User blog:Kat2wind2archer/Royalty

Oh wow, look, a story

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Royalty had a specific way of looking at others. Their gazes were usually judging and borderline threatening in a way that made chills clutch at your spine and goose bumps dance across your skin. They had a weird way of finding everything that was wrong with you; a loose hair on your shirt, a stray speck of dust stuck to your shoe, uneven nails, crooked smiles. Tattered robes that look like they were pulled out of a trash can, probably better off as rags than articles of clothing.

It was sort of hard to blame them for noticing that last one. There’s nothing about looking like you just spent the night in a dumpster that was discreet. Being led straight to the king’s throne also didn’t help with taking the attention off of the newcomer’s embarrassing state.

Not that the newcomer was embarrassed, thank you very much. They were perfectly fine with strutting up to the most important man in the whole country dressed in a pair or ripped shoes and a button-up missing half of the buttons. And a disgusting looking cloak that may or may not have been found in a wastebin.

Aly’s lips ached from all the smiling she was doing. She didn’t want to be known as the idiot who dared frown at the king. Maybe one day, though. She’d like to see the king’s face when he was faced with a nasty stink eye. But not today. Today she was in a bit of a pickle, judging by the whispers of ‘who’s that?’, ‘is she the one who set the town ablaze?’, ‘I wonder if they’ll cut her head off’.

She whipped her head around when her ears were met with a murmur of ‘wait, isn’t that the cloak I threw away months ago?’

Damn it. He knows.

‘Damn it, I know’ whispered the voice, but she couldn’t find its owner among the crowd. Too many stuck up faces were staring back at her. She resisted the urge to tear the mystery man’s head off when the guards demanded she continue towards the king.

“Puny commoner, how can I assist you?” a gruff voice escaped the king’s throat. It echoed around the hall and Aly wondered if they placed speakers all around the room.

“It’s not puny commoner, it’s Aly” said the woman, and everyone’s jaw dropped simultaneously. The king’s surprise was a bit less animated than the rest of audience’s, but that didn’t stop his eyes from bulging out of his sockets. The woman felt weirdly proud.

“Aly?!” the King’s mouth continued to hang open, and Aly was worried it got stuck like that until he spouted some more words “-Aly, it’s great to see you again!”

Oh wow. Okay. Aly stared at the King, bewildered. She had never met the king before. Never. Unless she met him during some weird family-gathering when she was but a child. To be honest, she didn’t remember any of her aunts or uncles, so if she was somehow blood related to the all high and mighty, she wouldn’t have been surprised. She should ask for a look at the family tree next time auntie Becky visited.

She watched the king get all giddy and happy, which was very, very disturbing because this Aly wasn’t the Aly the king thought she was. Oh god- what if she introduced herself as the king’s niece or something, and was about to be smothered with a hug!? No way she’d let that happen.

“Aly from the town of Willow Wind” she corrected. She hated saying her towns name, considering her town had no willows. It also rarely had any wind, since even the lightest gust of wind took a one-eighty whenever it reached the towns borders and just… flew the other way. Truly a cursed town if you’d ask her.

The Willow-winder watched as the king’s face stilled, before morphing back to its usual thoughtful thrown. Good, it should stay like that. A smiling king is either unreliable or just plain terrifying.

“Ah, yes. And what do you want?” He adjusted his crown, before letting his hands rest on the throne’s blood-red manchette.

“I want to leave the castle. But your guards dragged me here for some reason” That ‘some reason’ was creeping into the royal kitchen and stealing their wine, but the king didn’t need to know that.

“She crept into the royal kitchen and stole all of the wine, your highness”

Or maybe he did.

Aly made sure to give the snitching knight the sweetest grin she could, lacing it with a promise to elbow him in the gut later. He seemed unmoved by the expression sent his way, which made the newcomer all the more anxious to deliver a blow.

The king frowned, before waving his hand towards some muscle-head on his left.

“Who was guarding the kitchen at the time?”

Aly watched the man sweat under the king’s stare.

“I have no idea. Maybe Joe?” he squeaked. Or squawked. He looked more like a duck than a mouse, with the gold armour and all. A very buff and scared duck. He was so tense and uncomfortable, Aly almost looked around the room to check for potential snipers. Did they kill people for answering the king incorrectly?

To her dismay, all the king did was sigh and point to someone from the crowd.

“Go and fetch someone who knows who patrol’s the kitchen areas and at what time” he demanded, but before anything could happen, the gates (which somehow closed themselves when Aly wasn’t looking) were burst open with a heavenly force as a stray knight tumbled in.

“Sir! I mean, your Highness! The wine is gone! It’s all gone! What are we to do!?” oh god, he was crying. The poor man was crying. Good thing Aly sold her heart for a box of chocolates five years ago, else she’d feel as guilty as the knight. The king levelled him with an understanding gaze, looking back at Aly.

“Where did you hide the wine?”

Aly patted her pockets, and suddenly everyone was staring at them.

‘How did I not see all those bottles in her pants!?’, ‘I don’t know, probably cuz you’re blind Jimmy’, ‘Shut your trap Mickle’ and other murmurs erupted from the crowd. The wine-snatcher put her hands or her hips, smirking. Ha, she was amazing, wasn’t she?

“Ah yes, the ol’ hide-it-in-your-pockets trick. Got us again, your Highness” one of the knights chuckled. The king laughed along with him. Eventually the whole hall transformed into a cackling and wheezing symphony, which Aly was reluctant to join. Just a chuckle and her pants might fall down, breaking all of the wine bottles she stuffed in there. That would not be a fun outcome, at all, she deduced.

The king was having a hard time making words in between his donkey-like laughs, so it took a while before he finally declared; “Thank you for teaching my knights an important lesson. I’m sure they’ll try to avoid falling for similar tricks of such impressive calibre. Now, guards, chuck her into the dungeon and don’t let her out until the next blue moon. And take all the wine from her, for gods sake, we don’t want drunk prisoners, they never shut up”

Aly let herself be manhandled to the cells underneath the castle. A few days of eating stale bread and mucky water was better than losing a head, afterall.

But before letting herself be locked up, she gave one of the knights a punch in the gut, which was very satisfying. Later that night she wondered whether she got the right guard, considering they all looked identical, but decided it didn’t really matter because a punch is a punch.

The bag of gold coins she snatched from the ‘tip jar’ the cooks left in the kitchen weigh heavily in her right shoe.

That should buy her enough wine to last her a few months, she mused.

Now, if only she was skinny enough to slip through the jail bars. It’s probably time to start that diet she’s been thinking about. The mouldy bread would surely help her with that.