The Tales of Miriela: Shadowborn

Chapter 27: Rebecca Wullmont

"Mira, the day will not wait for you. Now up and out of bed," Said Rebecca. She had quit going to wake Kline. It was a poor habit, one that caused her pain and was founded upon some distant unfamiliar emotion, a common ground between love and hate. She had stopped conversing with Kline altogether. There was no need to, and Rebecca realized it now more than ever. She instead spent her mornings waking her children, she couldn't quite break the habit completely.

"I'm awake, mother, I'm awake!" Little Mira said as she squirmed back and forth, dreading the imminent exit from her warm bed.

"Being awake and out of bed are two completely different things, Mira. Do you want to be a princess who sits idly by and watches the world change before her, or a Queen who sits on the throne and shapes that change herself?" Rebecca asked with a fierce tone. Mira was too young to understand what her mother meant and Rebecca knew it. But Rebecca wasn't talking to the little girl lying in bed, she was talking to herself.

She always wanted to do more, to step outside the boundaries of her role and change the flaws which she saw around her. But for so many years, she couldn't. For so many years, she was the princess refusing to get out of bed.

Her bed was safe, and warm. The world outside of it was not. She knew there was insecurity, angst, harshness, and death that awaited her. So she took the abuse from her husband, because the alternative was to be alone. And alone was unpredictable, unexplored, and unknown.

Mira seemed to ignore Rebecca's ranting but finally climbed her way out from under the covers.

"How many times must I remind you young lady, to do as your mother says? It's not ladylike to be disrespectful," One of the maidens said. She came charging into the room from behind Rebecca, seeming embarrassed at the princess's behavior. The maidens raised the children, and they knew them like Rebecca never would. They knew them like a mother. "Now get dressed and find your way to the dining hall, it's almost time for breakfast," The maiden continued.

Rebecca watched and listened, as Mira put on her day's clothes and did as the maiden had asked. Rebecca felt like a fool. She was no mother to these children. Her desire for motherhood had lured her into believing that she could love her husband's bastards as her own, and that they could love her in return. But it would never be, it could never be if Rebecca was to become the Queen that she so desired.

The maiden and Mira were busy and distracted, as Mira ready herself for the day. Rebecca withdrew and slowly backed away into the shadows of the room. She looked one last time at what she may have had, in another life, and her heart ached. The pain was worse than her husband's abuse, it was an inescapable torture.

Though Rebecca wanted what she saw before her, children, love, motherhood, she knew that life, or the gods, or whatever it may be, had chosen otherwise. She could not live within the order of the world, for she was swallowed in chaos. She had lived in it for so long that she had lost sight of the fact.

Perhaps one day she would find herself within the realm of order, with a family and children to call her own. But that would have to be created within the world of chaos, for that was all the Queen knew, and it was all that currently surrounded her.

Rebecca had silently vanished from Mira's chambers and slipped into the hallway. The Estate was no place for her. The disingenuous order in Rebecca's life stood up like a house with two walls. The house was either gorgeous or a complete disaster, depending upon the perspective.

For years Rebecca had forced herself to turn away from the truth, but she couldn't take it any longer. This life of nobility, the Estate, the children, the King, she could not bear to exist within it another second, yet she had little choice.