"Revenge"- Seladon
She wanders away from the embraces and raucous celebration after a time- the joy and relief are infectious, but every time a jubilant voice calls her All-Maudra, she struggles not to recoil in disgust. She doesn’t deserve that title, and the thought of how it came to her fills her with self-loathing.
How could she have been so blind?
This victory may belong to all gelfling, but it is not hers.
She is so lost in her own thoughts that she nearly trips over the strange obstacle in her path- a heap of heavy fabrics, bits of leather- and the ugly metal armor of a skeksis. She bends to gingerly flip the overturned helm lying beside it, and the disgust flares up in full force when she recognizes it.
“Then you are no more!”
Him.
There is a cruel satisfaction in at least knowing that her mother’s murderer is dead- if he can even be called that. He swung the blade and spilled her blood onto the cold marble floor of the palace, but the blame still lies with her and she knows it. She had been so desperate for attention and validation that she had brought ruin to everything she loved.
At least one of her mother’s killers is dead, then. That will have to do. The other will have to find a way to keep living.
Without even consciously deciding to do so, she swings her foot in a vicious kick, sending the helm flying in a cloud of ashy dust, and lets out a hoarse, anguished scream. There are tears welling up again before she can hold them back, but it’s strangely cathartic all the same- the antithesis to all her worship, all her emulation. An echo of the humiliation when they tore it all away from her, even if the General isn’t alive to feel it as he deserves to. She sinks onto a log beside the remains of one she had called Lord, the tears flowing freely now, but her heart strangely lighter.
The past behind her is ashes now- like her mother, yes, but like the pathetic heap of dirt at her feet as well. There is nothing she can do to change it. But she can leave it behind and move forward.
Someday, she can be worthy of the title.