▬▬▬ her epigram, a necessary disorder

YOU GREW UP NOT KNOWING what being hungry felt like, even the remotest idea of the nature of the sensation of "hunger." All of the finest food was offered on your table. You were the priced princess; your family never left your stomach empty.

You recalled the moments whenever you finished doing a ritual, the chambermaids would make a great fuss over you.

"After long, exhausting hours of doing a ritual . . . How terribly hungry thy Highness must be? How about some fruits? There are sweets, too."

And even though you were not hungry, you did get yourself to eat, seeking to please your servants.

Eat or die.

It was some kind of saying that this culture adapted. But as for you, it was a distasteful threat. It aroused doubt and fear to the people, ever filled with menacing overtones, just like as common remark, "Human beings worketh to earn food, for if they doth eat not, they die."

There were instances that the king, your father, would shower his riches in the nation through a feast. Perhaps, there were only seven times of feast in three hundred and sixty-five cycles in a solar year . . . Futile. People would still toil, be anxious as they strived and labored under the sun. All their days, their work, were mostly grief and pain; even at night, their minds might not rest.

In other words, this system and belief of society were corrupted.

You knew that you were not in the point of talking such. People had told you, countless times you could remember, ever since you were a small child, how blessed you were, for all of the best would be catered in a whim. It had seemed to you that in fact that those who called you blessed were incomparably more unfortunate than you.

But you had always felt as if you were suffering in hell, in a kind of slavery you never wanted.

A priestess: someone who led people to a false belief, to false hope.

If such a thing was existing, why wouldn't it make the whole children of Kálíkhaan as flourished as your family was?

It was even ludicrous that they gave lives, offerings, and devotion for a god, but their expression of passion was never returned.

As you had stated, the cursed spirits were becoming larger in number, whilst the population of humans was decreasing. The deities were not even protecting the people, and the work of the soldiers should be acknowledged and honored in this battle against the supernaturals.

Then, they still wanted to worship such negations of being?

"Thus unfairness causeth Her Highness sorrow?" Your humble guest, Mykerinos, questioned.

The two met again. The same place—the sanctuary of the temple pyramid—after the setting of the sun, when all was fair and laiden eased under the noble starry-night sky.

You also didn't mind having him within your presence He was serving you with wine, while you talk about your follies. Mykerinos, for a merchant, had an intensely, dark gaze and presence. He was tall, skin as brown like honey, eyes that were dark as the dead of night. He was clothed with a black, knee-length shirt and a kilt made out of linen, decorated with colorful beadworks.

"Yes . . ." you enunciated with grace and eloquence. "Perhaps, yes, my humble Mykerinos."

Pray that the people would manage to survive without killing each other, without going into lunacy, maintaining their faith and conviction on how they viewed mortality, not yielding to despair, and would resolutely pursue the fight for existence.

"Even though thou blessed one possessed more than gold?" he asserted, pouring wine into your empty cup.

Soft cackles lingered on your throat. "My cause of sorrow could not be measureth by worldly worth, for then, it hath no end."

"Lo, then, what doeth thine Highness, thine priestess, desire?"

Your mind, as if on cue, became occupied.

Your thoughts became quietened as the night blanketed the sky. Just like Mykerinos, a different kind of blackness, he could make your soul realize all more clearly; then he would hold you close until dawn, until you were ready for the dawn.

"I, the Royal Highness, the blessed one, desire . . ." Your lips twitched, thinking for a virtuous reason. Then you sighed, "I couldn't think for an answer."

"I entirely understand," the merchant spoke. "I'm sure thy Highness would find her uncertainties being answered; it will only take time."

"Time, huh?" you muttered as you lifted your head at the serenade of the black and choral of the stars.

"What about time, thine Highness?"

"Nothing." You shrugged your shoulders, tilted on the right. You made no reply at first as you drank your wine in silence, then you said, "How about Mykerinos? What kept you in thy presence, a deceiver?"

"What doeth Highness mean?"

You were seated on the table, but once you had your fair share of your coquettish drink, you made your back was lied flat on the offering table. Your accompany for tonight was standing behind you, so you turned your gaze at him. He hadn't much expression on his face, but he looked amiable enough.

"Mykerinos," you stated, a humming scoff vibrated on your mouth, "if thou must kill me, let it be now."

He was taken aback as a stupefied frown escalated on his facial features. "H-Her Highness . . . I—"

"Doth not take thy Highness, thy priestess, for a fool." You managed to maintain on the surface a smile, which never deserted your lips. "Of course, I am only indulging in idle speculations, as thine priestess hast observed every aspect of the sky, I know nothing."

"And what thou the aspects of sky spake?"

For a fleeting moment, as the moon soaked his form palely, you saw the honest truth in his eyes.

You inclined your head, then you urged your humble guest to look up as well. Then you gestured your hand up, pointing a certain bright object on the night sky.

"Thou celestial body named after god Kukulkan, the second brightest object on the sky after thy Moon," you stated; you were still as calm and stoic as ever. "In this rotten culture of this nation, when Kukulkan is seen, it is associated with war. Battles and wars would be arranged to coincide with the movements of it. People will once again rouse in fear. They will capture warriors, even leaders, and likewise be sacrificed according to the position of Kukulkan in the night sky. And as far as thy priestess could deduce, another war will rise."

Thus Mykerinos courteously answered unto you, "Basing from thine Highness hast said, thou not believe in deities."

"I doth not believe in delusions," you said, pronouncing the words with a smile, having no feeling or an emotion, "but I believe in thy thoughts of feeble, mortal beings."

