~Breathtaking~
"I once dreamt to be born a queen
had to live life a living puppet."
"I once lived life a common subject
had no time to laugh and preen."
"Oh, joy to be free
free in Death's clutches."
"Oh, glad to be me
warm in Fate's arms."
"Hm," Oris' cellmate commented wordlessly with a rattle of familiar chains as the melodious verses filled the cell.
"What?" Sensing some displeasure, Oris stopped singing and directed her gaze to the dim corner. "You don't like the song?"
"You wrote it yourself, I reckon?"
Oris flushed at the accusation and put her hands on her hips, glad for the cover of the darkness. It hid the mirth in her smile and the warmth in her cheeks. "Whatever do you mean?"
"Only you would be daring enough to dream of being a queen," her cellmate snorted, not even close to being amused. "You are such a daft girl."
"Yes, I am daft. That is why we share this cell together," Oris shook her hair loose, letting it fall down her shoulders in messy waves.
She reached down to pick the strip of cloth she had used to tie it back, having undone the braids Mayree had locked her fiery strands into on her second day of captivity just to have something to do.
Now she made a habit of making a braid each time the guards brought in fresh gruel and emptied the chamber pot.
She had four braids on now, two on either side of her head for the sake of aesthetics. She used them to tie the rest of her hair back when she wanted more variety than what strips of her dress could manage.
The first time she had put her hair in an elaborate do, her cellmate had asked who she had been dressing up for but Oris didn't need to dress up for anybody but herself.
She could not lose herself to the monotonous ways of dungeon life. She couldn't lose hope.
She had a bright future waiting for her and waiting around sulking was not going to propel her towards it.
When the guards brought water, she partitioned it and used a portion to soak the piece of cloth she used to clean herself, so while she had not been allowed to bathe since her arrival she didn't reek like the rest of her dungeon mates.
Her hair was a different matter however. Keeping filth out of it was turning out to be more of a challenge than she had anticipated.
When tying the oily mass of curls up in a bun and sleeping in a meditative position had not done the trick, more of her gown had needed to be sacrificed to be used as a sort of cap for her hair.
At that point, Oris had to admit that prison life was turning her into quite the creative person. Even her cellmate could not deny that fact and had showed some support by doing what Oris assumed had been clapping.
At day three of being a prisoner, Oris had prioritized comfort over modesty and stripped down to her underclothes, making strategic cuts that left her with a top half, a bottom half and a whole lot of fabric—a long strip of which made a very nice belt for her new underwear.
She had done all her cloth ripping with a future use for them in mind. She had not forgotten that the royal family had not provided her with clothes when she and her maids had started the selection.
This dress was one of the plain, almost-white maid uniforms that she had managed to acquire. Its pieces could be dyed and sewn into the gown she had been working on before being arrested.
New designs popped into her mind with each minute of silence that passed in the dungeon making her wish for some thread to get busy with. Growing up, she hadn't been fond of needlework or dressmaking but her adoptive mother had still taken pains to teach her, ignoring her obvious lack of enthusiasm.
Not for the first time since being incarcerated, Oris wondered what the wizened woman would be doing at that moment in their quaint village.
"Hey Girl!" her cellmate's hoarse call snapped her back to the present.
"What?" Oris blinked at the darkness.
"You were staring off into nothing again," they informed helpfully. "I won't take care of you if you run mad."
"And I won't expect you to," Oris swept her hair over her shoulder. "Just leave me to die, I won't want you defiling my body anyway."
Grumbling erupted from the corner. The chains hit the floor noisily. "I won't touch you even if it was the only way I'd get free!"
"Good," Oris laughed and sat on the bed. "What was wrong with my song?"
"Other than the words, nothing," they admitted. "Still don't see the use of practicing your singing. It won't win the emperor's heart if you get out."
"Ah, so you finally believe that I will get out."
"I said if Girl. And it is a very big if."
"I know you don't want me to leave. If I go wherever will you find such a good partner for conversation?"
The corner went quite after that, making Oris glance in her cellmate's direction.
Over the course of her rather short imprisonment, they had been her only source of entertainment and more than that surprisingly good company. She couldn't even begin to imagine how lonely it had been to be stuck in silence for years.
Just imagining it made her shudder in fear.
That was why she sang everyday despite the fact that her throat felt like it would tear open any moment now and her stomach threatened to spew its contents back into her mouth each time she danced.
How else could she repay the person that had been keeping her sane?
"I ran out of songs and stories, that is why I decided to make some up," Oris admitted, hoping to coax some sound out of the corner. "I didn't want to bore you to death."
Her efforts were rewarded with silence.
"I guess I'll just have to continue singing again," Oris said with an exasperated sigh and stretched her arms above her head. "I have a really nice dance to accompany it too."
She clambered over her dress and got to her feet, the bed creaking under the weight of her body.
