‘Twas a dark night and the Queen lay sleeping in her regal bed, her only company the black cat who slept by her side, gently purring and keeping the royal person as snuggly as the most common of peasants. This was a Queen who loved to wander the markets and chat with her subjects, she discussed weave with the tailors, and the value of oil with the fish merchants. Her nobles thought her most eccentric, and were loath to follow her example of egalitarianism, the truth was they couldn’t even have spelt the word, they were not particularly bright!
So Her Majesty spent a lot of her time with her son and daughter when she was not wandering the kingdom, the prince was a young man now and so she had to teach him all about ruling the land. The princess was younger and she was fascinated with the properties of herbs and the meanings of the stars up above, her mother allowed her to visit the wise women, to learn the ancient arts of healing and scrying.
So in spite of the nobles’ disdain, the royal family managed to be quite happy most of the time, and their subjects loved them to bits, and wished the nobles would crawl under a log and disappear. It seemed like nothing would ever change this picture until one night as the Queen lay sleeping peacefully in her bed, she was woken quite suddenly by a great force that battered at her body, mind and spirit. She went into shock, but even in that state she fought back as hard as she could, to keep out this dark force that tried to suck out her energy as if she were a glass of water and it a thirsty ghoul.
Somehow the Queen managed to survive the night, but the next morning she was pale and tired, with dark rings under her eyes. She would have preferred not to burden her precious children with her worries, but her aristocrats would most likely say she had gone mad and try to lock her away, so she had no choice but to tell them of the battle she had fought through the night.
To find out what the Prince and Princess had to say about all of this, and to find out what happens to the Queen, tune into my next post!
Through the Vortex 