EPisode 28 - Destiny

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Considering the way I format the episodes for the feed, you might not realize it, but this is the… Well, it’s the thirteenth episode of Season 2. Unlucky thirteen. I know it is because of the way I format the scripts on my computer. So I’ve been staring at this fact for quite a while. Or I need to be more plain about it. You know the unnamed fantasy story you’ve been hearing about? Well, we’re getting into the births, as it were. Both the princess and the duchess are pregnant, and they need to have their babies. 

I guess there could be some more filler before then. As a watcher of anime, I’ve definitely seen plenty of that. And it’s Easy to replicate, and my wording would somewhat imply there isn’t any filler in the text I’m looking at. A text that you can’t see. Text that I could represent any way I want to. Wouldn’t be beyond me. There’s a lot of questionable… Okay, representation does not really work in that sentence. I mean that I’ve spent a great deal of time twisting this story in any number of ways that are convenient to me and/or suit my specific ends. What’s one more twist of it all? What’s buying me some time so I don’t have to associate a specific birth with such an unlucky number. 

Truth be told, though, I don’t understand why that would be the line I cross, you know? I might feel compelled to do it, but that’s the superstitious part of me talking. There’s no actual reason to fear the number thirteen, and plenty of aspects of this story that could have stood to be corrected. Like how so many of my characters are unnamed, hardly described, great to get confused and mixed up.

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What was that thing in literature class we all learned about writing? Assuming you had a good  one, which can be a fairly bold assumption. W--We learned to show not tell. I haven’t done the showing nor the telling, technically. I’m just filling the space in your life with my almost nonsense. But it’s not nonsense. This isn’t imposter syndrome talking. It’s a very specific kind of sense.

There’s been things I’ve left out, and had I not left them out, then I wouldn’t be in this situation, right?. I could have reworked the story. Sure, the season could be longer or shorter. The story would have probably made more sense. But I wasn’t worried about sense, just superstition. Because this is my podcast. This is my story. In so many ways.

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The princess was inclined to fall into her old ways, into habits once chased off by her own fear but had come swarming back when a perceived injustice crossed her again. She was the princess, after all. She was their princess. Why would the people not be more excited about her baby than that of a foreign duchess come to rule over them. The second choice bride, at that. 

Now, this version of the story was missing a key few facts, but the ones that were there stoked the princess’s anger. And she sat in the corner fuming while her mother, the queen, doted on the young duchess while largely ignoring her own daughter who was in a similar state.  The royal lineage had to continue, granted, but it could have gone through this illegitimate child who had no paternal line to claim them. 

Not that the princess could say any of this out loud or act on it. She wanted to, but the timing wasn’t right. The princess proved to have a difficult pregnancy, and her body seemingly begged her to spend most of her time in bed. This was what spared the duchess--that the one who so vehemently wished her ill could not see the matter through herself.

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I’m somewhat uncomfortable with the mere fact of my existence, which is a statement that tends to make other people uncomfortable because of the existential implications. We aren’t supposed to feel this way. We’re just supposed to be happy with it or about it, right? We’re all just trying to make the most of it collective, and then there’s the alternative to think about. I get it. And I prefer the mental alternative, believe me, which is to not think about this, but I’ve never been able to manage it. My brain just defaults to existential crisis mode. 

And in my case, there’s a reason for it, but honestly, I thought other people in my generation felt that way too, though for their own reasons. I mean, even if the world has always been this chaotic, as the first generation bound to social media, we’re going to see it more than anyone else did. And there are implications to that. There’s a price to pay for that. But it… But it seems like I’ve gotten it worse than anyone else did. Somehow. 

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He was not an attentive father. And in many ways, he was losing his resolve as a partner. The princess knew he was looking into something, but she assumed it was something for her, and she was not wrong, exactly. It just went beyond that. Or he worried it went beyond that.

