DRAFT Mirys: The Green Prince I

Chapter Five: Don't Tell Mother

And somewhere, far away...

Ji'Ranesh stretched out around the city beyond the window, gaping and cavernous as any void, like a waiting mouth stretched around the Citadel. Like a red-scaled dragon, perched upon its mighty moated rock.

It could feel it in its sternum. Or through it, really. A cold and hollow feeling, one it was very familiar with— the feeling it was born to have.

"It's time for another culling," its low words fell like golden stones in a pool, and though the sun was high overhead, the stone room suddenly felt cold, as if all the braziers had doused and the silks had threaded away into dust.

"You betray your purpose." They had to interrupt its serenity.

A dull rumble of a laugh scraped up its ancient throat at the words. "My purpose?" It turned, relishing in the slow shift of fabric as it turned to face them. "And how, pray tell, am I accomplishing such a feat?"

Their mouth opened, ready to spit cold steel, but it had no intention of letting them finish. "Those who must die," its own mouth pulled into an unkind smile as they slowly gestured to the window, moving as if in water. "Die. And She mustn't be cross with me, for my wings I still have."

They spat at its dressed feet. "You get by without honor. Hiding behind them, keeping your dusty hands clean. The black fades from your fingers as you stand by-"

"Winged. Watching those who must die, die. You speak more as if to be a child of Kallel and not Myriad." It stepped closer, and they suddenly felt its hostility, unspoken and unexpressed... yet nearly suffocating. It spoke once again when their mouth opened, and it could tell they concluded it loved interrupting. "You have overstayed your welcome in my presence, Brother mine. You are free to watch the deaths of the Still and steep in your embarrassment of confronting me. And here," it lifted a spindly hand behind its back and flicked the wrist. It then offered up a single long, ash-dust feather in a pale palm. "A reminder," its head tilted with its unpleasant smile, "of your asininity."

They prickled with rage, eyeless face contorting with a sharp-toothed snear. They snatched the feather from the offered hand, destroying the vane in the clench of a trembling fist. "You will fall. Mark my words, I will see you fall— not just wingless but headless as well." It watched them stand for a moment more in silence before hearing them snarl once final time, storming past it. It gave it no mind— to the point where it didn't turn to watch them leave. Instead, it moved back to the window.

"Funny they mentioned headless," it rasped to itself, counting the seconds.

Twelve. "Mother," Thump.

It smiled again. This time it was wide. Smug. Toothless. It turned back around, twisted up in its black rose of a dress.

"Good job, children. Come," it lifted its left hand out, and watched the three grown Folk clamber from their bows and step over their severed head to grasp at the hand, pushing their cheeks up against it.

"We shall make a new decoration," It rasped out another laugh, like pebbles rattling around in a hollowed gourd. "Soon we'll have our full collection. Take it and make it pretty, Bev'yan," it cooed to the old halfling man at its palm. He looked up with eager eyes and nodded through a wrinkled smile, eager to please Mother.

The three Folk retreated, and it watched Bev'yan take their fallen head in his hand, bloodless and limp, and turn to leave and complete his mission.

"No. I am the one who never falls," it whispered to the empty room.