Rather be a Lover than a Fighter

Chapter 11 : The Tea

Charlotte had already left a while ago but not without making me my favorite blend of tea, which I could sip peacefully while looking over my paperwork. I had already finished signing and reading all of it last night but since I did not feel tired and had nothing else to do, so I read the most important passages again, to make sure I remembered all of it. The sun had long gone down and the palace slowly became so quiet that I decided to open the window of my office to hear the the rustling of the wind. I stared quietly into the night sky and finished my last cup of tea without the guards in the yard beneath my room ever noticing that I was secretly watching over them. After I drank almost the entire kettle, my stomach felt a lot better and far calmer than it had the entire day which was due to the herb mixture I preferred in my tea. Charlottes mother had made it for me once when I was a little child and caught a bad stomachache telling me that it was great to relax the stomach and digestive organs. Soon after I started skipping meals I started to realize it also did wonders to keep away the annoying cramps and the rumbling that came with suppressed hunger. At first when I started asking Charlotte for her mothers tea frequently she refused to keep making it for me, hoping it would force me to eat more but after she realized how urgently I needed it she quickly gave it to me. It did not take long for her to even give me the recipe in case I needed to make it by myself when I was in camps on the battlefields.

I never even attempted it. Just the thought of consuming anything while I was out there, inbetween the corpses and blood I have spilled made my stomach hurl. When I swallowed another sip of tea it burnt my throat and I gagged, almost spitting it back out. I quickly set the cup down and took a few deep breaths to try pushing back the memories I put myself into. My heartbeat was still faster than it should have been and I felt myself shivering but I slowly calmed down. After that, I decided to take a stroll through the palace while the sun was still down and I could sneak around unbothered. The halls of the palace were so quiet that one could probably hear a needle drop. It felt so wrong to walk through these spacious and clean halls while my dirty and restricting memories still haunted me in the back of mind. There was nothing that could make me forget a single one of them and even though I cursed that fact often, I was also grateful for it. I didn't have the right to forget the lives I had ended with my own hands no matter the circumstances. If someone out there was able to beat and kill me, I probably wouldn't want them to forget about me either even if I deserved it. Sadly though, I couldn't be sure about that because I never felt endangered enough to think too much about my last wishes. There was nobody out there who could actually end my suffering and I knew that, these thoughts were just desperate attempts to escape the cage I build for myself. Killing myself was always an option but I couldn't disrespect the value of a life like that, not after everything I have been through. Enduring it was my punishment and I would accept it for the sake of those I slaughtered in cold blood. I often wished I could go back to the times where I paid no mind to these values I now held so dear. The times where I still wondered why the veterans didn't celebrate with us while basking in the glory I earned through killings. I once asked the Commander why they only drunk their beer in silence but when he told me I would understand one day, I didn't believe him. Of course, I knew now that I had been an idiot back then, an idiot who still believed that strength was only power. I still vividly remembered the day that I started to realize I had been wrong  all this time. It was raining and the air was cooling down after a hot summer day so the mist quickly rose from underneath our feet. I remembered how I blended out the screams around me that came from soldiers I couldn't see anymore. The way I had seen of the Commander before and assured him that we could handle this on our own. How the Lieutenant closest to me screamed to close the ranks and form a solid line to counter the mist and how I didn't listen. The memories of that day flooded my brain all at once and they overwhelmed me so much that my knees buckled and I fell to the floor. Tears streamed down my face and sobs escaped my lips before I could even attempt stop them. The voices in my head started to scream at me and flashes of my most horrifying memories followed quickly. I tried hiding my head in my hands, curling up into a small ball sitting on the ground while desperately suppressing the screams that wanted to escape too. 

After some time the memories  started to fade back and the voices in my head became quiet enough to tolerate them again so I propped myself up at a nearby wall. Slowly, I let my hands slip out of the mess they made while they were gripping onto my hair trying to silence my own head. It felt like my tear ducts had dried out at this point, but I knew I still cried when I carefully wiped away the last of my tears from my face. While my heartbeat slowly figured out its regular rhythm again, my lungs also steadily started to work in a more controlled pattern and I could finally let out a deep breath. My eyes were probably still very red but there was nothing I could do about that so I decided to ignore it, it would go away soon anyway, I knew that from experience. When my legs were stable enough again I stood up and looked around, simply to make sure that there truly had been nobody who saw me like this. Since I did not know how long I was laying there and how much time had actually passed I decided it would be better for me to return to my chambers before I got surprised by the rising sun. When I reached my office and looked out the window I was pleased to see that it was still pitch black outside with only the stars illuminating the night. I stayed at the window for a while in order to breath in some of the cold night air which helped to cool down my slightly overheated body a little bit. Afterwards I knelt down to slowly collect some papers that must have been scattered on the ground by a breeze coming through the window. Then I calmly pulled back the chair and sat behind my desk again to sort them and then started to reread the ones I could not finish before to waste my time until the sun rose. The reddish hue in my eyes was steadily fading and when the palace would wake up, it would be completely gone again and there would not be a single reminder left of the events that night.