𝟎𝟎𝟎. lament the youth of the princess delphine

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TO THINE OWN SELFprologue

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TO THINE OWN SELF
prologue...
' lament the youth
of princess delphine '







     DEAR READER, before history commences with an utterance of 'once upon a time', I must warn you. This is not a story of love, a romance to be idolised. It is the tale of a girl who became a woman, and a boy became a man — both against their will. It is a story of stolen youth, stolen hearts and stolen joy. Hairs stand on end, and tears fall in a ballet of synchronicity, like icicles in the early March sun as our fated adolescents mourn what could have been.

So beware, my dearest reader; do not hold onto hope. Instead yearn for a world in which Peter Pevensie, and Delphine of Archenland might at last find a glimmer of truth in this land of falsities. Allow us to lament, to cry, to weep. Allow us to sing, to shout, to stamp our feet in glorious protest. To demand that this becomes a story of boy meets girl, of love at first sight — a tale in which the prospect of a happy ending caresses each word with a quivering featherlight touch.

But alas, despite such sorrows our story begins as most often do — with four familiar words lingering like morning dewfall upon the waving grass. Once upon a time... once upon a time... once upon a time, after the winter ended.

Delphine sat by her balcony windows, her knees pulled into her chest as her eyes lingered upon the foals that galloped down in the field below. Dagmar, her favourite, a colt with a particularly skittish gait and a crisp white star between his eyes of chestnut brown had instantly captivated her attention. As his muscular legs pelted him across the open plane it seemed as if he was flying — drifting at first, his head banking up and down as he moulded to the contours of the land, and then, as the speed with which he ran grew ever faster, all tremors and movements ceased, and he seemed to soar up into the sky with perfect stillness. "How I wish to fly." She muttered, the lace of her corseted dress, a triumph in eggshell blue, beginning to scratch at her neck. "How I wish to fly far into the clouds and away from everyone below."

"Stop with this nonsense of flight." A taut voice quipped from behind Delphine, sending a jolt of surprise through her like an electric current. "I do not know why you sit on the floor like a common peasant girl, Delphine. A future Queen of Narnia must sit like a lady — look! Your dress is all creased!"

Delphine felt her face pale at her mother's words. Future Queen of Narnia. How strange it sounded upon her mother's tongue, how wrong, how nauseating. In just a month, one short yet seemingly eternal month, she would be married to a man she had yet to meet. Married under the sun of an April sky to High King Peter, the Magnificent. The whole affair was fickle, folly, foolish. The kind of event that causes time to cease moving forward and entrap nature under the grip of an icy fist.

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⏰ Last updated: Jan 02, 2023 ⏰

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𝐓𝐎 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐄 𝐎𝐖𝐍 𝐒𝐄𝐋𝐅 ―peter pevensie.Where stories live. Discover now