Young Writers Society

((This is a sketch of a chapter that takes place somewhere in the beginning-middle of the story. I"m trying to sketch out possible ways memory blocks that can be broken down besides "Power of Love/Power of Friendship." 

 What has happened so far in the story: Princess Serena and Prince Deravin were prenatally betrothed and were extremely close until the prince disappeared. Serena and her guard/friend, Besden, have run away from their palace to find him and end up getting lost in a mysterious and hostile land. Among the forces capturing them is Deravin, but he has completely forgotten who he is. He doesn't even recognize his own name anymore. Side note, Besden is in love with a member of the Riders, a guard patrol on flying mounts.))

“He didn’t even recognize me,” she whispered, staring down at her blue fingers. To come all this way, and to find him at last, and then…

Why didn’t he remember? How could he have forgotten everyone so easily? How could he have forgotten her?

Moving closer, Besden took her hands into his to warm them. “Maybe he’s not really—“

“No.” She spoke stronger than she meant, but she meant what she said. “It’s him. I know it is. I see him.” She stared at his hands for a while, then with a start, noted his white fingers and black nails. “My hands will be alright. They won’t be warm if yours are just as cold.”

After a moment, Besden nodded and squeezed his hands under his armpits, shivering.

Whoever he’s become, he’s still good. I have a blanket, she reminded herself. It was thin, but as hard and dangerous as he had become, Derivan had at least offered her something. She stared blankly into the dark as she huddled under the cloth, pressing her hands into her neck. That didn’t do much to warm her stiff fingers. The chill lay in her so deep, her very bones ached as if made of stone. Cold air tore and scratched all the way down her throat with every breath. Her body shook too violently for her to think straight.

Then, with one particularly strong tremor, she heard a rustle from under her clothes. With trembling hands, Serena reached into her pocket—missing several times before finding the slit—and clumsily pulled out a small brown packet. Her lips parted slightly as she remembered what it was, turning it in her hands as gently as she would a bird feather. She had brought it for luck, though it clearly hadn’t done much for them thus far.

Besden watched her curiously. “What’s that?” he asked softly, battling his own shivers.

“Orange peels and clove,” she answered. Her voice was thin and papery. “When I would visit him in the autumn, we would sit in the trees and eat oranges all day and save the peels. Then, with our hands still sticky, we would steal cloves from the kitchen and wrap them together with the orange peels in torn burlap. We hid them in the study and the solar and in our rooms, and it would smell so nice.” Her chapped lips twitched into what could have been a smile. “It didn’t take long for them to know who did it. And then we couldn’t remember where we’d hidden them, so it took an eternity for everyone to find them all. We enjoyed the scent for months. Derivan and I didn’t know why everyone was so angry, because the clove spice was…was still…” All of the sudden her eyes welled up with tears, and she pressed the packet into her face, shaking with violent sobs.

Besden jumped at her sudden loud outburst and quickly scooted over to her side. “Princess—“

With the spices still pressed against her face, Serena fell crying onto his shoulder. If she had found Deravin dead in the snow, she would have been able to deal with her grief and move on. But to lose him so completely, in a way she didn’t even understand, on top of the hunger, cold, fatigue and fear, was just too much.

Quietly, his voice breathless from the chill, Besden began to sing the same song he had sung on the river. Though his voice wasn’t as strong and controlled as it had been, the words were the same. Serena found herself more drawn to their message than last time.

“Rider fair with your hair so dark,

Know, I am here. I am here.

In the sky, you are nothing but a mark

I am here.

I can’t tell if that’s really you,

But I am here. I am here.

Looking down, you are wondering, too,

Am I here?”

As Serena’s sobs mellowed down to just tired hiccups and sniffles, she thought of the first time he had played that song. She remembered how he craned his neck to look at every rider who flew overhead, hoping to find some hint that his love was close by. No matter how many times he looked, there was never any way to know for certain, but in that moment she had come to understand that it wasn’t about that. Not at all.

Besden stumbled before the next verse, breathless from trying to sing in the cold. His breath was stark white in the dark. His eyes were rimmed with wet, and his lips trembled, but he seemed determined to press on.

“Mountains Duar or the low Red Land

Still, I am here. I am here.

Wherever you are, I want you to understand

I am here.

Rider, dear, you will never be lost

For I am here. I am here.

Whatever battles you’ve had to come across

I’ll be here.”

Before he could start the next verse, the tent door was flung open. The wind and snow slapped her in the face so fast she couldn’t gasp. Squinting, Serena was able to make out three figures, deeply sunken into silhouettes by the torches they held behind themselves. Her eyes having gotten comfortable in the dark, she had to squint against the sudden flood of light.

