1 The Day I Offered Myself to the Sun

When I was a young girl, I used to dress myself up as a boy. The maids didn't mind and instead found it quite cute.

"Look! The little princess is at it again!" they would exclaim in delight, with their powdered faces and pink-stained lips.

I would order a few of these giggling maids to buy me clothes fit for a middle class boy. They would dress me up, and when they laughingly declared me "handsome" or "a future lady killer", I would proceed to sneak out of the castle.

Of course, my parents, the king and queen of the Kingdom of Saule, didn't know of my secret hobby. It wasn't that hard to hide it from them. After all, I was a daughter and not a son.

In the Kingdom of Saule... Rather, in the Aerim Continent, if you were born a girl, you were already tied to a dire future. The common women would only be of use as child-bearers. If a learned woman chooses to be a priestess for the Sun God Solus, then she would be of better use as a healer or a sacrificial lamb.

As a princess, my only purpose was to marry a powerful and wealthy nation's prince.

Donning my commoner boy's outfit, I could forget the drawling lectures by the strict trainers. With the short sleeves of a young boy's shirt, I could finally air my skinny arms, still stinging from the regular abuse of my teachers' whip.

I used to steal away into the kitchen, where I could crouch into the little, secret pathway only a small adult or a child can fit through. I would set out with a childlike determination, hearing the faint hustle and bustle of the city square. Once I felt the warmth of the sun, I used to smile. 'Freedom was near,' I thought.

Freedom came in different ways.

I could speak to other children and no one would chide me. I could join in a bout of chess with the idle gentlemen and they would say nothing wrong about it. If I made a particularly notable move, they would even praise me. I could speak and always be heard.

At one point, just when I had heard I was to be betrothed to a faraway empire's crown prince, my 13-year-old self donned boy's clothes yet again and decided to run away. I vowed to myself that I would live my life as I wished. On that day, however, I came upon a younger girl.

I was just a few ways away from the city borders. For the rest of the world, I was simply a merchant's son on an errand. I had forged the necessary documents long ago, with the help of my one kind teacher. I was just a few steps away from freedom, but this little girl stopped me.

The girl was probably not even ten. Her clothes were dirty and ragged. Her ankles and wrists were bare where she had outgrown her dress. If she were just a few more years older, she would have been gravely punished for her appearance. "Temptress," the masses would call her. They would then stone her to the state of crippling her or up until she slowly died.

Fortunately, with the wispy form she currently had, no man would be tempted to take her in. So, people only deemed her a poor beggar child and granted her their pity.

No one was helping her, though. They only avoided her, and I would have done the same if she hadn't seen me staring. It might be because I, too, was a girl under my rough clothes, so my sympathy showed on my face.

The girl was sobbing and crying, and when she reached me, I knew it was too late to act as though I hadn't noticed her. She grabbed unto my merchant's clothes and asked for my help. I do not remember exactly what she said, but I gathered that her brother was sick and dying.

All the while, I spared longing glances towards the border gates, where a pair of soldiers were guarding the steady traffic of people and carriages going in and out of the city. Freedom was right in front of me.

The girl's crying grew stronger, and passersby were starting to notice the commotion we caused. I tried to pry her off me, but her desperation manifested into a great strength in the form of her unrelenting grip.

Suddenly, a shadow went over us. A tall man, obviously of a noble house, looked down on us in disgust. I was familiar with that kind of expression. After all, I have always received that look whenever I wore my dresses and let my hair down.

An uncomfortable thought invaded my mind. Here I was, dressed as a boy, yet I was still being stared at with those harsh, judging eyes.

Annoyance grew within me like a manic beast. And I showed a violence I had never released before.

"Get off me!" I remember screaming. And then I hit the little girl with all my strength.

The younger girl made quite the sight, with her slightly upturned skirts and snot-filled face. The red mark of my fist was evident on her small cheek. She looked like a frightened mouse. It seemed as though she was ready to receive another hit from the merchant boy in front of her.

Pitiful.

