Four Years To Think And To Heal

Branches and leaves punch my face as I run through the heavy wooded forest.

"Sereen! I know you're out there! I WILL FIND YOU!"

I ran further and further from the man chasing me. My lungs are about to burst out of my chest. I can't breathe. Unexpectedly, I tripped on a small fallen log and tumbled to the ground and jolted awake.

I had fallen off my bed. I pushed myself off the soft floor to sit up and I could still feel the burn of the cold in my lungs.

What is happening to me? I shook my head trying to shake off this recurring dream. My mother's last words are still stuck in my head.

"Glimpse of the future."

Am I seeing my future? Will someone try to kill me?

I just sat there, horrified.

Maybe, I was seeing someone else's fate. Yes, that must be it.

"My lady?" A knock came at my door.

"Yes, Lowell, I am awake. You may come in."

Lowell was the personal maid, entrusted to me by King Leifae Arkson. She enters with new clothes, a silver bowl of warm water and towels. I stand there while she dresses me.

How did I ever let myself become so stuck in a world like this? A world of expectations and loneliness as if I'm not lonely enough already.

Lowell tightens my corset, crushing my ribs and preventing me from breathing.

"This is suffocating." I whined quietly.

"Did you say something, my lady?"

"I only said that I think it is tight enough."

"My lady, your hips are expanding. You've become an old maiden. We need to keep those hips tucked." Lowell continued to constrict me like a python strangling its prey.

I am now twenty years of age. My hourglass has formed and certain parts of my body are protruding more than other parts. For instance, my breasts are plumper than most women and my black hair grows thick, long and shiny like a horse's mane. My skin is no longer bumpy with acne, but smooth like a pearl and soft like silk.

Later, we continued the schedule like always.

First, I have morning tea and biscuits.

Second, piano lessons with a mean instructor who whacks my forearms when I play the wrong chords.

Third, learn the etiquettes of proper mannerism.

Fourth, dance lessons.

Fifth, lunch outside to enjoy the green grass scenery.

Then it's more lessons on how to be a woman, and more time to spend with no one, but myself. Finally, at dinner King Leifae Arkson joins me… or should I say Lei?

We sit at a long table far across from one another as thralls serve us a five course meal.

Words are barely spoken between us.

"How were your lessons?"

"Good."

"Did you learn anything new?"

"How to eat barley with a fork."

"That's great. Soon you'll be a real lady." he smirked.

Oh how that line always digs into my skin.

"I'm not hungry. May I please be excused?"

"You're not hungry?"

"Yes, Lei. I think it might be because this dress is crushing all of my innards together. I don't think I can fit anything else in there."

"Wait." Lei wiped his lips with a napkin and stood up. "I really wanted to speak with you today."

I stood there waiting. It's always these awkward silences between us. He quickly made his way down to me and asked, " It has been four years. Are you not content with the life I've given you here? Do you want more? You haven't yet given me an answer."

"I am not miserable, if that's what you're asking. But this lifestyle is exactly what I don't want. I feel stuck in a loop of repeated nonsense for other people's entertainment."

We stare at each other intensely, " You are a great and loving person, Lei. But, if a lady is what you seek in me then I'm afraid you'll never find her. I am a person meant to be free to make my own choices and walk barefooted in the grass if I so choose."

"There!" He said loudly and pointed at me. "There is the Lady Sereen I've been seeking."

"I'm confused. All these lessons and learnings for what?" I asked.

"To find you, the REAL Sereen. I still remember, you and I talked once about the world of equality between men and women. I thought you had forgotten."

"I was just doing as you asked." I started to get angry. "It's been four years and you never said anything to me. How was I supposed to know that you were just waiting for ME to say something?"

"Say no more." He rushed to my side, "I have been planning my new adventure. You will be joining me. I will not take 'no' for an answer. We will be boating southwest, down the lakes to explore the waters of this new land. Hopefully then, I'm sure your answer for me will be 'yes'."