“Separate yourselves.”

Serena shot up straight. Deravin. His voice was so cold, it struck her through like an iron nail, pinning her to the spot.

“Separate yourselves and we’ll feed you,” he commanded a second time.

After a moment, Besden slowly and painfully shifted himself away from Serena. She also pulled away, hurriedly wiping her face with the back of her hands. Without the solidity and warmth of Bresden by her side, and with Derivan staring down at her from the shadows, she felt very alone.

Once Besden was apparently a satisfactory distance away from Serena, the foremost figure—Deravin—handed one of the other two his torch and came forward towards the princess. Squinting up through the darkness, she began to just make out the glittering whites of his eyes.

“Ladies first,” he said simply. Then he crouched in front of her like a stone gargoyle and held out a bowl.

At first she couldn’t move. She stared into Deravin’s face, studying each line and crease, and the intent in his eyes. He was unblinking, his mouth set in a hard line. You are a threat, his eyes said. The frigidity of his glare was worse than the winter, and she felt the press of tears return to her eyes.

Again he pushed the bowl towards her. The intensity in his face grew harder and colder. Without taking her eyes off of his, she reached for the bowl with trembling fingers, but she couldn’t bring herself to take it. Behind his eyes, his spirit was too firm, too hard, to be an act. But surely he couldn’t have buried everything? Where was the boy that ate oranges and stole cloves? Where was the boy who scrawled simple love poems and hid them because he was too scared to send them to her?

When he noticed her tears, Deravin’s brows pressed together in a dark scowl. He slammed the bowl down hard against the ground with a loud clunk, sloshing the contents over the sides. “You can’t fool me, girl,” he spat.

Serena simply acted. Both her hands shot out to shove the packet of spice right into his face. She couldn’t say for certain why--out of heart, or instinct, or just pure desire to make him know, to bring him back to himself.

After that, everyone in the tent exploded into confusion and movement, everything muddled by the dark shadows and moving flames. Deravin fell back with a shout, knocking her hands away. The packet flew off into the empty darkness in the tent. The second figure who came in with Deravin moved forward to protect him, drawing a short sword, and the third was between Besden and the rest of the group with blinding speed. And everyone was shouting, though Serena couldn’t make out what. Her strength spent, she shrank down and held her hands over her head, eyes squeezed shut.

”Everyone be quiet!” Deravin shouted.

The noise and bustle immediately went still. The sting of the cold and the wind whistling outside was all Serena knew for a moment. Then she heard footsteps travelling back and forth across the tent.

Fump fump fump fump

A pause.

Fump fump fump. Fump.

…Fump.

He was close to her. She could feel his shadow and heard the creaking of leather as he crouched over her again.

“What is this?” He asked, his voice no louder than a whisper.

Slowly, Serena opened one eye, then both. Deravin was down on the balls of his feet, one arm draped over a knee, the other holding out the packet of spice he had retrieved from the darkness. His eyes drilled into hers, completely unreadable.

Her mind swirled with things she wanted to say, but her throat was dry with cold and nerves. Eventually, after a long, icy moment, she answered, “Orange peels.” She swallowed, suppressing a cough. “And stolen cloves.”

Something flickered.

Something small, but it was there. It was real.

Before she saw too much, his face disappeared back up into the darkness as he stood. “I don’t know what trick you were trying to pull on me, princess, but it had better not happen again. You took advantage of my kindness; never do that again.”

Serena curled up under the thin blanket, exhausted, but she could not take her eyes off of where his face would have been if she had light.

He gripped the spice packet so tight, Serena could hear the brittle peels crack. “I’m keeping this with me. I’ll find what magic you were trying to do, and then I’ll destroy it.”

Serena’s heart skipped a beat. Deravin was going to spend time examining the spices? What would happen with the flickering she had seen? Serena hoped his hands would be stained with the smell of clove and crushed orange peel for a good long while.

Deravin turned his back on her and waved at one of the figures, who hesitated before dropping a bowl like Serena’s in front of Besden. Then Deravin snatched his torch back and pushed out into the wintery night.

Just before the tent flaps closed, Serena saw the silhouette of the prince raise a hand to his cowl, smelling the packet again. Then she and Besden were plunged back into blue darkness with eyes that had only just adjusted to torchlight.

--

((Thanks for reading! This was a sketch, playing with the ideas of how to dig up buried memories. I was also trying to sketch out some development for Besden, who I've really been struggling with. I know the poem is bad; I cranked it out in ten minutes because I wanted something to work with :p I plan on shining it up someday, but for now, I'm just focusing on figuring out story and style.

Thanks again!))