Brielyn

The river ran backwards on the day the Queen vanished. The ground of the earth itself went cold and lifeless when she was taken, and the stars did not glow; they simply sat in the sky, dim and dull and sad—waiting.

Down past the river, all the way down to the precipice of the sea, the sound of running could be heard. Footsteps pounded the grass, violent and relentless and all in unision. The cold air hung dankly all around these running men, an air that would have chilled the regular human to their core. But there was a warmth that radiated from above them in the body they held upright like the glowing licks of a fire, like a soft orange candlelight illuminating the dark, snuffing out the cold around them like a flame.

Brie—the bringer of warmth—had been taken, and all that was and breathed and existed suddenly changed and darkened, halting for her return.

For the trees—the trees did not rise before Queen Brielyn’s eyes; rather, they curled. They knit themselves into thick, twisting tendrils above her, melding into the inky night sky in blots of black and brown like an oil painting. An abyss of those pale yellow stars twinkled in the distance, illuminating the looming, curling oaks that seemed to reach for her with every upward jolt of her limp, motionless frame.

Everything was dark; everything was spinning.

Questions swam across the Queen’s mind at a rapid whirlwind of a pace. Who were these people? To what kingdom did they belong? How had they taken her, and what drug in their possession had been able to render her so helpless? Was she hurt? Was she bleeding? She didn’t feel hurt—she didn’t feel much of anything, really. She tried to open her mouth, but she could barely move her lips and couldn’t use her voice to speak. It felt stuck somewhere within her, her throat raw and burning as she tried to find it, like her larynx had been bruised and beaten by some invisible, inconceivable force.

This proved that she was utterly paralyzed, and if she’d been anyone else in the world other than Brielyn of Wiloh, she knew she would feel afraid. When was the last time, she wondered to herself, with a distant sort of wistfulness, that she’d been at risk of feeling afraid of something, of anything? Fear was a very human emotion, one she had experienced quite rarely in her young life. The thought struck her into contemplation, and it was the only thing she found herself able to cling to as her body was propelled further through the woods, swiftly and without a sound.

The morbid curiosity of the whole situation, above all else, was driving her up a wall, and Brie thought she might go mad with the silence. How many men were carrying her through the trees—five? Ten? She didn’t know. She couldn’t hear their footsteps or see their faces. She could barely feel their hands holding her, could hardly discern the tightness of the bindings around her ankles and wrists. Simple ropes were what constrained her—how embarrassing. Brie would have laughed if she could.

From an outsider looking in, as these men surely were—how very cliché it all was, really.

Unbeknownst to them, however, she was not one to go down easy. They would find that out soon enough.

No world halted for an ordinary woman, nor an ordinary Queen.

Then everything opened, all too suddenly. Brie felt her body being hoisted high into the open air, as if lifted by itself, as if she could fly, before she plummeted down, down, down. She couldn’t see anything but blackness; she could only feel the fall, and it sucked the air out of her lungs, nearly leaving her breathless.

Brie finally let her eyes fall shut, giving into that bleak, colorful unconsciousness.

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Edit: I had to make some quick changes to get this over 600 words for the challenge—I hope it still flows okay!

Thanks for reading! ♥️