Lei moved his face closer to mine and whispered, " I heart yearns for your love. I hope one day you feel the same for me too." He pushes his lips onto mine and kisses me.

I pull away. "Lei, I can't do this. Please, excuse me."

I ran to my chambers and locked the door behind me. I rubbed my face and walked up to the vanity and sat down looking at my own reflection in the mirror.

"What are you doing?" It's dark now. It is time for Seer to see her people." I said to myself. I undid my hair, removed my make up and took off that nasty corset. I quickly changed into ragged clothing and waited for the coast to clear.

I made my way out of the mansion and into Pormanstown. Once there, I disguised myself into Seer, at the local pub. The owner was a widower and his deceased wife had left a fortune for him. The only problem was that it was nowhere to be found. She left a riddle for him to find it, but he was a man with little to say. I was able to help him find his fortunes with the aid of his late wife's ghost.

Words went out of a sorcerer who can see the dead and at times, the future. Soon, my identity was named Seer but the townsfolk. The pub keeper gave a room for me to do my work every night as gratitude for my helping him.

Every night that I could, I would sneak out of the mansion to help others with their unsolved problems with the dead.

For four years, this kept me sane in this cage I felt I was locked in.

Tonight, my client was a son who only wanted to feel his mother embrace one last time.

The mother enters with a jacket at hand.

"Not a word." I said to her, "Ma'am, hold your tongue. I will ask your departed to validate their presence for you."

The little boy whispers to me.

"Ma'am?" The woman looks at me intensely. "Your son is here. Philips is here, though he keeps saying that his name is Flips."

The woman laughs and sad tears drip off the edge of her eyes. "I gave him that name when he was a baby. He kept rolling over and I'd have to flip him back to the center of the bed. Otherwise, he'd fall right off."

"He wants to apologize for leaving this world before you. No mother should EVER bury their children~"

"That's what I say to him, every time I visit his grave." she cried. "Before I decided to move here, I took the little wooden cross from his grave and brought it here with me."

"It is in your yard, hiding in plain sight with your fence. You had it painted white to blend with the fence." I validated her son and her story.

"He is here because he can't leave. You had promised to hold him one last time, but before you could, he had passed." The woman nodded and continued to cry.

"Here." I handed her a dried lavender flower. "Go to his cross and burn this. He will come to you. Embrace the wooden cross as if it were him. He just wants to feel his mother's embrace one last time before moving on into the afterlife."

The mom continued to cry as she thanked me and left.

After helping all these people, I would sneak back to the mansion, where my exhaustion forces me into a deep sleep and the dreams of the forest take over.

*

In King Leifae Arkson's study, he rapidly wrote on a parchment paper with a quill.

"Your grace, you shall retire to your chambers. The sun will soon rise."

"Has she returned?"

"Yes, my lady is now in her chambers fast asleep."

"Good. She needs to rest now. We will be leaving in a fortnight. Make sure all the supplies are ready by then."

"Yes, your grace."

King Leifae Arkson stood up, relieved to be going to bed.

"Tell me, Yuqin. Who did she see this night?"

"A old woman who had lost her son in a well. He has been dead for over 30 years."

"No way she would have known about this person and or her son?"

"No, your grace. This old woman lives alone and she does very little. No one in town knows her and she normally doesn't speak to anyone."

"Yuqin, do you believe her?"

"Believe in my lady? Yes, I do. When I first saw her, she had spoken to someone about their future and as I observed her on The Great Juliana, she was always talking to someone every night, until she'd fall asleep. At first, I just thought that she was a bit looney, but the more I got to witness her abilities. The more I believed. I knew then that she would benefit you someday, your grace."

"Thank you, Yuqin. I am feeling tired. You may leave."

Yuqin leaves the study.

King Leifae Arkson shifts some papers around on this desk and opens up a large incomplete map. On a part of the map the word "unknown" is written. King Leifae Arkson, picks up his quill and writes something else next to the word." He puts the quill back in the ink jar and walks out of his study.

On the map, the word 'unknown' is crossed out and a single sentences wrote:

Sereen leads the way.