The girl is hungry. So hungry. Everyone had fun last night, celebrating the royal family. She wanted to cry. Why was she being treated like this? Tear of anger rolled down her small, hollow cheeks. Her little body curling in on itself, always wanting to disappear. The little girl, no more than seven looks down on her hand, at the little stringy things the teacher told her are veins. They look red on the outside, but the blood is blue. It was science.
She loved Mr. Adlen. He was kind in a way that didn't need gentleness. No babying, only truth. He was her favorite teacher, only teacher. The palace tried looking for someone to tutor her, struggling since no one wanted such a cursed child. But he was fine with it. He smiled weird, and the guards didn't like him, but he was clever and patient. Sometimes it seemed like he was more than that. Sometimes he would get anger, face dark, and force her to do something. He would smile as he told her she would go without food for a day if she didn't answer this question correctly. But she had a well of kindness for a reason. To forgive those basic mistakes.
"WhErE's tHaT dUmB cHiLd?" The girl startles as her parents enter her room, clearly intoxicated.
"Let her be. Nobody wishes to see her at this hour anyway. She has disgraced this family, eating from a sacred pie without hesitation. How have we raised such a greedy, shameless child?" They got silent for a moment than Dad quietly suggests.
"What if we get rid of her? Get her far away? Make her disappear?" He asks. Mother thinks about it for a second but suddenly snaps out of it.
"We cannot do that. You're drunk Richard. Let's get to bed." The girl smiles, satisfied. See? Her mother loves her. Otherwise, she wouldn't have stopped father from getting rid of her.
Quietly, a bitter voice calls out, "Seline, stay here. The queen ordered you without food or water for a few days. Such a gentle punishment for your actions." Then they leave and lock the door on their way out. This was a special room. Her room. It was separated from the royal wing, in a tiny corner. In there sat a little window with a sheer blue curtain. She stays behind it and lets the wind roar in her ear. The little girl falls into silence once more. She stares at her wrist. The veins there. Red like most qestins but with something hidden underneath. A grayish clear liquid runs through her veins. It was the reason peopled treated her like this, why she was not loved, why she has this weird well of kindness always ready. Nobody told her directly, but she hears them whispering it. They didn't like the white liquid? Did they only like the blue? If she got rid of it, would they be happy? Would they love her?
So excited to explore her new idea, Seline runs out of her little makeshift cage of curtains. She searches her entire tiny room for something to pierce her skin enough to get the gray liquid out. She searches and searches, ignoring the numb hungry and thirst gnawing on her body. Nothing. She finds nothing. Seline goes back to the window, sits there defeated, but not even the windowsill had a broken shard to work with.
The girl doesn't want to give up, she doesn't. She wants her mother to love her, her father to adore her, the princess to smile at her. She wanted to eat the pie and feel the magic the people told her she couldn't. Finding nothing else, the little girl stars biting her own wrist, scratching her nails, digging into the stringy red things. She starts bleeding blue blood. Blue, it was blue, didn't they like that. Blue blood drops off her hand, her right one, and onto the floor. Normally, it would clean itself up, but since she had no magic of her own, it didn't work. Her blood lay there, discarded, a witness to her wild expression as she frantically dug into her own skin, ripping her own veins, just to get that gray out, out, out of her body, and give her life back.
She doesn't care about the pain, doesn't even feel it. Her body is a map of scars, anyway. This too won't matter. The night passes by like life leaking into death. The girl stays there, digging and digging in her own skin, desperate to find some kind of treasure. When morning comes, the winds blow carelessly over her body, unworried about her weak body's fragile breathing.
Nobody comes to check. Nobody cares to. And life goes on.