land

Five days ago, you had been granted access to the royal vault, on the condition you wouldn’t share what you saw. Which was a stupid proposition from multiple perspectives. You were a prince, wouldn’t you soon get full access regardless? And, why would anyone ever trust you not to share? Your confusion and irritation was omnipresent and palpable, thinly masked with solemn pursed lips and a nod.

The grade of the treasury’s magic was failing. This sword was blessed by a wizard. This sword was blessed by a witch (you thought witches didn’t bless things?) and slathered with holy water. This wand allowed you to cast a ‘Clank’, but sucks out heat from your body for magic energy instead of using thaums. This chest rotates you on the W axis.

They let you take the chest. They also insisted you take a copy of some old letter, in the hopes you had the time to translate. It was shocking your ‘aunts’ and ‘uncles’ thought of you as the person who could translate ancient languages, rather than Agarma, but you appreciated the recognition nonetheless.

Rose, Agarma and Hendrik probably already had all the cool stuff.

You may be a man, named Quincy Day, covered in blood and feeling nothing.

Everything pulls you toward their soullessness, and you have to assert, no, I have a soul. “I am better than you,” you say to the world, as you stand at its cliff, and perhaps through narcissism, or through an inertial fear of death, you step back.

You’re inept, and foolish, tired and directionless. The sky opens, and you are wet, your shoes grow soggy in the damp, muddy grass. You grow annoyed at yourself for wearing such a nice shirt to hunt, when you knew it’d get soupy. You laugh at your ineptitude, and cry. You are a microcosm of the world, and neither can improve the other. If they could, neither would’ve arrived where they now are.

You close your eyes. The rain pock-pocks your head.

Maybe you’d jump tomorrow. You suspected death wasn’t enough. But what did it matter.

You’d missed Anisa. Good. Her presence was actively atrophy-genic. Stifling.

You gave Samantha a full list of magical items stored in Blisbane. She got angry — as she is wont to do, as you love her for. You are a mosquito for her passion.

She requested several of the items be brought to Penbarrow, and got denied by Red Hand. She had screamed at you, “why can’t you just force dad to give them over? We could do so much good! If we could reverse-engineer how the Aqueous Acumulus worked, we wouldn’t need to worry about droughts! If we could work the Dreamward Signet, maybe we’d find an easy source of thaums! You’re the prince! Do something! Take responsibility for something greater, for once in your life!”

You had responded, “it doesn’t matter. Things are fine as they are.” She had screamed and screamed. Young and passionate.

She was overreacting. The particular items Samantha had requested had either already been requisitioned by Rose or Agarma, or had sat in the vault for so long it was senseless to believe someone else hadn’t already evaluated them as worthless. Time was the greatest filter, and the world had experienced so much time already.

“Think about it!” she’d continued, she’d shouted, she’d somehow begun to wear you down. “You’re working in the field, overheating, and instead of needing to fill your water back up, ‘CLANK’! You’re all cool again! You should’ve taken it!”

“If it worked like that, someone else would’ve already taken it,” you said, and she ignored, and you questioned why you were bothering to engage. “It probably only works a certain amount of times, or instantly freezes you.”

“You don’t know that! You don’t know any of that! Maybe no one’s thought of using it like this! Or maybe it just needs to be tested! You’re so closeminded! Boring! Uncreative! Lifeless!” And she had marched upstairs into her room until the maid called her down for tea.

You hoped Anisa had enjoyed her Green Carmella. A cleansing, earthy taste, but simple, much like her.

The maid was annoyed at you, too, but the maid was always annoyed at everything, a low simmer to Samantha’s hot spikes. You so loved them both, as much as you could love anything.

The two of them left for Felkner the next day.

Samantha’s fleeing was a foolish, if optimistic, endeavor. She’d run quick enough that she couldn’t reason herself out of it, nor could you. Going there would restrict her freedoms, and her time, and energy to the whims of others. She’d need to meet new people to do her experiments, if she had the time to do them at all, and if those people even existed in Felkner.

It was saddening. More saddening than the default malaise of the world’s lack of possibility. Perhaps you two weren’t as similar as you’d thought.

She poached their Felkner workers, too, assisted by the maid’s testimony. A Peter and a John and a Jane. Your empty world was emptied further.

You eventually had the clank wand sent to her. She thanked you, and encouraged you to visit Felkner. She’d cooled a bit, over the years.

Samantha should’ve been chosen as inheritor. Failing that, Rose. Calhoun. Agarma. Lionel. Hendrik. The succession plan was yet undefined, but most assumed Rose or Agarma. They were both awful.

Samantha had been right, about your impotence. It was pathetic. You were bored and unfulfilled and felt like no one was addressing any of the world’s problems. Everything you did was a patch, a temporary solution.

Maybe Samantha was okay with that now. She seemed to be, if she was working for Anisa. You could pull her with him. You, rather. But, were your places swapped, you wouldn’t want to be pulled. Better to give her the choice.

You smiled for 2 more years, until the boredom and depression finally overcame the inertia.

You sent a letter, waited for her frenzied arrival, and jumped off the cliff.

There was no longer a man named Quincy Day. No Quincy body would be found, but disappointingly, a Samantha body was soon found again at the Felkner Vanguard Guild, hosting pancake breakfasts and ensuring compliance with municipal bylaws.