Once upon a time there was a princess; and she was lucky to be alive – though most days, she didn’t feel that lucky.
She had her own kingdom, all to herself; no king or queen, no suitors, no subjects. It was a small kingdom, to be sure; no more than a single house on a little triangle of land, though certainly large enough for her – perhaps even overlarge for only her on her own. The kingdom was hers, though, and she had all the necessary papers to prove it; yet she still had to pay for it every year, offering tribute to the Great Old One to keep Their unholy gaze from peering too closely.
The princess knew she shouldn’t complain about things like that. Her tiny kingdom was far more than most of her precious friends had, after all; never mind its various problems – the little things, and sometimes not so little things, that swam beneath the surface, like discolored veins under dry and peeling skin. Problems she would never dare show another living soul; things she’d have to fix first before letting anyone close enough.
Was she still talking about the kingdom, or herself? She’d forgotten the flow of her thoughts again.
The princess forgot many things. Her head was full of holes that she did her best to patch up, even though it felt like an impossible task. (Four pills in the morning. Four pills in the evening. Don’t forget.) The desk was lined with handwritten notes, scrawled on every available writing material: opened envelopes, old advertisements, the occasional napkin. There was a stack of sticky notes somewhere, but she’d forgotten where. It might show up again some day, but she couldn’t afford to wait for it; she’d forget too much.
The hallway had a large black chalkboard mounted on the wall facing her bedroom, so she could see what was on it before she stepped through the doorway and lost track of it. It was messy, smeared with poorly-erased chalk dust in several colors; green for the daily tasks that didn’t change (until she had to rewrite them when they did), a stark white for the special appointments, orange for the thing she’d seen in her dreams one night and then staggered out into the hallway in the dark of night to record before it faded. That was still there, the two not-exactly-triangular shapes, the floor plans; she remembered that. Of all the things she forgot, that dream was somehow lasting.
She dreamed often. Some dreams she could remember, and of those, some she could rework into stories; the rest she simply endured, and was grateful to wake from at last, as taxing as they were. Some of those, even as long and frustrating as they were, she wished she could take and spin into fine thread to weave something beautiful out of the pain.
The princess rarely slept through a night. Sleep like that was a luxury.
Sometimes it was a noise she didn’t recognize that woke her. She kept a canister of pepper spray by her pillow, and she would take it in hand and step out onto the hallway; and of course nothing was there, no one was there. There never was. The ever so slightly misaligned floorboards were creaky enough that no one could move around in her kingdom without her knowing. And yet – what if, her terrified mind would whisper, what if you didn’t hear it right, what if your ears are playing tricks on you, what if they’re standing and waiting? What if, princess? You’d better go check the locks. Again. You checked them before you slept, but you should check again. You have to.
Sometimes it was only her bladder complaining for release. Those awakenings were far better; they came without the clench of fear in her chest, the agony of adrenaline pulsing through her veins. But the princess had no choice in the matter.
She tried. She had two fans, one for noise, one for air purification; she had an audio track on her phone that would loop with quiet, soothing frequencies. It helped; but it did not solve the nightmares, or the sudden wakefulness, the vigilance. But she had accepted that some problems would only ever be mitigated, never eliminated. She hated it; but she accepted it.
The princess had grown sadly accustomed to accepting things she hated. Her royal authority barely extended far enough to cover her own affairs; beyond that, all she had to offer was a kind word, and perhaps the occasional gift of material support, when the royal treasury would allow it. But there remained so much suffering beyond her ability to mend, even within the smaller circle of her closer friends. For this she could do nothing but acknowledge it; accept that it was so, and not ignore it.
She hated suffering. She hated injustice that led to suffering. She hated broken systems that perpetuated injustice. She hated the Soulless Ones who profited from their own broken systems.
But she could do nothing about these things she hated, isolated in her tiny kingdom; and so the princess accepted that things were as they were. The fire that once burned in her heart had long since turned to cold ashes; too many years, too many dark winters had passed to keep it fed.
It was just as well she had no subjects, she thought. They would be ashamed of her miserable state.
The princess hated herself, perhaps above all else; though in a way this should come as no surprise, for she had no one else to focus her thoughts upon, day after day. She hated her reflection in the mirror; every morning when she took her medication (four pills), every time she washed her hands, every evening before she went to bed (four pills, remember, remember). She hated the way her joints would crack and grind and send little sparks of pain up her nerves at the slightest provocation. She hated the way her breath would catch in her lungs with a little spasm, when she used to sing so clearly and uninterrupted before. She hated the way her body seemed to rebel against her, how she could not stand or sit or kneel or even crawl for long before the fatigue set in, how the only respite from the pain was to collapse upon her bed and hope she could twist and turn into a position that would make it go away.
