**We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken. By Fyodor Dostoevsky**
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Inside the King's palace, after Indicy had left, Lendon stepped out of the room as well. She had heard King Indicy inform her to wait but she had so much work to do, and she felt uncomfortable staying in the palace. She did not want to get on the bad side of the princess either and she did not want the other maids to bully her for getting any sort of 'preferential treatment' from King Indicy.
She felt this way because the room she woke up in was even decorated with gold curtains. It was a medium-sized room with a bed that could fit 2 people in the middle of it. It was made of the softest feathers she had ever felt. It had a small table and chair just adjacent to the bed with a candle holder on it; and yes, it was also made of pure gold. It looked like there was gold everywhere in there, and that made her feel uncomfortable. She desperately needed a good bath after her escapades in the maze. Taking all this into consideration, Lendon decided to go back to her quarters.
As she walked along the corridors, she felt people pointing at her and whispering, but she ignored it and kept her head down as she had always done in the past.
What she did not know was that she had earned a new nickname for herself, The King's girl…, the only one to have survived the King's wrath and the only one who had come out of the maze at all.
Tarragon was not in the room when she arrived, and she was grateful because she was in no mood for a chat. Lendon did not expect to see Thalia again, so it was no surprise that she wasn't there.
Lendon took some supplies and went to have a much needed and refreshing bath. She carefully checked the injuries on her body and applied some oils on it from her potion collection.
After this, she returned to the room and stored the vials away. Even though she told herself that she had unfinished work, she was asleep almost instantaneously when she laid down on her bed to catch some rest due to exhaustion.
*** *** ***
King Indicy strolled into the room he had left Lendon in but … it was empty. The bed was laid out and the room was thoroughly cleaned as if no one had ever stepped foot in there. With surprise evident on his face, he gave Alan a signal. Alan immediately set out to find Lendon while Indicy headed to his chamber to check on his 'twin'.
Indicy confirmand that his lookalike was still asleep and moved to the royal library to wait for news from Alan. However. He couldn't get any reading done and just paced up and down in the room. After what seemed like a long while, Alan returned with the news and Indicy walked right out of the library toward where he presumed Lendon would be.
Alan on the other hand was very puzzled about the reactions of Indicy but wisely kept his thoughts to himself and followed him out.
*** *** ***
___________________________
[Whispers flew all around her. They said all kinds of mean things,
"The monster is here again",
"I understand why her parents abandoned her",
"Is she dumb? Doesn't she understand that no one wants her here?",
"She's so pathetic",
"I'm running out of patience with her",
She could not distinguish who said what. Both adults and children alike were whispering and pointing at her. She tried her best to hold her emotions in and only show a passive face, but it all crumbled when one person threw a stone at her, hitting her right on her forehead. Elcaro let out a small whimper while silent tears fell from her eyes making the blue iris stand out even more, but she kept her head down and hurried along the path back home.
Elcaro walked down the same path that she had taken daily towards the stream but this time, she half-run home and collapsed in a heap in front of their hut where Nuama sat on a rocking chair knitting.
Elcaro now a beautiful teenage girl, had gone through this emotional and physical abuse serval times but she had never gotten used to it… I mean, who will?
[A/N~ Loctovia]
Nuama, now visibly very old, got up with difficulty and cradled Elcaro's head in her lap and let her cry to her heart's content. She always thanked the Oracle for giving her a long life to guide the child that had been bestowed on her. Elcaro had always been an outcast in the village mostly because of her physical features and her unexplained origins. Nuama secretly thought that the women were envious of the girl's beauty and that may have been the main reason for the pure undiluted hatred from everyone.
The women hated her as most men ogled at the girl even before she had started budding into maidenhood. She also attributed it to the "Fear of the unknown". But Nuama knew that notwithstanding the reason, Elcaro never deserved what came at her so she gave her as much love as she possibly could so that the girl would not lack but survive. But when she encountered situations like these, she couldn't help but wonder if she had failed.
Nuama sometimes thanked Elcaro's imaginary friend that she had played with most of her life. She even gave the friend a name which was quite ironic. As these thoughts brushed through her mind, she heard Elcaro say,
"I wish Lendon was here" …]
__________________________
*** *** ***
Lendon woke up to a voice calling her. Lendon, Lendon wake up! Tarragon said as she shook her awake. Lendon sat up on the bed groggily.
"Were you having another dream?" Tarragon asked her with concern written all over her face.
Lendon nodded but said nothing to her friend. She briefly thought back to the dream she just had and wondered if Elcaro had existed at a point in time. She had never understood why she had these realistic dreams about one individual but there wasn't much she could do about them.
"Elcaro seemed to have had a difficult life" Lendon whispered to herself.
She finally noticed that the sun had long set as the slight evening chill could be felt. Rubbing her hands over her arms to try to warm up, she noticed that Tarragon was looking at her in an unsettling way.
"What is it?" Lendon asked her,
Tarragon hesitated a bit and asked,
"Do you know King Indicy personally?"
"I mean, have you met him before when you arrived in the palace?", she continued and hurriedly added,
"I'm not talking of when you met him on our first day here,"
"Not that there was anything 'normal' about that meeting" Tarragon added quietly.
