V ━ Please excuse my feeble efforts, I have no tongue

225 6 4
                                    



ROTTED LABOR // Act one, chapter five 
Please excuse my feeble efforts, I have no tongue

Innocence and arrogance entwined
-The Last Shadow Puppets

The patron saint of silence, yet her mind was as loud as a harald delivering riveting news. With each step, it felt as if her heart struck her rib cage like a mallet would a gong.

        Visenya's palms were sweaty, she feared the parchment would tear and the ink would smear. She periodically exchanged the note between both hands, in the hope doing so would cancel out the damage the other had caused, and vice versa.

The walk to the library felt like a trek, despite it being a single staircase and left turn. Each person she passed, guards and servants alike, she felt as if they were discreetly judging her. As if they knew the containments of the note and her exact intents. Their smiles morphed into sneers. She feared they would go back to their quarters and gossip about her.

         The silly and stupid princess, writing fruitless letters because she is too frightened to speak up.

        Please excuse my feeble efforts, She would tell them, I feel as if I have no tongue.

A pathetic tale. One that would elicit pitiful 'tsks' and sorrowful eyes. Within the castle walls, Visenya felt as a dragon would in the North — outcast. She often wondered if that was her mind playing tricks or that was the truth. Part of her wished to remain ignorant of the answer.

Many a time during her short journey, she debated turning back and tossing the note into a fireplace, letting it ignite and burn into oblivion. Her mind felt like a rocking chair; shifting back and forth but getting nowhere. Alas, her body triumphed, because her legs had successfully carried her to the entrance of the library.

The doors were arched and hatched with lattice embellishments, derived from the beauty that bards gushed about in their songs. It was a perfect foreview of the magnificence that expanded into the vast room.

With both hands, Visenya gripped the gold and curved handles; the tips flourished upward into dragon heads. She felt the carved scales and spiky horns under her fingers. She pulled, reeling the dragons forward and parting them.

        Evening had not come yet, though it was fast approaching, but it felt as if it were deep into the night whilst in the library. The walls were blanketed with thick tapestries with intricate stitching and gold tassels, embroidered with Targaryen heraldry and dragon embellishments and motifs. Dust wafted through the lust of the light, brought by flickering candles, and danced around the ceiling-high archives of succession and wisdom. Visenya wondered how much knowledge had been lost because of the amount that there was. She was sure there had to be dusty and lost scrolls hidden beneath and behind the ones that 'mattered.'

She thought of the people who had written the forgotten texts, how tirelessly they must have worked to transcribe their thoughts into words on paper. She hoped they did not know their work was not significant enough to be remembered.

        There and then, Visenya made a promise to herself: she shall read all the forgotten books. In retrospect, a childish and unreasonable goal, but a considerate one, nonetheless. Books in the library felt like people in the world. Some would rise to greatness and others would not—Which one would be her fate? Reading every forgotten book would be like traveling the world and telling every pauper and whore that they mattered. In the eyes of many, they did not.

ROTTED LABOR ━ House of the Dragon Where stories live. Discover now