She accepted her physical limitations, though to be fair, she was working on that reflection. Little by little.
She hated her memory and her head full of holes. She hated the cold ashes resting silently in her heart where passion had once burned, what seemed like ages ago. She hated… what was it…?
She hated the cold. So very much. That was probably what she meant to say.
The princess wrapped her old plaid robe around herself more tightly, and turned on the space heater below her chair. She hated the awful grinding sound it made, but it only sometimes. Once the trembling in her hands slowed enough, she began writing.
She loved writing.
At least…
The princess thought she did.
Some days, like today, she wasn’t so sure. The words weren’t coming to her. The characters she’d worked on seemed so flat, so lifeless to her, like paper dolls without even the slightest depth to them. The setting was so thin it would fall over if you breathed on it.
(Was any of this true, or was the princess in one of her terrible moods? I suppose you’d have to read the story and judge it for yourself, though you’d have to find it first.)
Her fingers tapped a nervous rhythm atop the keyboard, just for the sound, not making any presses. It wasn’t working, none of it was coming together the way she wanted it. If she’d been on a typewriter the floor would be littered with crumpled-up paper by now; it was, regrettably, littered with other things.
The glass of water was empty. Looking at it made her realize how dry and chapped her lips were. How long had it been sitting there untouched? She sighed, and picked it up, carefully and slowly standing to keep her body from protesting, and then going out to the kitchen to refill it with as much royal grace as she could manage.
It wasn’t much. It never was, if she was brutally honest. But she did try; she really, really tried.
She didn’t bother turning on the lights. There was no need to, when she kept everything the same; the chair standing in the center of the kitchen, interrupting the flow, hadn’t moved since she first moved it slightly out of the way. The bare metal shelves in the hallway, the random boxes upon the floor; occasionally she would clean and sort things, and every now and again the landscape of her little kingdom would shift. But never enough that it disturbed her. She knew it too well; it was all she had.
The only light came from her room, and from the inside of the refrigerator, when she took the water purifier out and poured it into the glass, taking a brief sip on her way back. She never drank enough water; dehydration was always a problem for the forgetful princess. She’d meant to figure out a countermeasure for that at one point – but then she’d forgotten to pursue it. Perhaps the train of thought had fallen into one of those countless cracks.
It wouldn’t be the first time she’d lost something of importance, and certainly not the last, either.
She returned to her room and sat down again, staring balefully at the monitor, painfully bright white with black text – and not nearly enough of the latter. Perhaps one day they’d finally implement dark mode for this site, but not today. She sighed, and typed a few words, almost unthinking.
The princess coughed, suddenly; a wretched, miserable sound, not very princess-like at all. She doubled over in pain, and reached for a pile of napkins, wheezing quietly. A few more moments and she’d cleared out whatever it was that had troubled her throat, or nose, or whatever the problem had been. It kept happening.
My kingdom is trying to kill me, she thought, momentarily.
I probably deserve it. For the years of neglect, and everything else.
She shook off the thought and continued writing, or trying to. None of it made sense today; none of it connected properly. The same threads were right there, but she couldn’t seem to grasp them the way she needed to.
She felt like crying again; not uncommon for her, particularly this week. But she’d lost hours to her emotions already from laying down and weeping softly into her pillow until the afternoon turned into early evening. She didn’t want to repeat it when she still had things to write – or to try to write, anyway.
If nothing else, being able to feel again – after so many years as an emotionless stone statue – was an improvement, she thought. It would be better if she could have a little more happiness, a little more positivity; but still, even the darkest lows were better than the awful gray colorless existence of the past…
… two decades? Or was it three?
She stopped thinking about it. Age wasn’t a useful number any longer.
The princess stared at the monitor again. There still weren’t nearly enough words on it. And even if there were, a spiteful little thing in her head whispered, do you think anyone would bother to read them?
She sighed, slow and deep, as if exhaling her soul. Then she took a breath, and put her hands back on the keys.
Even if no one reads them, the princess thought – more bitter than sweet – writing the words is enough.
And somehow, it always was.
diamonds from ash 
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