp, you have all the positive thoughts and comforting measures I can send to you. I can’t imagine what you live through, but for me, it’s been a matter of circumstance that has worn me down and kept me down. It drains whatever bit of energy I can accumulate as I gather it. Not unlike life in the year of our pandemic when so much suffering is happening completely needlessly. 

(Pause) Welcome to a taste of my world. It’s not that great, is it?

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The GiftedDuckling was a gentle soul. Or is a gentle soul. I don’t… I don’t know if she’s dead or not. Which is a super morbid way of putting it. I don’t know why I suddenly care about verb tenses. I’m pretty sure I’ve said this, but if I haven’t or if it was not implied strongly enough, once the GiftedDuckling and I fell out of contact, we never got back into it, and I don’t even know where to begin searching. People disappear all the time. Online especially, but it happens in the real world too, that’s just not something I’m sure anyone wants to think about right now. 

Why do I keep thinking about that? Too many true crime shows I guess. I don’t even know why I still listen to them. They never cover the story I want them to cover, and I’m not going to ask for it. That would only raise more questions, so it is what it is. 

But The GiftedDuckling was good to me. And that is grammatically correct. While I knew her, she did not push me. Even when she wanted to or even when she maybe should have. But at the end of the day, if she had tried to push me--if she tried to get me to do what was probably in my best interest I can admit that--I would have shut her down. 

If she hears this podcast, I hope she doesn’t feel guilty about what happened. I hope she doesn’t look at the hot mess of a human being I’ve become and think that she could have prevented this in any way because she really couldn’t have. A lot of damage was already done by the time I met her, and all of it was irreversible. Maybe that’s the issue that I have with the Queen deep down. The Queen always believed I could be fixed somehow. That justice would mean wiping the slate clean, and it was the one belief common amongst the personas she used to try and get close to me. Almost like it’s a belief fundamental to who she is, which it is. And I get it. (With a sigh) I get it. I’m not going to like or agree with everyone’s fundamental truths, but frankly, I don’t share that belief. At all. It just seems impossible. What’s done is done. There’s no undoing things. And maybe that means there’s no fixing me.

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The prince’s new bride arrived with a long, black veil over her face, and this was a controversial matter. The choice of color was not welcome, to put it lightly. Though the king tried to hide it, he took offense at the color of mourning being used to dress his son’s new bride as she made the journey to her new home. 

“It’s as if she’s marching to her grave,” the king said. “Does she believe that? Is she so unhappy with the match that her parents pursued?”

It was a mental slip of sorts, you see. The king knew it, and some others did as well. After all, there were some who knew what had happened to the general’s daughter. However, it was the king’s desire that everyone pretend this was not the case. That there had never been a bride before this one. That the general--now gone and out of mind--had, in fact, never had a daughter at all. Cold as it were, the king himself would say, it was completely necessary. 

Though regarding this new bride, the color choice was not as he feared, the couriers were sure to say. They pointed out that this was the custom of her nation. That the color black was not one of mourning but of elegance as that kingdom did not have the dark dye as readily available as theirs did. For them, gold was the color of mourning for them because it evoked the imagery of the promised afterlife. It was meant to symbolize the riches that would be bestowed upon them from a god that rewarded good and generous souls for their morality. As for the veil itself, it protected her face from the sun’s rays, and all could agree that sunburns were unpleasant, and also completely unnecessary for a woman of her status. 

With those assurances, the king softened at that, though the queen sat beside him, still tense. There was another matter to be discussed, so she leaned over to her husband, mouth pressed against his ear. “With this match set,” she whispered. “We should find a groom for our daughter.”

The king took a strained breathe, nostril flaring. 

“She is not much younger than her brother,” the queen reminded him. “It is only proper she get married soon.”

And she was right. It would be proper. However, proper did not mean safe. 

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The GiftedDuckling gave up on uncovering the mystery I carried. Or she accepted that she could not pry it from my hands. Rather, she could give it some place to rest when I was ready to unburden myself and lift this weight from my shoulders. And so she started working on that. The rest of the world moved on. The rest of Symbolic Myst moved on, and by moved on, I mean away from the site. The actual community seemingly wasted away partially because the GiftedDuckling gave me too much of her attention. She wasn’t the main moderator, I need to add, but she was a pretty dedicated one. In fact, she was the one that kept the group going. She just had this personality that made her inclined to hold everything together and put everyone else at ease. So when she stopped doing it, no one else thought to or knew how. She let Symbolic Myst fall apart. Only to try and do the same thing for me and for our one word assignments. She tried me to hold me together, but being one person, she obviously had her limitations, and yet, I was the priority. And I was flattered about that, but I felt really guilty all the same.

From that guilt, I often felt the urge to change the subject or to give her something, anything she could hold onto, to make her feel like this was all worth it, so I told her when my aunt got engaged again. I don’t remember which husband this was. I could piece it together if I tried, but I don’t want to try. I’m not sorry about that.

