prologue
She's cold- or just misplaced when she awoke in grass rather than sheets, when she felt grass blades of water rather than her own soft sheets of a polyester mix. It's jarring, not as she awakes to it, but to not remember how she came here, how she ended up waking in a land, a vast land of grass that is not, is never her home of city-life. The worst part, on top of all of this is that she's not worried for her safety, she's not worried how to call someone to save her, she's more worried about the consequences of her life, what time she'll arrive, what excuse will be shut down and which one most fathomable, and how the fuck she'll double-check her last edition before work starts in- well, she assumes an hour. Gods there is so much to do, and yet, she's still in the dew of the day, her body raising from the side she rolled onto.
More confounding is the dress she wears of silk, draping off of her frame yet cupping her chest of wanned golden brown, far too soft for the grass blades due to how thick aloe rests on her skin, mixed with Vaseline of course, the cheapest always reigns supreme. The dress is barely mucked from the ground, no dirt or mud finding her slippers of silk, matching the soft effervescent pink under the moonlit night. Huh, as she stands, her hands finding her elbows after planting in the cold dirt, she realizes that it’s not winter, albeit late in her discovery, but give her some time. Swirling with her head prompted, she tries to find something other than grass, even a relic of snow, and when nothing turns up, she recalls the night before as a good investigative journalist does.
But what they do not do is come up with blanks on the first load, for she cannot remember anything- except cozying under her covers from the bite of the frost on her cheeks, staining them a ruddy color only in winter, also because she couldn’t bare hot water on her skin to wash her makeup off. Curse social media for raising her. Taking a huff of air, she marches blithely to her own damp steps, trying to find something where the moon is resting. She does so fairly quickly, not only does she find something, a bridge, but also two folks resting there, one with their skirt pooling around them whilst the other stands tall, hand on what would be a sword if the conduit weren’t empty.
She rushes a bit more, grabbing her silk skirt and hiking it to bare her hairy-winter legs to the cool chill of the morning. This is definitely not her home city, not even a city at all for the bridge is too old, made of wood and stretching over a newly-breathed-into-stream, rocks of ragged dampened grey below treading waters keeping up with the wind and debris. Her steps make her shoes squeak with attention that the princess finds, at least whom she assumes is a princess for- she should just say because she is wearing far too big of a gown for anything but a royal painting, something far less modern, far less Bridgerton, more Game of Thrones if conceited.
Regardless she is the only one that notices her, and in doing so, Eleonora finds her browns, more of the open space than land, quite endearing, if it weren’t for the shine of the metal above, swinging from the guard or soldier or someone that stands in a taller stance, legs parted and drowned in a white garb of purity, yet raining on someone’s innocence of tears and lost hope- no, forgotten faith.
Eleonora has done nothing heroic in her life, and she doesn’t know if she would in her home, but here there are no real rules she’s found. She woke in clothes that were not hers, in a body that was, with wet grass to hold her unlike the comfort of her own home, of her home. She worries for her deadline still, but the blade is sharp, is real and antiquitous in a sense that finds only her before this bridge with this princess staring at her. She calls her a princess in her head, btu she’ll never speak it to existence, she’ll never tell her as she runs in her slippers that act more as socks or ballerina’s shoes without the blocks of padding, as she loses her breath somewhere she doesn’t know of, for no one she knows of, to maybe not even save this person from their demise. Maybe she is no one, and unlike Eleonora, no one here means she should just be no one, and yet Eleonora doesn’t mind shoving the guard off of the bridge that was higher than she thought.
He only a second to nominally react before her feet padded against the curved wood to find him at the edge, to shove him over with a yelp. She could be dangerous, the princess sat below with her hands once cradling her face of softness, chubby cheeks yet angular jaw, yet bulging eyes and a bumped nose. Young, youthful, faithful, yet maybe not loyal, or maybe as loyal as a dog. Eleonora doesn't’ really know what to think as the guard disappears without even a bubble of water, just a slip into the deeper waters than she thought.
She finds her looking up to her as the moon had shone on the sword; like Saving Grace. She doesn't feel like that, honestly, she feels a bit indifferent, no more lost. Lost as she thinks and lost as she stands before blinking away from the trap that is her black holes of eyes. Worm holes, they’re called, right? All she knows is they hold the colors of her emotion, for now admiration, just as same as the sky lets vibrant colors be vibrant in the night. “Are- Are you alright-” “You saved me,” she rasped, not incredulous, but doe-eyed, credulous.
Eleonora blinks, not credulous or incredulous but just shocked, just plain words that seep into her brain because she’s not worried for a moment, she doesn’t need to be when there is no wind to blow her thick and curly, not wavy, curly hair away from her face, from behind her shoulders like when she ran. She’s still looking down to her, and it isn’t right, it isn’t right, and selfishly, she doesn’t think because this princess isn't supposed to be on the ground, or that Eleonora shouldn’t be the one standing or looking down on her, but because she cannot see her properly, even with the light of the moon. As if the moon is her Saving Grace, the way Eleonora looks to it as this princess did her, she finds a bit of light on the woman in the white, cotton, and layered dress that keeps to her frame jsut as Eleonora’s eyes do. Hers aren’t brown like hers, and even if she’s been lightly nudged, complimented for the aqua and green ponds that are hers, she cannot compare to the heaven that rests in the orbs of her. Whoever her is.