Lendon shook her head and asked,
"Why do you ask that?",
Tarragon studied her friend and thought back to the afternoon when she had come back to their room.
The door was slightly ajar when she neared it. She didn't think much of it as it wasn't unusual but the scene, she saw, shocked her to her bones.
The backs of two men faced the doorway but she did not have to go near as their garments screamed out who they were. One was slightly hunched because of his height versus the low ceiling of their room but the other was seated. Just as one turned slightly at her footsteps, she immediately crouched down to avoid being seen and peeped through the slit in the door. She found herself looking at THE KING! in their room.
King Indicy sat at the edge of the bed by Lendon's sleeping form. He just stared at her with a very tender look on his face. For almost the thousandth time that day, he had asked himself,
"Why?"
All the 'whys' were related to the girl on the bed in front of him. Alan had asked him so many other questions as well, but he could not find the answer for himself including why he was in the middle of the sleeping maid's room neither could he answer Alan as well. He just did not know!
It felt like there was a disconnect between how his brains worked against how his limps and mouth did. After standing by Lendon for a while, he rearranged the thin cloth that had come off her to ward off the cold. He took one last look at Lendon and then turned to leave the room with his guard.
Tarragon ducked into a narrow opening that served as storage so that she would not be seen as the two men turned to leave the room. She was unsure of how she felt about the scene she had just witnessed. King Indicy paused at that opening as if listening for a non-existent sound and Tarragon knew she would be dead if found, but King Indicy did not say anything nor gave any indication that he had seen the girl and moved on.
This left Tarragon in a sort of dilemma as she was not sure whether she had been seen or not.
In the room with Lendon, Tarragon did not say anything about her thoughts and what she had witnessed earlier, she just said,
"They call you the 'King's girl' now",
"How did you end up with that name in the span of a day?" she laughed teasingly trying to lighten her question.
Lendon shrugged but volunteered no information. She did not care about gossip and whatnot as there was nothing, she could do to make it stop. She was on the contrary thinking of what she had witnessed in King Indicy's palace. She knew that there was a reason that none of them knew about this and judging from the fact that she was nearly killed by the guard, she realized that she needed to keep her mouth shut to keep her head.
While these thoughts went through Lendon's head, she appeared distant to Tarragon. Tarragon gave up because of the pensive look on Lendon's face as she knew her friend by now and would not get any response from her when she had that face.
As if by some mutual understanding, both girls never mentioned Thalia for it was now an open secret what had happened to her.
After talking about everything and at the same time nothing about the events of the past two days, the girls retired to bed. Lendon surprisingly was able to sleep again through the night and this time it was a dreamless and restful sleep.
Looking refreshed the next morning, the two girls left their room for their respective duties; Tarragon to the Princess quarters and Lendon, to finish up her long-overdue garden work.
After they parted ways, Lendon walked along the familiar corridors in the direction of the garden She was so lost in thought that, she directly collided with someone. Apologizing out of instinct, she looked at the person and gasped.
Head maid Alba looked at Lendon with disgust; she had never liked the girl from the day she had a close death call with King Indicy, because of her. She remembered that day so vividly that it seemed that the encounter incident had happened a day prior instead of a decade ago- which was; 'The day she brought the girl to that palace'. She shivered as she recalled everything and thanked the oracle for getting her out of that predicament.
Alba initially thought that when King Indicy had ordered that Lendon be sent to Princess Mugda's quarters, she had won some favour. In the initial months after that, Lendon had been given the lightest of tasks and everyone threaded cautiously around her but as time went on and there had been not even one contact from the King, the treatment had changed. Even though Lendon was kept in that palace, she got the worst of every task but remarkably never complained. Alba had to admit that the girl was resourceful especially when it came to medical knowledge but those were words that she would never utter to anyone.
Alba had also learnt of Lendon's new pet name and the incidents that led to that and she couldn't help but applaud the girl once again. The only brave one who had directly addressed the King, not once but twice!
As these thoughts went through her head, she said in a cold voice,
"The slut has done it once again",
Lendon had a blank look on her face and bent down low while she apologised profusely.
"I guess, she is the 'King's girl' now, so we have to give her way and clear a path for her when we see her," Alba curtseyed and said mockingly.
Out of experience, Lendon never uttered a word but kept her head down.
Alba looked at Lendon one more time in disgust and brushed her aside while she walked away.
Lendon did not even turn once to look at the head maid but just continued to the garden.
Lendon set to work when she arrived by clearing all the weeds from the flowers and plants in the garden without wasting any time dwelling on unnecessary things as she called those encounters.
She worked tirelessly for a long while until the sun was up high in the sky and she started feeling drenched in her sweat. She paused a bit and started gathering some flowers which she usually put in vases in the Princess' quarters. The garden had a wide variety of plants, herbs, and flowers but she habitually only picked Love-in-a-Mist, Lily of the Nile, Hydrangeas, Forget Me Not, Blue Daisies and Blue roses. All these flowers had one thing in common: beautiful and blue.
As she picked the flowers, she felt as if she was being watched and straightened up from her crouched position in front of the flowers. When she turned, she found King Indicy staring straight at her.
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