Just as she was about to begin, the chains jangled.
"You can't be on about that again," her cellmate screeched, sounding very much like a worried parent. "Do you have a death wish?"
"Well, excuse me for wanting to be good company," Oris said but didn't get off the bed. "I really do enjoy being kept on my toes when I dance and the height won't be enough to kill me."
"Your company is good enough as it is," they hissed. "And you seem to forget that we get food once a day and water thrice a week. If you keep on wasting energy, you will not have the strength to swallow your wonderful gruel when it comes."
"I'm fine," Oris waved off their concern and looked into the darkness above her while thinking of which dance to try tonight.
"You are not."
"If you could survive on only bread for so long, I can do much better with two bowls of gruel a day," she said and gracefully lifted one leg off the bed. "I think the taste is growing on me."
"The poison is what's growing on you, child," they said certainly. "And years of starvation is not enough to kill me. . . What I really crave is the feel of the sun on my skin. This suffocating darkness is what is really snuffing my spirit."
"So you are from Narita," Oris couldn't help but blurt out. Her cellmate remained quiet, neither confirming nor denying the statement.
She didn't let that deter her though. "The people of Narita worship the sun and its patron god Sūn. Worship is not only a vital aspect of their culture but it is their very way of life. So the punishment of never seeing the sun is one given only to the most hardened and unredeemable criminals. The emperor worships Sūn as well because his mother was Naritan. All his conquests are dedicated to the sun."
"Really?" they asked, hesitation slathered on the word. "Despite being born a prince of Inae. . . he worships the sun?"
Oris nodded vigorously, glad that she had gotten a response. "His skin is so dark, he must have spent every waking moment of his life in harsh sunlight. Not at all like the rest of Inae that runs for shade at the sight of the sun's rays."
"He is a son any mother would be proud of," they muttered.
Oris could tell that her cellmate hadn't expected her to hear the words. But those words were what she had been waiting for all this while, how could she not have been listening intently for them?
"He is," she agreed and was replied by a violent bang of chains. "Are you saying that because you miss your own children or because you are his mother?"
"What are you saying?" her cellmate hissed. "Don't let the guards hear your nonsense. They might just decide to beat you to death now."
"The Empress Dowager put you here, didn't she? She forced you into this dark corner to die knowing it was the worst punishment for a Naritan that had opposed her for so long."
"I never said that she put me here. Don't lump me in with your kind. I am here for rebellion."
"You look as much a rebel as I do," Oris argued, "and you shake each time I mention her."
"That proves nothing."
"It doesn't. But the fact that you are Naritan does," Oris got on her toes and began to stretch in preparation for her dance. "The emperor is filial. His birth mother was a princess from Narita, there is no way he would let her people be maltreated. Even if they were hardened criminals, as a devout worshipper of Sūn he would never deprive a Naritan of sunlight. He would be very aware of what such can do to their psyche.
"If you are here in these conditions, it means that he does not know of your imprisonment. And the only one with the ability to obscure the emperor's eyes is his mother. She has the power to put you in prison and leave you to rot, forgotten.
"If indeed she is responsible for your imprisonment. Why? Which Naritan would the almighty Empress Dowager go to great lengths to hide away? As I know, the emperor's mother and wet nurse were the only Naritans of influence in the palace and the Empress Dowager has many reasons to keep both away from her precious son—"
"He is not her son," they corrected immediately. "And everything you have said is conjectural and refutable. Quit now while the guards are still away."
"So either you are one of the two," Oris continued, not at all dissuaded, "or you are completely unrelated and the darkness is simply getting to me. But the moment I saw you I knew. . ."
"Knew what?"
"That the emperor got his breathtaking eyes from you."
~
The first of the three chapters is here!
Did you guys see this one coming?
You guys should really spend time solving these puzzles before the answers come out. It's so much fun playing detective.
NOW we know what Oris has been up to since the moment she first saw they. Everything she had done was to confirm her cellmate's identity. All the humming and singing and dancing was all to get us to this point.
During it all, I battled between whether they would end up being Hermes' mother or Mii Ai. I chose the former because it's going to make what's about to happen so much more interesting. *wink wink*
I did leave clues for you guys regarding this puzzle as well.
They is always showing concern about things regarding Hermes. Remember when Oris joked that she was pregnant with his child and they said that he must not want to be a terrible father. Little things like that are scattered all over the chapters in the Prison Arc.
Same with Mikeal. Why would the Empress Dowager be concerned with his marriage if he wasn't someone close to her? Uh? Facts, guys. Facts :')
Alright, you guys. I'm off to write the next scene. I've edited Chapter 46 and realized that there wasn't much I could add without making the dialogue drag, lol. So you aren't missing anything except for me changing the color of Eugene's eyes from hazel to emerald green.