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The prince did not find this new bride unattractive, he told his mother. She was a beautiful woman, but it could have just been that she was so exotic. Her skin, hair, and eyes were so dark, dark enough that it made her teeth look dazzlingly white. Almost unnaturally white. Or maybe it was unnatural, he thought privately. He didn’t quite understand it, but he had noticed that his new bride had rituals and habits that he’d never seen before. He wasn’t inclined to ask her about it in case she did not want to talk to him about it. 

She could talk to him about anything but only if she were willing. He decided to give her that luxury, but he was relieved that she spoke his language rather well. Better than the king’s advisors had thought, in fact. The prince was so relieved that he could understand her. While he did love the general’s daughter still, he was pragmatic. The prince could not be with his love but had to be with this woman. And he had to have and raise at least one child with her. Or two. Or more. To that end, it would be easier if they could talk to each other, share their thoughts and their fears, and work through problems. 

In the course of their many conversations, the prince realized that this noblewoman from a land he had never seen had a very good heart. She was strong and protective of the children she did not have yet, telling him a list of tutors he would need to find for their children. And she wanted certain plants removed from the royal garden or at least pushed to the boundary where her children would not reach them. Whether they be pointed or sharp, she always specified which it was. And then she would escape his company at times for ‘womanly’ things along the lines of preparing for motherhood. Or that’s what she told him. And he had no reason to doubt as she would always walk off with his mother who would affirm what she had said and agree with every word that came out of her mouth. Obviously, the prince thought, his new wife was telling him the truth.

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The GiftedDuckling did not ask the usual questions when I told her my aunt was getting married again. You know the type. Where did they meet? When was the wedding? Was I going to be a bridesmaid? Etc, etc. The GiftedDuckling didn’t care about those things. She only cared about me.

And so, point blankly, she asked, “Are you going to be safe?” 

I didn’t know, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. I also didn’t want to lie. 

My silence spoke volumes.

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The queen was most pleased with her soon to be daughter-in-law. How ironic, the queen thought, that the girl’s name roughly translates to hope. There was more nuance to it than that, of course, but the queen’s notion of hope itself was… not as you might think. It was dark and twisted. It involved death and suffering, after all. But these were things her new daughter, Hope, understood quite well. Those were things she was willing to embrace for herself and her children. Reluctantly her husband. But this bed had been made, and she was content to lie in it. 

Her magic was stronger than anything the queen had seen, which was unexpected, yes, but her dedication to her family line was what the queen had hoped for. And that was the critical factor: the key for all of it. With this, she could make anything work, she thought. And the plan could go on ahead. And that meant the princess needed to be married. Sooner rather than later.

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The next prompt The Gifted Duckling gave me was different than all the others. It wasn’t a single word but a prompt in the sense you might be more familiar with. She wanted me to write an escape plan. 

Or something like this: ‘Write a plan for a young teenager to get out of her house in the dead of night. Silently but safely. Include a destination she can go to. And a character she can trust.’

And I took issue with that prompt. For one, because trust actually means very little. Just because I could trust someone, does not mean they can actually help you. That was the one lesson the Queen could never understand, and I almost hated the GiftedDuckling for not understanding it either.

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The princess wept when she realized her plight, when she found out--through whispers in palace hallways--that she was to be married off. She did not like the idea of that in and of itself. Never mind the prospect of a hypothetical groom. There wasn’t one picked out for her yet, but no man could ever give her what she wanted, so she would be unhappy regardless. Now what did the princess want? That was the question left to answer, though answering it did not come all that easily to her. She wanted the small kingdom, for one. She wanted the throne that was supposed to go to her brother. And she wanted her parents’ love. More generally, she wanted love at all.

The eyes in the shadows were also something she wanted. She wanted to keep those. Everything else was just an amorphous blob of desire. 

The princess wept. She wept and wept, nearly shrieking in the pillow. The eyes in the shadows returned as if her tears had summoned them directly. Of course they did. He loved her, he thought, and how else does a man respond to the tears of the woman he loved besides making himself available for whatever fight needs to take place. 

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She wasn’t paying attention to him, and he felt his heart break. In desperation, he dared to reach out and brush his fingers against the princess’s hair. He knew what that could mean for him. It was death to touch royalty for someone of his status. How lowly born he was. This fact had never escaped him, and yet, the princess let him touch her. She let him love her. And he swore he would never be without that.

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I never did that assignment. The GiftedDuckling would ask about it, but I would change the subject. At least for a while. Then I told her that I had this… idea, let’s call it. An idea of someone in the shadows going after the young girl. It seems like a silly detail, but it’s the sort of detail that can change an entire story. Little things do matter. The GiftedDuckling knew this, but the queen had never figured it out.

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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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