The flower is rare. At least, Misou has never seen one like it, beautiful in the moonlight that is streaming through the window of this autumnal night. She peers through the window glass and sees thin wisps of mist floating over farm fields in the distance, beyond the city walls. Torch lights flicker, perhaps labourers working late into the hour or travelers coming home from a long journey abroad.
If only she could travel to distant places. How grand that would be!
The princess touches the black petals of the single flower blooming on the ornate pot. Someone left it just outside her chamber door. Who could it have been? The stem is sinuously entwined, and the petals have a curious black colour fading to glassy pink, translucent in the middle, like the hybrid offspring of an orchid, a violet, and a jellyfish- how marvelous and strange.
Listen to you, says the voice. You’re going mad stuck in this room. Step out and explore the castle, won’t you? It must be so grand and with many rooms to explore.
But she feels too tired to listen to her inner voice. She needs more than encouragement to navigate life, and her mind is full of cobwebs, all knotted up as if some erratic spider has woven a translucent cocoon within it. She needs rest.
She slips into more comfortable attire and swims mermaid-like beneath the downy sheets.
Sleep comes fast like a tide of silence into her mental ocean. On its horizon, the moon rises higher, its pale illumination casting long shadows on her bed.
In the nothingness of slumber, she hears a sound!
A knock on wood.
Tsk! Tsk! How terrible it is to be sucked out of a deep delicious nap, she muses as she sits up straight on the bed and tries to gather her bearings. She runs her hand through her jet black hair-streaked with a dash of red- and brushes away the insolent strands from her face.
“Hello?” she calls out sleepily in the dim atmosphere, “is anyone there?”
“It’s me, my lady,” says a voice behind the door. “I just wanted to let you know that supper is ready, and we’re waiting for you.”
“Oh, why thank you,” she responds to the man, “I will be down as soon as possible.”
How could she have forgotten about supper? Oh dear, now she has to find an outfit and tie up her hair. Freshen up. It is very careless of her indeed.
She chooses a long sleeved gown, black with a hint of red and gold for mischievous elegance, the pink-laced corset nicely complements the smooth velvet of her long skirt that cascades around her body in foamy layers and wispy tendrils of fabric that trail ghostly just above the floor.
“Not too bad, right?” she twirls in front of the dark flower. Oh, it feels so delicious to dance in the moonlight. To be bathed in it’s cool brightness and otherworldly beauty.
Through the window, she sees the mist approaching the city walls, shining silver as it flows across the fields towards the city gates.
She mustn’t delay now. A lady must be punctual even in the smallest things. And this is no small thing. This is supper.
The table is full of tasty treats: roasted boar braised in honey, smoked salmon, pies with all manner of fillings, salads, vegetable and seafood, breads, jams, mead, ah! such a stupendous feast.
The intense flavours flow in her mouth, warm on her lips, rousing her senses to incredible heights of pleasure. The fragrances make her feel light headed and her sense of self dissolves in the sensation, as if she has enjoyed every single treat in existence at once, and yet, she cannot not remember eating any of it.
And where is everybody?
The seats around the table are empty.
She calls out but only the echoes of her voice are heard throughout the vaulted ceilings of the dining hall. She tries to enter the adjoining rooms, but the large arched doors are locked and unmovable.
Her stomach feels queasy. Perhaps she ate too much, and it would do her good to return to her chamber.
She rushes upstairs into her room.
“I will lie down now,” she says to the dark flower. “My tummy feels a little sore.”
Through the window, the lamp lights flicker in spite of the mist that now snakes around the sturdy watchtower at the gates.
She lies on the bed, and as soon as she closes her eyes, there is another knock upon the door.
“My lady,” the voice sounds familiar, “the masquerade ball is about to begin. I shall be most delighted if you would join me for a dance.”
“A masquerade dance,” she is somewhat surprised, “but I don’t have a costume.”
“I believe the maid left it in the armoire.”
“Then I will be prompt!”
Oh dear, a masquerade ball! She rushes to the heavy armoire that groans when Misou eagerly pries open its oaken doors, revealing a feathered costume that shimmers radiantly as it catches the light of her lamp.
She runs her fingers through the feathers, feeling their soft velvety texture encased in dark green frills and veins of silver embroidery on the topography of its bodice. On the top shelf lies a mask crafted with a long sharp bill and ruby eyes on its iridescent face.
“It is marvelous,” she says donning on the mask and running to the window. She holds a mirror to the moon. “Isn’t it, wonderful?” she asks the flower while she watches her reflection.
