Forgotten

Cersei couldn’t tell you what made her go into the castle. It was dilapidated, like most of the buildings before the Fall. Towers had crumbled into themselves; wood rot had set into the door and drawbridge. Fauna had slowly grown its way into every crack and crevice, widening them as it did so. The glass had been shattered; the statues broken: and valuables stripped away from the inside.

 

There was no reason for this place to have any appeal.

 

But Cersei was a wanderer. An adventurer, who had donned the armor of the knights of old, painstakingly kept and restored by the blacksmith’s in the new cities. She had left her city�"the one on whose doorstep she had been orphaned, the woman clutching her succumbing to the cold of winter, leaving only a squalling babe who slept by the fire of the inn and did chores about the place. She learned swordfighting from the guards; learned how to hunt and shoot from the hunters; could cook and clean and sew thanks to the innkeeper. The smith had given her the armor on her 17th birthday, after the many years she had spent pining after it�"and that had been that.

 

So while she had no reason to go into the castle… she also had no reason not to go into the old castle.

 

Curiosity demanded she enter, see where the rulers had lived before the miners awakened the horror sleeping below. There would be little left, she knew that�"but she had to see.

 

The air within was musty and dry. There weren’t nearly as many creatures inside as she would have thought�"only birds who made nests in the rafters and the occasional bug colony. No predators. No abominations.

 

Just sunlight streaming in from broken windows and plants who stretched across the floor.

 

Paintings hung on the walls�"or, rather, frames that had once contained paintings. Each one was made of brass; the wooden ones broken on the floor, or rotted away by time and insects. Chewed up rugs, frayed at the ends and covered in dirt and debris covered the marble floor, and furniture was in varying states of repair.

 

The whole place was strangely still, in a way the world outside wasn’t. Out there, things were always moving. Plants. Animals. Monsters. In here…

 

The deeper she got, the less life she saw.

 

Cersei wandered, looking in room after room, disturbing as little as possible. She felt like an outsider. An intruder. Like she very much didn’t belong here.

 

But she didn’t feel unwelcome. (Of course, nor did she feel accepted. Just a strange, tentative silence, as if neither of them could decide what she was.)

 

Then she found the bedroom.

 

It was… remarkably intact. Holey curtains fluttered in the breeze. A canopy bed, still remarkably intact, dominated the room. The dresser still retained its varnish, the mirror clouded with dust. Paintings were aged and cracked, but you could still tell what they were�"except for one, directly in the path of the sun. It was so faded and peeling you couldn’t see anything at all.

 

But the thing that drew Cersei’s attention�"the thing that commanded her to enter the room, something she had only done when it was the only alternative�"was the grand piano.

 

Glass and debris crunched under her boots as she walked, slowly, over to it. She laid her fingers on the keys, yellowed with age.

 

She pressed�"excepting no sound at all.

 

Instead, the piano sang.

 

Still in tune.

 

She found herself smiling.

 

She used her foot to push out the bench, and settled herself before it; back straight and shoulders back, fingers on the keys like she had known how to play all her life.

 

She knew no songs but the ones sung in taverns�"and none of them were played on the piano. Yet still, she found herself playing. The song was haunting. Familiar. Like a word on the tip of her tongue that wouldn’t make the journey to her brain.

 

She let her eyes fall shut.

 

There was a weight on her head, a gentle pressure on her forehead and all around. Someone’s fingers were clasped in her own. A skirt swished around her legs as she moved, in patterns long-familiar and long-forgotten. A hand was solid against her waist, and she could make out the softest whispers underneath the strands of the music.

 

The song ended, and Cersei’s eyes opened at the final note.

 

She’s surprised to feel liquid on her face; her vision blurring.

 

She doesn’t know why she’s crying. She doesn’t know why she has a fierce ache in her chest, a tightness to her gut.

 

The castle walls close in around her, and she feels like a decision has been made. The weight in the air, the stillness that haunts this place has changed. There is a new taste to the air�"a taste she doesn’t yet understand… but as she stands, she knows she wants to.

 

She touches her brow with two fingers, right where the thickest part of the weight had been. She drew a circle with her fingers�"and sees a jewel of the deepest purple.

 

She turns to face the room again, her back to the window.

 

Cersei couldn’t tell you why she entered the castle, but only because she didn’t know.

 

There were answers, somewhere. She just had to find them.

Author's Note

A short piece I did as a warm-up. I may possibly expand it into something more one day, but for now, I thought I'd share.