Chapter 1: In which she awakens between- again.
She sits, alone, in the middle of a large, four post bed. The wood is dark and heavy on the eyes, and intricately carved. In the small bedroom, stark white and filled with opened but unpacked boxes, it seems an object out of time and place. The Little Queen, neither little nor a queen (not technically, not in THIS here and now) looks, what is that? Perhaps a bit pleased with herself, as a precocious child who has stolen a cookie from a fresh batch (without permission) does look. Only...substitute a cookie with all of the crowned jewels, and a bit pleased with very well self-satified...and the reality draws nearer.
This is the most exciting day of her post-children adulthood. Post marriage, post responsibility, post troubled relationships. In this New In-between space where so many Posts could be counted, the As-Yet-Manifest seems infinite. Troubling, though, that look on her face. Defiantly strong and bearing the countenance of one prepared and fired to a strength close to unbreakable, but also young and naive-- her face too youthful to be in between the list of Posts.
She rises with luxuriant slowness from her bed and stretches the sleep out of her body and singing to herself,
Happy Birthday to Me,
I've Escaped from the Deep,
I suppose they'll be coming....
until her voice trails off into a full silence, and her face no longer masquerades naive youth. That look, though, the cat who ate the canary...or a usurper queen newly escaped from the clutches of those who would silence her...and with ALL of the crowned jewels, the crown, and the old queen's guard...oh, yes. That look is well and rightly placed.
Always Revolutionary.
Always.
