Curate, connect, and discover
There are certain times of the day where the numbers align in perfect harmony and a familiar glow of magic illuminates the world for that singular minute.
It’s 7:21am and you’re running through the sweet spring fields, far away from home with the hand of your twin sister— your half soul held strong and confident in yours. Both of you dream of a life away from the responsibilities neither of you understand. You leave scarecrows in place of yourself in the classroom of your chocolate bunny teacher.
It’s 3:03pm and this is the first time you smell what you have only have heard stories of. The stink of bloodlust, of a tidal wave war, of screams and the clattering of iron, of a mother’s tears and the crackling fires of revenge. You and your people survive. An assassination attempt was made on your father. You feel rusted gears start cranking, slow and threatening, deep underneath the earth as the wails of the fallen fill your ears.
It’s 8:45am and forbidden confessions echo against the walls of the holy. Words you did not know were capable of escaping your father’s mouth, old and dusty secrets pouring out and you realise you do not know him. Your sister’s hand grip yours and your crowns spilt into two, simple metal clattering against god-forsaken grounds as everything you have known now lies at your feet. You narrowly escape the church. You witness the brutal murder of a friend. “The Bulb cares for no one.” You run.
It’s 10:05pm and you embrace your mother for the first time in weeks. You see the way she looks at your father. You see the way she scrambles to find some resemblance in him of an older lost one and fail to do so. Her soft and love swelled eyes that grace you and your sister does not land on your father and you wonder if she deserves the wordless losses she has dealt with. She demands that you and your friend go to rest but you, your father’s child, see too much, hear too much and you run away from the castle to explore as you did before all this.
It’s 12:01am and you draw your last breath. You feel yourself slip into the mist within the warm arms of your friend, your brother. “Tell Ruby that I love her, and tell her that she did the right thing.” You feel yourself loose the tight grip of your sister’s hand, your mother’s, your father’s.
Your dream of fighting for the world has been fulfilled. No longer princess, instead a warrior in war. And you remember the stories of the soldiers— you feel the warmth of your father’s arms around you, of your mother and sister’s tears soaking the earth above you and you sleep, knowing that you have protected what is most important to you and that they still have the breath to even mourn.
It’s 6:33am and you smile a little smile and sleep— a sister, a daughter, a princess and a warrior.