Her knees brace beneath her, and the unnamed princess comes to her a bit as well, her legs more as a mermaid morphing to mirror Eleonora’s visage. “I did as anyone would,” she says with the utmost confidence others would, that others would do as Eleonora has done because look at her- look at her. She’s bashful maybe, dissident, letting her eyes waver for a moment before Eleonora asks, “Are you hurt at all?” She takes a breath after finding Eleonora’s eyes again, letting her brows furrow for a thought, then smiling as she comes to it, or doesn’t and just witnesses someone caring. Eleonora knows that feeling, and maybe that’s why the discovery comes to her. “Now that you are here, I think I am mentally stable.” She weighs her head. “But I did nick my palm on the wedge of the edge.” She motions to the edge below the curved thick paling of the wooden bridge, but Eleonora pays no mind to the structure, to the how, more to the who it’s affected.
She offers her palms, closest to the edge with a light flex to it since it must sting. She wishes to feel the sting herself, and she doesn’t know why, as if she knows this person when she obviously does not. She’s gentle as she nears it, asking, “May I?” The unnamed princess offers a light smile with her hand, and Eleonora takes it as delicately, more delicate than she’s ever known to give herself, than her mother’s ever been able to from continents apart. The blood is thick, and the jab is flared from edges, deep yet somehow superficial. The blood leaked onto her dress, after it ever touched her face and ruined her powdered makeup that probably isn’t makeup, just her. Eleonora uses a bit of her dress, letting her silk cover the lesions of the blood. “You’ll ruin your dress,” she murmurs, distraught yet not pulling her hand away. “I’ll ruin your hand if I do nothing,” Eleonora bites, musing her own smile to the princess’s wilted features. She shakes her head. “It is not your fault that you saved me from that...” Eleonora stops to look at her, still holding her hand delicately and making sure there is no more harm to her- physically just as much mentally. “It is mine,” she breathes, pained as she admits an admonishment of herself, “That I was spooked by you saving me.”
Eleonora shakes her head as if indignant, moving into her space lightly as she exclaims, “None of this can be your fault, not a reaction to movement.” Her eyes dip to the wound, back to her browns more reminiscent of the night than the moon in the sky illuminating this moment for her to stay in for all eternity. “I mean, why was that man even trying to kill you?” She’s taken in her appearance, the surroundings now shone on and the white of her garbs compared to Eleonora’s silks scrubs of opulence. She doesn’t know who she is here, but she knows comparing as is habituary in her human form can help her here, help her be the student she never grew out of being, never succeeded in being because her mother was lost in a dream Eleonora was also deluded in, not as superficial as the blood on her silk. She knows here, in this moment, the person with power was hurting the one servile without, and she knows that cannot be a reason for any of this.
“I…” She loses her, this tie not to her bashfulness, what Eleonora assumed as such, but to abashedness, shamefulness, as if she’s ashamed to be harmed. Eleonora feels it as she had always experienced, to not have the opportunities for frivolous things, for the failure of her faith in wanting, in knowing there could be more if just- “It’s okay, you can tell me, I promise,” Eleonora speaks before she can finish thinking, this time really getting close as she knocks knees with the princess, slips of skin against skin accidentally, or silk to cotton. “I-” She breathes as if blush is coating her skin, implausible due to her own night sky-kissed skin, a beauty even in the sun, she knows. She swallows before taking a breath that fills her covered-cotton chest, holding Eleonora’s eyes as if they were as easy to touch as the moon. “I’m a bastard of a child and that man was here to punish me for such a thing.” Eleonora’s brows furrow as she searches for the meaning, the words so old that they’re just reduced to mere anger from an opened mouth.
Her lips fumble for a fragment of a thought. ”He- He was going to kill you for being a child to someone’s father that somehow holds more than you-” “Why do you say such a thing as if it is unfathomable?” Eleonora’s lips are agape, shaking her head as she searches for an answer, not a thought but just a word, just something. This reminds her of crying all those nights that her dream was never met with anything but a soon but a maybe but a never more except endless hope, it reminds her of those nights she just couldn’t think of what to put to paper for her boss because she was more an assistant, and intern than anything else. “I- I don’t mean to, I’m sorry, it’s just… A bit incredulous to me-” “I’m Sani’s illegitimate child, of course it’s incredulous. He was supposed to be faithful to his husband and yet-” “Sani? You mean-” “Sentry Sani Faarax, the one whose father started the revolution, and Sani bore the balance for it?” She looks her up and down, truly askance incredulous. “Didn’t you read the scripts?”
Eleonora can’t answer that, because more confounding than this all, is that she finally knows, at the very least that she was never talking to a princess, but a queen.