to be loved. || Who Made Me A Princess

one: immortal

to be loved.

To be loved; or love in general, was a term Amadea embodied--or would have embodied if names had power. From the moment she was born, she would be tossed into an orphanage with the many other children who too, would grow up to never know the faces of those who had brought them into their world.

She would grow as any other child, would live in some ways, like another child. Before growing into another heartless adult, and eventually die without ever understanding what 'love' meant.

It's when she wakes up from a slumber she believed was the end of her short existence, that she stares at a blur of colours and indistinguishable shapes. Overarching and evermoving silhouettes of figures spoke cacophonies she couldn't comprehend, and just like that would be her brief epiphany that wherever she was now was no different to the impersonal and bleak life she had lived and died with.

As her senses would eventually develop to be sharper than she could ever recall, the answer to her brief state of perceptual isolation had come in the form of two chubby hands struggling to hold its place in front of her face.

Like a flower that blooms in a day she had withered by night, and in another sunrise she bloomed once more.

[...]

As time passed, Amadea had learned quite a few things. For one, she was no longer Amadea but instead Arius; a boy without a mother or a father to claim as his.

He didn't need to see the array of worn bunk beds or cribs to know where he had landed. The collective snores, deep breathing and the occasional cries of an infant only to mellow over hushes of a woman, were tell-tale signs that he was back where he had started.

Love was a term Amadea never knew, and Arius would follow the same fate.

[...]

"Arius? Come here, let me comb your hair." Shakily, Arius padded his way to a woman sitting by the windowsill. Brown hair became stunning under the moonlight, as a gentle glow emanated from her small smile.

Dalia, a peasant who came to run the orphanage was...warm. He couldn't help but subconsciously lean his back closer to her as she ran her fingers and comb through his hair.

"Why here?" He blurted. Running an orphanage wasn't profitable especially in a time like this. "You could have been a scholar. You're intelligent."

There was a sliver of a pause, but barely obvious. The boy could feel her smile without even looking behind him.

"Well, I wouldn't have been able to take care of you sweet angels."

He would have been a fool to not know she had diverted the conversation. "That's not the reason."

She chuckled, "Then what reason are you looking for?"

He opened his mouth, and then shut it; utterly lost for words. What had he been expecting? A cruel, patriarchal society shutting her down? She was secretly nobility escaping her previous life?

To him, they had made more sense than simply the idea that she would go to such lengths and effort for children she had no connections to begin with.

"Ah-!" Suddenly fingers had pinched his side, and he glared at Dalia whose face was filled with mirth.

"Take care of your hair more, Arius." She pushes aside his pale pink locks, and kisses his forehead.

Her green eyes shifted as she lifted him into her arms, his small body perfectly cradled against hers. Then slowly, her heartbeat lulled him into sleep.