At that moment, I wondered if I had looked like that whenever my teachers dealt too heavy a hand. I wondered if I, too, had looked as weak as the little girl sprawled out in front of me. My hands shook, and I felt myself unable to breathe properly.

And then, I heard a chuckle behind me.

"Good job, boy. Those nasty rats should be taught a lesson," I heard the noble man say to me in a haughty tone.

I felt the need to vomit.

That day, I went back home and burned all of my documents. I never wore a man's clothes ever again.

Years passed and I had no goal in my life. I was swept by the tides of the wants and needs of the kingdom. I was carefully groomed to be the wife and queen of a strong empire. With time, I grew into a beautiful lady, enough to be called, "The Temptress" herself. However, no matter how sweet the words, it was never a compliment.

In my dreams, the sight of the young girl I had hit haunted me consistently.

By the time I was 18 and had to be sent over to the Mond Empire to finally be married, I suddenly grew alive again. Just like the child I was when I was 13, I decided to escape.

'Perhaps now, I would deserve freedom,' I had thought, still imagining the young girl in the dirty rags.

If I had chosen to wear a man's clothes, I would have made it outside. However, because I had felt nauseous at the mere sight of well-mannered men, much less act like them, I decided to escape in a maid's plain dress.

I should have known it would end badly.

The soldiers by the border refused my pleas to exit the city. And when I continued to beg, they threatened to call the knights, believing that I was a run-away slave. I had to leave and hide by then.

For days, I was confined in the city, hiding from lust-filled men, suspicious soldiers, and from the royal family guards roaming the city streets. My small pouch of money was dwindling as day after day passed. When slave dealers found me weeks after, weakened from starvation in a dark alley, they decided to sell me off to the Temple miles away, thinking that my beauty would fetch a higher price there than in a common whore house. They sure got their money.

I was bought for my beauty. I was groomed. Inside the white-washed rooms of the Temple, what little strength and defiance I had was all but gone.

The priestesses taught me to be silent and to behave. They told me of my great purpose: to constantly offer myself to the Sun God, and to the powerful men of the Temple.

The white-robed men rarely visited me, but when they did, I was always drugged. I could only stare in a daze as my body was used again and again.

In those blurry days, I was only kept alive by my holding on to my promise that I would never tell them who I was.

One day, I was led into the bathing house and was given a long cleaning by the priestesses. When they suddenly praised me for my beauty and my luck with their hollow gazes, I could not even reply as my face was quickly covered by a black veil and I was herded into the topmost room of the Temple.

"Be jubilant! Your time to offer yourself to the Sun God Solus has come!" a priestess whispered into my ear. "All the more, you will be offered for the blessing of a royal family!"

They ushered me up unto a circular platform where I was told to stand quietly. I couldn't see anything from the veil, but I could hear the chanting and singing of the ceremony. I felt so empty and devoid of hope that I couldn't even cry.

'I will die here,' I thought absentmindedly.

When the singing ceased, a pair of hands slowly took away the dark veil on my head, and I was greeted with the harsh light of the noonday sun. I found myself staring too long at the sunlight directly above me where there was a perfectly round opening on the white roof. I didn't know how long I stared at the sun, but when I did finally look away, I found myself looking into the eyes of my father.

I could see the gently sobbing form of the queen seated slightly behind him, but I couldn't look away from his gaze. My brothers were beside the king, their faces filled with shock... and shame. My youngest brother, barely a toddler, was looking at me curiously, as though he found me familiar.

I waited patiently as I stared at my father's eyes. I wondered for the tiniest moments if he would order the Temple's people to stop the ceremony. After all, his daughter was about to be killed.

I was greeted with silence, and the ceremony continued.

For the rest of the chanting and the singing and the undressing and the anointing, I was filled with a warm serenity. I smiled gently at the calming feeling surrounding me. I felt as though freedom was near. I could almost grasp it.

When the time came, I found myself looking up at the sun again, and I felt the sharp knife quickly slice my bare neck.

The sun had never been more bright.

'Sun God, perhaps it would be well if I am born a man in my next life.' I called out to the blinding light as my life seeped out from my naked body.