got_it

You

Got it.

Please, you’ve run out of imagination. There must be somebody who will spare some.

Some say there could’ve been a man named Quincy Day. Some would’ve spoken of him at his funeral.

It would’ve been a modest affair, for a prince. He could’ve been the one to bring the excitement, had he been not dead, and had he existed.

Of his family, only his sister Samantha and brother Agarma would’ve attended. No Reimond or Carline, no Lionel, Four, Anisa, Rose… the names don’t matter. Reimond had an excuse. The rest didn’t care.

Samantha had been catatonic and shaking. Joan held her tight.

You suspected Samantha didn’t exist, either, but it’s hard to prove a negative. Agarma had offered her some words which failed to speak life into her. You didn’t know what they were. Some said they could’ve come from his maid.

There had been a lot of evidence, and though it weighed heavy now, there had already been judgement. There was a baker who had been thrilled that this ‘Quincy’ and Samantha had organized the construction of a mill. Samantha would’ve known, it hadn’t been much work, it had simply been a matter of finding the right people to give the order to. There were farmers, Phillip and Monroe, who’d celebrated when the alleged Quincy rode into town, a great flowing cape behind him, further followed by a deadpan minstrel-maid ordered to blow a horn to regale his arrival. “I have come to fix your well!” they say he said, and though it took a week to diagnose the blockage as an upstream draught and another two weeks to circumvent it, he did it, and they’d felt heard, and proud to have such a prince, and happy there was someone who took such joy in helping them.

…

The same couldn’t be said for other lords or royals.

…

There was sadness, and there was uncertainty. Who would run Penbarrow now? Why had he jumped? But, in spite of questions, life would go on. The people had lived without him before, and they would live without. At least, until the inevitable civil war, and the inevitable invasion by Bythrusia which everyone would be too distracted by the civil war to think about. Ha ha. Or maybe you were wrong, in which case, good thing you’re out of the way, so the people who are right have one less obstacle. But you didn’t think you were.

And, well, that would’ve been it, then, had that been what had happened. But please, will you be spared a bit more?

It was a simplification which didn’t generalize. Anisa had attended the funeral, alongside her lycanthropic pyromaniac, her incurious dwarf brick, Wheels, and an insecure ego’s worth of uniformed swords. Unlike the other speeches, you’d managed to completely recover the contents of this one. To the mourning countrymen, with pale lips stained sanguine, she proclaimed: