Neomythology - Beauty

The queen stretched her legs under the white linen sheet. Her bones were tight again, and everything was hurting.

She no longer felt the cramping in her calves, the constant ache that was as much a part of her as the beating of her heart. It was the spasms in the tibialis anterior - the muscle she had never heard of until it caused her so much pain she needed to know the name of her tormentor - that woke her in the night and made her cry out.

One of her servants brought her a glass of water. She had only two servants, and they loved her with the heart of curators caring for a priceless relic that no longer had a place in the outside world. Even so, they were faithful, and that was enough. It had to be enough. There was nothing else left.

Once, she’d had over a hundred servants, and they would fill pools with fresh spring water warmed in the sun, with milk and with honey and with almond oil pressed only for her. Their adoration was natural, they loved her because she was their queen, their beacon who stayed bright when the world became dark, and every act of reverence they performed ignited the flame that made their own hearts beat stronger.

But just as the stars in the night sky shift, so do the times, and empires crumble and queens move on. She went north, craving the chill of winter to numb the pains of starvation, where she learned to hunt rabbits for their fat meat and soft fur.

During the dark ages, the time of the crusades, she bathed in blood instead of honey, and it was salty and warm on her sweet cool skin. She smiled to herself as she remembered Alexei, and the look on his face the first time that he had truly seen her.

The young soldier had been strong, brave, and handsome, but all of these things, even when combined with his impressive family name, would not have been enough to earn him a place in the queen's personal guard. She was more interested in the stories that he had killed seventeen Saracen with the bloody lust of Venus under the light of a crescent moon that the enemy had mistaken for a sign of favor from their own god. This is what inspired her to extend the invitation.

“Why do you look at me that way?” she asked as he stood in silence, staring while she rinsed herself off. The water in her bath was infused with the scent of copper as she soaked until her body was white again.

He didn't answer, but returned her question with one of his own.

“Where do you get the blood?”

“From the heretics.” She laughed and rose to her feet, holding his gaze so none of his manners could force him to look away. “The same place you did when it covered your own body.”

She walked toward him, and the lightly tinted droplets sliding down the sides of her hips made more sound hitting the floor than her footprints. They both held their breath as she reached out to touch the side of his face, his neck, his throat, and when she tore open the front of his shirt they inhaled together as one.

Twenty lifetimes ago, she thought. The pillows and carpets she had touched that night were long since crumbled to dust, and although she had lost her lover as well, she remembered him on her fingertips and searched for his eyes in the faces of strangers.

Sometimes she would find him, and other times she wouldn't, but she could never forget, not even when she wanted to. At times, it was the only thread keeping her attached to the long tapestry she knew as her life.

But now, the queen wanted to rest. Just for a moment, she thought, just for an instant of silence. She knew she couldn't sleep through the whole night. Not when her lovers, her brothers, her sisters and her children - wherever in the world they may have ended up - still searched for the beauty of her ethereal glow.

But just for a moment, that wouldn't hurt.

The queen closed her eyes. The world went dark, and a very young girl started screaming.

The sound in the air mixed with the first breath she took, and it contained all the agony one could expect from a queen being torn out of her dreams into a room flooded with artificial lighting too blue to ever be called white.

They named her Stella, and she was born by the sea.