A GODDESSES PARADISE (girlxgirlxgirl)

15; halfway mark

"The dearest of people"

🌿

⚠️ PG 13 again ⚠️

The people here are different from what I'm used to. That's something I have been telling myself all the time for these past two weeks.

They have different thoughts than I do, a different language and different culture. Of course I find similarities between myself and them, but most of the time, I point out the differences.

King Anaxagoras is someone that people are scared of here. The whole system is built up on respect and fear, I can see it in everything they do. They admire him, see his blinding smile and their eyes sparkle. But many of them stutter out of fear, I see the carefulness they use around him. Sometimes the blond haired king is cold around them, his people, and his servants, other times he is happy. But with me, he is always the same. Calm, smiling and patient. I don't understand him and he doesn't understand me, but with patience we have gotten far.

That goes both ways. I have had to be so patient to survive.

Waking up in the morning is always a let down. I still wonder if this could all be a dream, and the next time I wake up I'll be at home. Together with Irene again. Sure it was dark and cold and hard work upon hard work every day back at home, but at least it was home. I knew everyone there, I understood the language, I had gone to school with them there, lost my parents there, been born there. Here I'm a nobody, a prisoner, someone who is locked up in the palace without any means to speak. I don't make my own living here. Instead I am dependent on the king, hoping that he will bring me a meal this day too, like every other day, hoping that he will let me live and not starve.

How could I possibly trust him? Just because he smiles? Just because his smile might have given me butterflies on more than one occasion?

It's also a let down to wake up every morning, because if I can't wake up at home, the least the Gods could do is let me die peacefully during my restless slumber. Sadly, I am awake and very much alive.

Over the week Anaxagoras has not let me outside the room, until today. He opened my door like always, walking in like he owned the place, which he does, with a bright smile on his face. The smile is awesome for others, bittersweet for me. It's kind, really it is, but it's also quite creepy sometimes. I wonder how he can smile so brightly, yet not let me leave. How can he smile while holding me imprisoned? Still, it gives me butterflies.

He told me to stand up, using words that I obviously didn't understand, but also hand movements that made things easier. I had mixed emotions. Hope, but also fear. Would I be killed or let go? Still I followed him outside the room for the first time in two weeks. I was still wearing a similar robe to everyone else, but to me it felt a little revealing, and shyness bloomed on my cheeks. With Anaxagoras just walking out, expecting me to follow, I was too stunned to defy him. He had no guards with him. No way to make sure that I wouldn't run away. If anything, that made me fear him more.

I followed him through hallway after hallway, down the stairs and through narrow and wide corridors. Everywhere I looked was expensive and expensive and even more expensive. Gold and jewels and paintings and silk. Marble floors, open walls, greens and flowers everywhere. Not a single person we met dared to look at me weirdly in any way, however I must have stared at them. Their white robes, jewelry, handsome faces and tall and healthy figures were just so different from everything and anything I have ever seen before. Nobody looks remotely like this in my village.