You had nothing to fear except for humanity. Humans were unholy, awful people. Like you, deceptive in nature.

After your humble guest, Mykerinos the merchant, heard your heeds, he became shut silent. And you took his silence right.

"I hath not shewed thine Highness my thoughts, what thou made my priestess be assured with thine words?"

There was more you wanted to say. You were an intellectual being, having a fine way with words and observations, ever so good at empty reasoning. Yet you held your tongue for a mere instance. Him, seeing you gazing silently into your empty drinking vessel, while listening to the sad tune of the wind, he offered to pour you another, as if to soothe any possible hurt feelings. You reached him your cup.

"Thine humble guest, Mykerinos, not even a merchant from thy land of Kemi," you said.

"And why must thine humble guest not be?"

"Thou body not even for a merchant, nor manner of speaking, even the way Mykerinos carrieth thyself."

"Therefore, what doeth Highness think of thee?"

And thou Her Highness spake to him, saying, "At first, I have thought thou Mykerinos got sent here in the land of Kálíkhaan to collect information for thou country Kemi, and feasibly enough, thou art a warrior, liketh a patient lion prepared to strike in the right time."

Spring had just arrived. Wars were usually prominent at this season until mid-autumn.

Mykerinos was looking guilty, trying to find a way how to counter your confrontations (as much as your understanding of the facts were allowed). The two of you continued to mull over the present affair. Somehow, you were able to grasp the real source of a war, a distress that could grow out of vague perplexity and doubts. Lost as he was, the supposed to be a merchant clung to what frail judgment you offered.

"Art thou not worried?"

Then you lied down on the altar table again and looked up at the divine night sky. You breathed. And breathed once again. Breathing, breathing with those impassive, fragile lungs of yours.

You reminded him and yourself: "Thine Highness, thine priestess, hath not thy heart troubled. All is as it is meant to be. Surely, it is meant to be lonely, terrifying, unfair . . . but it is fleeting; I worry not."

"Her Highness seems to get her qualms under control now that thou hast come to a conclusion," he remarked to you as he reluctantly moved closer. And from what you could observe, he was not simply putting on a brave face, but as well as skepticism if you were just feigning presumption, speculation. "If thy priestess hath known regarding this, why hast kept the quiet and welcomed thee as thine priestess's humble guest?"

"You sayeth thyself before," you grinned subtly, "Thou Mykerinos wanted thine Highness, thine priestess, to offer fellowship."

"Say, if thy tongue professed truths that matter thee, what actions shall be executed?" He appeared to be stolid. He came and went around you without becoming breathless or feeling remorse. True, his intentions were might be awful, but this matter was nothing new, so you paid it without being mindful "As I confessed, I meant my Highness no harm."

He gave you his affirmation, but you treated this with gaiety disregard. "I will not do anything. Soon, the high priest will behold the alignment of Kukulkan . . . Whatsoever thou happens, shall happen."

"How about thy people? Art thou not feeling responsible for thy lives?"

"Responsible . . ?" you nonchalantly mused. "Let it be done, then. If being responsible is a kind of life all I get to experience, thus it's the only thing that matters most."

An expression of the profoundest disgust gleamed for an instant in the man's stern face. You understood why; your mind had a perfect picture of how dreadful war was and what did it entail . . . Ever so dragging the innocent people into destruction, sorrow, hate, desperation, misery, bloodshed.

"Thine Highness hath no compassion?"

Compassion . . .

A vile-like poison burnt your throat as the taste of something putrid rolled on your tongue upon repeating such equitable—ineffectual—word.

You might still have the apprehension of human notions, but you had no special interest in the instances of it. You yourself had already spent your whole life long deceiving human beings with your insignificant foolery, thus you were unable to work up much concern over the morality's prescriptions about the ethics of your culture under the precedent of 'compassion'.

You told him that, your thoughts, your opinions.

And the words he returned to you were: "Thou hast a calloused heart, thine Highness . . . A poison to thyself, even to thy sodality. Good things will never radiate in such, even in the blackest of thy heart."

Then he departed in utmost dismay, leaving you a malediction that validated you so well.

You ignored the obscenity of his invocation, while you felt the gust of the melancholic wind. You should head back to your chambers by now, yet you grew to care less. That royal palace, where you spent most of your life, was never a home. It was just a mere house, a place of infidelity for dysfunctional people.

You couldn't simply judge; you were dysfunctional yourself.

Perhaps, that was what did mean to be a living person . . ?

You merely didn't understand, having not the remotest clue what the nature or extent of the people's concepts could be?

You didn't know why the rules of this coterie were as they were. How life came into existence? What is life? Was it something relative to consciousness? What was even a consciousness, though?

The only thing you could do was to find answers.

That was must be the reason why you could see a sliver of aspiration if ever a war would break out.

You yearned for this society to have a restart, a change of perception.

Thus you wanted to allow bloodshed to happen, to find concrete reasoning why.

Surely, it was an egotistical, self-obsessed, intention, but you wanted to do things that make you feel right, and you got the free will whatever this meant to you.

Human life would most certainly cease to exist at some point, would it even mattered if you accelerate the process?

They already had explored themselves and the world around them, trusting the law that exercised authority. But to you, you had no respect to the accordance of the law, because it had no concrete way of enforcing power—let alone having essential principles and purposes.

And if this world had no principles, the only principles relevant were the ones you decided on. This world had no purpose, but you were aware that you could get to dictate what its purposes were.

A necessary disorder.

It must be foolish to risk everything just for the sake of something foolish as well. You only had one chance in this life, it was scary, but it also set you free.

— HANDTHE;REND —