The mysterious eyes left the palace shadows and turned to the streets. But he navigated this new environment just as easily. He strolled on the edge of crowds and picked up the whispers of citizens excited for the next royal generation to start. But even for those who were more hesitant in their feelings, no one discussed the duchess’s home country leagues away. That mysterious entity so far on the edge of the world with customs, habits, and… curses that no one cared to know about. 

Presumably the royal family had looked into such things and found no cause for concern, which was why the marriage match had gone through. Or that was what the citizens believed. For better or worse, they trusted most of the royal family--the king and queen above all. But the mysterious eyes had a very different opinion of them all, so perhaps he was the best person for the matter, after all.

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The GiftedDuckling taught me many things, but one of them was about caring for people. To care for someone is to offer the assurance that even if you cannot see the existential answer, it is there and that your existence has meaning and merit that does not need to be dissected. It took me a very long time to piece this together, though.

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The duchess saw the change in the princess’s eyes. She saw the rise of goodness and its decay. She saw the reasons for it. She saw the tides of public opinion that had always swallowed the princess up, pulling air from her lungs and joy from her heart. And the duchess knew what misery that was. She lamented that it was this way for it did not have to be. All the same, through the fog that was this empathy, the duchess could see the danger she was in. 

And for this, they called her wise but gave no more thought about it.

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We all have regrets. I--I have a laundry list of regrets well over a mile long. But to not tell the GiftedDuckling that I saw what she was trying to do--that she was trying to show me that she cared about me and that I was worth this care--, well that’s fairly high on this list. There was more to her actions than those of The Queen from the Forum. I could see it, but I never said anything about it. 

Having strong eyes is in my blood, I guess. Having a strong mouth, not so much.

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The princess went into labor first. And it proved to be as difficult as the pregnancy had been. Her water broke, but it was only afterwards that her body began to shift itself, lining up muscles and the baby itself into the proper position. 

And so, for the first several hours, the princess suffered alone and only had the midwife to tend to her while the rest of the palace remained oblivious to the events happening in the princess’s chambers. Alone, the princess struggled, cried, and screamed in the name of perception. This was a secret that needed to be kept lest anyone speculate about how unnatural it all seemed: a casual remark that could always devolve and create a revolt against her amongst a populace that despised her so much already. 

Or that was the story that was told. Between the queen and king when they thought about it in passing some time later. Who knows their true reasoning. But what a terrible situation, it was. What miseries littered the palace halls. 

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I did go to therapy some time after. It took awhile because my family was never going to be game with it. So I had to wait until I was in control of my own life, but that day came, and I found a therapist and did the whole thing. I didn’t really even wait either. It was the first time I was out of the house and in college. And I really don’t regret it. I’m better than I was, and sometimes I think I should find a way to let her know that, but I don’t know how.

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Magic, the mysterious man kept hearing as he wandered through the streets, and though he initially thought the speculation was absurd, it could not escape his mind. He carried the thought with him into the palace, into the shadows, and just outside the room where the princess struggled to bear his child. He could not help her, and those who could did not.

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The weird thing about therapy is that I can never tell what my therapist is going to say to me, which might not be weird but it feels weird because there’s the rational answer to things and my answer to things. So clearly getting from B to A would be a linear path, right? But maybe there’s a lot of assumptions I’m making as an extension of my nature. I want things to be easy and straightforward. I don’t typically like surprises and build up. In fact, I’m the kind of person who feels compelled to know what happens at the end of the book if the tension gets too thick, and I’ve never been really good at avoiding that impulse, even though as far as coping mechanisms go that is a terrible one. There’s just no real world applicability.

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The princess survived the birth which took three days and great pains, but her daughter was not welcomed with any sort of fanfare beyond what a noble child would receive. For that’s all a child so far down in the line of succession was: a child of nobility and not a royal heir of any sort. This was just a child, the duchess kept reminding herself, but as she stood on the outskirts of the modest celebration with a hand on her own stomach, she could not shake the uneasy feeling she was so desperate to not acknowledge. For that was not an ordinary child. Royalty? No, she could never be. But she wasn’t normal. Something far worse was coming.

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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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