The flower glistens with dark silent beauty.
In the dance hall, the music is loud, so are the voices and cheerful laughter that echo on the ornate room, decorated with pastoral paintings, flowering walls, and carnivals of light.
She feels elated with the sense of boundless physical freedom. That sense of falling without fear in the ether. Her breathing is shallow and her bosoms glitter under flakes of dewy light.
She has danced all dances, enjoyed the nuance of each step across the ages, the rules, spoken and unspoken in the flow of space and time.
Yet, the dance hall is empty.
Oh, cruel jesters! Why must she be tormented thus by the landlords of this confounding solitude? Well she is not one to be made a fool of, and she’s just about had enough.
So she gathers up her feathery gown and slipping off the mask, she climbs the stairs leading to her chamber. There, she reaches under the bed and withdraws a trunk made of cherry wood and adorned with golden ornate accents.
“I shall go far away from this haunted castle,” she mumbles and casts a glance out the window.
The mist has breached the walls and is now enveloping the university towers that rise between voluptuous shadows on the hills.
Her heart falters upon seeing the misty darkness. They shall think her mad. Perhaps she should stay the night and think it over in the morning.
She's also feeling very tired, exhausted from the myriad dances.
“I will lie a little while,” she whispers to the flower from the bed, "and perhaps dream a little dream."
Isn’t it wonderful to simply let the body fall into the cozy arms of a bed- a careless fall softened by a puffy pillow. You let go of control and simply let the body slide into the snuggly embrace of sand and the ocean of nothingness.
“Quick! You must get up and leave!”
She sits up in bed.
“Who said that? Who’s there?”
She pulls aside the covers in the moonlight and glides across the bed.
The dark flower pulsates with a soft pink glow.
Fear suddenly grips her heart, though no threat is in sight.
Hurriedly, she puts on her slippers and races down the broad stairs that sweep like a conch-shell down the tower. Her gown flows in the soft blue atmosphere created by the moonlight that filters through the stained-glass windows high up on the walls.
At the bottom of the stairs, she pushes through a door and stumbles onto a garden with rows upon rows of flowering hedges.
She tries to retrace her steps, but there is no seeming way out of this maze. Panic sets in, and she runs. Forever it seems at times, turning left and right, only to arrive at a dead end.
There is howling and hissing around her. The world spins, and above her, the mist swallows the silver moon.
“It’s okay, baby,” the familiar voice says.
He wears a raven mask and dark wings.
"Is this a dream?" she asks him, recognition setting in.
"No, it's something more wonderful."
“How goes the romance, ferryman?” said Karla to her colleague on the terminal beside her.
“Almost there,” said the technician with his holography gear still on. He held out his hand.
On the projector, Karla saw a snake-like plant with two beautiful dark flowers entwined.
“These cybernetic folk have some peculiar ideas,” she said.
Tim flew into a virtual garden and transferred the flowers onto a small plot of land beneath starry holographic skies.
“Hey, if you're going to spend a couple of years in suspended animation,” he said to Karla, “then you might as well have a bit of fun. Apparently, they’ve been at it for nearly three hundred years. Can you imagine? Cosplaying for that long.”
No, Karla couldn’t imagine, she was a mere twenty-five, and in a world of indefinite longevity that was markedly young.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I think there’s something to be said about dying of natural causes.”
Tim removed his goggles.
“Come back to me in fifty years and see if you’re still singing the same tune.”
“I know, I know,” she said. “Different lanes for different brains, as they say in Cryoland.”
“Amen,” he said and laughed. “By the way, you wanna grab a drink after our shift? All this gothic drama has me thirsty.”
“What about the lovebirds?” Karla asked him with a raised eyebrow.
“The narrative block is almost done. Their matrices look stable.”
In his capacity as ferryman, Tim had transferred various mental constructs between storage formats, but this project had left a lasting impression. He had never seen a couple so passionate about each other across the years. They genuinely enjoyed being around each other, even with limitless simulations at their disposal, they preferred to live them together. The husband had transferred first to accompany his wife during the personality reconstruction, which given its dizzying complexity could be disorienting and frightening. He wanted to be present posthumously with her every step of the way and would be there waiting for her when they returned to a new body two years from now.
Tim proceeded to shut down the lab equipment, and then he took a look out the window before leaving.
Down on the hover lot, Karla stood peering at her screen with a red umbrella in the rain.
Thank you for reading my tale. It was written in response to the The Inkwell Combined Writing Prompt 54- Nightmare. I hope you enjoyed reading it.
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