Castles in the Sky

Stitches

TW: Brief mention of domestic violence and execution.

AN: Hello! Please accept my apologies for the delay on this chapter. Life got in the way with one thing after another. Just a few more chapters to go - this work will be completed by early January. Thanks for reading! 🦋 (twitter: @Avalore_8)

Some new name meanings to add:
Thalassa - Female personification of the sea (Greek)
Anurak - male angel of Thai mythology

~~

Shells on the beach

Are the tears left behind

When waves come to the shore

And etch their sorrows

In the softness

Of white sands

A coal-black Cormorant teetered dipping and diving air's waves on the far side of the tidal island, casting beady eyes down seawards in seek of the flick of silver fishtails - but, distracted by a trio of figures at shoreline's shallows. A regal, sterling-haired lady walking hand in hand with two grown men either side, barefoot along winter's frosted beach.

A secret gathering, away from prying eyes. A reunion.

For a time, they were silent - only stopping now and again, for the woman to stoop and pocket shells. Tips of noses blown red by the bitter breeze, eyelashes drooping, decorated heavy with salt of sea's spray that stung. Toes numb, shoulders shivering. Yet still they walked.

Until the bird spectator lost balance in the sky with an ungainly squawk - buffeted away to deeper waters whither to pluck and plunder fishy feast. And as if sensing that they were then truly alone, Thalassa turned to her sons, and began...

"Allow me to tell this to you like a fairytale, for it may be easier to hear as fanciful fiction"

Orion nodding - solemnly steeled - as Solaris wound an extra shawl tighter atop the estranged mother's coat, each of her hands still clasped in theirs.

Glancing momentarily down at her own bare feet, then hurriedly out to sea, as if ever-sourcing an escape route - old habits die hard:

"Then...there was once a young lady named after the ocean...."

//

In truth she had wanted only life's simplest things, but with the blood of Mongkul nobility in prized omega veins, family played her predictably, like a pawn, into the bed of a lecherous alpha King. Though there were a carousel of conquests who fleeted through that man's chamber, within weeks she sat, stunned, alongside him in the throne room as kingdom's Queen. Perhaps Arthit did believe he loved her, in his own way - that magpie man hankered for shiny things, and said she glimmered like unmined gold - yet it felt more like acquisition and possession. Suffocation.

She lived life as if waiting for it to be over - unblinking even through that new husband's fits of fury and habitually heavy hands. Grateful to the harem of courtesans who kept him busy many a night, and resigned merely to lie back and dream of a faraway land of liberty on the evenings which they didn't...

But, in the way that the universe holds her cards so closely to chest, the Queen's life was soon set for sunrise. Awaking at last from that hollowed hell of existence one very precious day, sol itself shining in unimaginable happiness when she gave birth to a son-

//

-Thalassa breaking away from faithfully frank narrative to turn to Mew and tell: