"This is the palace we will dwell in from now on. Do you find pleasure in it?" Empress Katherine peered down at her, from the thick lashes of her eyes.
"Yes!" Elena exclaimed, running inside the palace. Her curiosity could hardly await her mother's walk.
Eliana stopped before the three meter wide grand staircase, leading inside the palace.
The empress regnant appointed five thousands construction workers, fifty architects and hundreds of miners--best of her time. Masses of blacksmiths melted down gazillions of Tungsten akin to ten mountains, mixed it with carbon into tungsten carbide and built the sprawling palace in two years. As the finishing touch, goldsmiths glided the walls with melted pure gold in the place of paint.
Later on, it had been talk of the town for years and many visitors from foreign lands traveled here to take a glimpse of the castle.
Eliana stepped a stair, and her dark eyebrows crouched down over the green orbs when suddenly everything in her sight started fading away.
Frantically, she craned her long neck and her anxious gaze happened to move to the right.
The gray-green, funnel-shaped leaves plucked themselves off the branches, scattered in the sky, and soldiered on drifting off further away, as if the blackhole was sucking them into its never-ending gigantic belly.
The once robust oak tree, which used to preen itself on its brawny and lush green body, now stood lifeless like a gaffer abandoned by his children. In its youth, the oak tree never let the moonlight fall into the ground.
At that moment, albeit, it did block the moon, the moonshine didn't have to struggle through the dense leaves, for the tree was shark naked, shivering silently in the cold winter night.
Eliana inhaled deeply in an endeavor to down the lump forming in her throat with cool air. She laid her eyes on the familiar gold palace, beneath which her navel string had been buried by her parents, practicing conformity to the cultural beliefs.
A blanket of transparent ice shawled the palace, sucking all the warmth from it with an oppressive grin. It had been this way for the last century.
Eliana let out a sigh full of melancholy. Winter turned out to be rather very committed in accompanying Venomblood; a season, serpents were most averse to.
"Elena, where is my little princess?"
Eliana's leg froze in the air in the middle of heading towards the throne room; tiny balls of colors began appearing on the black and white canvas of her sight.
"Father!" She whipped her body around; a big smile blooming on her rosy lips, revealing the perfectly even and white teeth.
Emperor Geoffrey walked closer leaving the hall room behind him. His gaze was as gentle as ever; smile pure and amicable as he spread his arms.
"Father…" She intended to sound louder, but her wet voice came out as yet another yearnful murmur. Tears coursing down her ivory cheeks glistened when moonshine caught on them, matching the sparkle of her pearl teeth.
Eliana ran towards her father's outstretched arms, cutting the distance between them to the best of her ability. She wasn't conscious of the cease of fold in between her eyebrows that appeared at her father's distant gaze.
She shrugged the odd thought as soon as it pushed itself up inside her head, and wiped the tears with the heel of her palms. It must be the overbrimming tears blurring her vision that played mischief, causing hallucination.
However, the nearer she inched the clearer she perceived it. It was as though her father was looking past her body at something else...
"Father,"
"Father!"
Eliana's legs halved their strength, just as the dynamically cheerful voice rang out across her golden ears, drowning her nostalgia-laced mellow one.
Little Elena ran past her. Emperor Geoffrey leant over, drawing her into the ever so familiar tender embrace.
"Father will take you to the carnival in the evening! There will be a shedload of vendors from all across our empire. They will be selling their province's specialities. You can buy whatever dazzles your eyes!"
"Really?" Elena exclaimed, her voice chimed like a bell ringing once from a distant height, breaking the eerie silence of night. Suddenly, this beauteous smile ebbed away from the lips, and she jutted them out. "But, I'm so short that my eyes don't even reach the countertop of those pushcarts. Moreover, I can't walk in the crowd!"
"That is it? How about you ride piggyback on father's shoulders?"
"Yeay!" The little girl shot her both hands in the air, then wound them around her father's neck, nuzzling on the emperor's cheek affectionately.
"Ha-ha-ha!"
Eliana's smile dropped; a sudden gust of wind wiped the color of the surroundings again, returning it to the frozen state.
Dejected, she placed her palms over a column twisted pillar and concentrated on gathering mana in the center of her palms. In the darkness behind her closed lids, she could perfectly see the green sparks flowing through the mana veins, stemming from the mana silos.
They materialized themselves into red rays and peeled off the thick layer of frost, that became somewhat flaky, and crumbled on its own from the pillar. However, in the next moment, a stubborn thick vein of ice burst out of the ground and climbed the piller, twining round it with double intensity.
Again…
Eliana released all the air from her lungs, freeing it from the strain. Over the years, she experimented countless techniques to liberate her land from the curse. It became a sort of habit for her to storm her brain, invent new methods then fly here spiritedly, carrying a heart full of hopes.
And every time she would leave down in the mouth. This wasn't a single formulation of magic rune that she had success with till that date.
She leaned back against the pillar, sliding her way down until her bum slammed into the ground. Apparently, ceaseless failures drained her emotionally; she drew her knees up against her chest, burying her face there.
"Crown Princess!"
Eliana turned around swiftly, before leaping up to stand; giving into the compulsion of the old habit, she gulped down all the saliva emptying her mouth.
The Dowager Empress, as quotidian, didn't entertain any trace of softness on her face, as she approached, striking the heel of a glossy wooden walking stick on the ground.
On a closer look, a dragon snake was artfully hand-carved on her cane; while the snake's body was the shaft and its hood operated as the handle.
"I verily can't wrap my head around as to how, someone born with all the great potential attributes of a Goddess, can experience such a delayed maturity?"
Little Elena recoiled in fear, walking a few steps backward, passing through her body. She, on the other hand, glanced back with a glare, trying to push the tiny frame forward, only for her spread palm to meet the air.
Sigh! Somewhere deep inside, Eliana knew she couldn't be the subject to the strict tutelage of her grandmother at that moment, yet couldn't help shifting in her stance nervously.
"Even the commoner serpents of your age are advancing towards their maturity rapidly and look at you... approaching it at snails' speed! You are dedicating all your attention to these marionettes and figurines from the sunup to sundown!"