Try not to Conceive and Contravene Instead

You give me light... and darkness in this never-ending life. - miss_polarity

----

As the morning sun arises from its lungga, the room grew more unpleasantly warm and humid.

"We're alone. So, why not now?" Ella perfunctorily asks as she puts the bottled water down the vintage coffee table.

"In your own time, milady. For now, let me do my bounden duty."

'So I wait until you finally decide to touch me, is that it?' She thought to herself.

Puffing out her last hurried and exhausted pants, Felicity ran down her hands to her knees. Ella promptly handed her the bottled water. The gesture made Felicity look up to Ella, whose eyes never connected with hers.

Ella turned her wheelchair around and went for her private room on the rear end of the underground place.

The reason she found the place was her grandfather's map. Her Pops once said that a tunnel connects the underground to one of the tunnels of the First Rates.

She remembers her Pops saying his favorite lines before they part ways after their regular one-on-one talks on the seventh day of the week. It says something like, "How to sneak-without-getting-beat? Then, use thy ticking pic. But thou shan't hit the wall or else get yourself buried under a dark hole."

Pops even additionally speaks nifty of her being ruled out of other's admonition sometimes, "..., howbeit try not to conceive and contravene instead."

The conduit dates back to the olden days when Pops used it to rendezvous with Alissa, her grandmother.

It was quite the Romeo and Juliet story of the century. The First-Rates and the Third-Rates of this time were once in the middle of a blood feud. The very time when the love between Arthur and Alissa bloomed. Only the remake involved Alissa, a distant cousin of the Second-Rates—one of the Royal Princess's confidantes—and an heir to the Third-Rates' throne, Arthur.

They both met each other at a ball which should not have welcomed Arthur. And that was when the sheer drop of fate checkmated Alissa and Arthur and yielded the reconcilement of the Firsts and Thirds.

That aside, Ella's Pops dropped that with a sense of direction, one can even reach the King's study through the tunnel. You should, of course, make sure the King is not in his quarters when you visit—else, you may be executed or worse, jailed for 20 years.

And even four years after her grandparents died of an accident, she still has not found the entrance to her Pops' conduit. But still, she continues to push and pull things in Pops' room—her private room, to be precise.

And so, after she had locked the door behind her, she pounded on everything but the wall. She searched for a distinct tic to sound. But only indistinguishable clatters reached her ear.

She headed for a book section on the right hand of the door to her left and picked an oldfangled book that had seen better days below in the shelf's false bottom. She opened it to the marked-up portion and fished out Arthur's outlier map of the tunnel.

'If I do want to live, then leaving is the only option.' She thought.

She skimmed over and over through the pages of other books of grandfather's, but to no avail, she found nothing. A knock reverberated from one end of the room past her to the other.

"Milady, we have to get moving. We will get sunbaked down here."

Felicity's notice was far from being a lie. True, the metallic walls are beginning to give her a headache. The walls are even exuding tiny moles of water; its dampness, even more, caused the room to get muggier.

She breathed out, and it made a cloud in the air before disappearing.

'Alright, time to fix this mess up.' She spoke to herself. But she found herself staring nowhere in particular rather. 'I am messed up.'

And so, after a minute of being dazed, she grappled a set of keys she found under a beat-up pile of boxes. She hid it under her legs before heading for the door.

Felicity soughs upon seeing Ella.

"Alas, I surmised you fainted! Let's get you out of here, all right." She annunciates with anything but a hint of contriteness for what she said earlier.

Seeing as the plastic bottles had been disposed of by Felicity, Ella paid no attention elsewhere and let Felicity push her wheeled vehicle. Felicity, on the other hand, hurried Ella toward the heating metal plate. She returned to turn the power off.

She fumbles as she tries to reach Ella's location. Upon returning to her side, the household's majordomo taps the same code to the buttons, and they ascended.

And up ahead, the scorching sun warmly greeted them.

If not for the shelter offered by the trees, going through the woodlands under the heat might have made Felicity even more susceptible to heatstroke.

From time to time and again, she stops to take a breath. Another, and she drank water from her packet.

Felicity then, halt exhausted upon reaching the doorsteps. She instinctively straightened before thrusting her forward with steady pressure. Once the doorkeepers identified them, she stiffly pushed Ella's vehicle across the hallway. And so, after what seemed like a very long time, Felicity reached the expansive living room of Chance's mansion.

Felicity directed Ella farther to the right to the heels of the magnificent staircase. But even before Felicity calls for help, Ella made sure the keys were safe with her.

And, with other helpers' assistance—mainly Malykith's, they had moved her into her room upstairs.

Their untimely arrival, though, caught Melissa and Anthony by surprise. They were busy arguing about the stockholders' inopportune time of visit.

The two stood frazzled for a moment before they put on their mascaras and welcomed their daughter.

"You should not have gone there during this time. Being as your immune system has a low response to this day, it is dangerous to be anywhere but our house, honey." Melissa points out to Ella.

Anthony takes a deep audible breath. "Now then, take a rest while we cook your meal," he says. "And do not try to check on your studies; I have settled it beforehand."

As she was being lain up on her bed, Malykith's hand came in contact with her back pocket, the place where she hid the keys. Although, Malykith instantly became conscious when she connected to Ella's piercing blue orbs—hence, she diverted her attention and so her hands somewhere else.

"To get even, all you need to do is rest. Also, for the furtherance of your health." Melissa said.

After seeing Ella settled on her bed, all of them went out to do their businesses.

××××

Be true, XOXO

*lungga - Filipino word for one's hiding place