Chapter Text
Alfred had always hated insomnia. As he’d grown older and hardier, he could combat it with a late-night workout. But as a sickly child, when his constitution had been at its weakest, sleepless nights had meant being trapped in the dark, alone in bed with his thoughts. Perhaps the young prince could be described as naive, but he wasn’t ignorant. Not of how unstable his condition was, nor of the very real possibility that at any moment, his health could worsen beyond repair. No one dared speak of it in his presence, but he was just as aware as anyone else that he could very well die.
If he were to die then, so young - before he’d ever had the chance to go out and form the friendships with his people that he’d dreamed of - would he even be remembered? He’d hardly known anyone back then, hardly been given the opportunity to be a part of the lives of any people apart from those in his immediate family. The worry had plagued Alfred that if he were so unlucky to succumb to his illness as but a child, that the few years he’d spent with those he loved would, in time, become nothing more than a paragraph in the almanacs of their lives. A memory growing further and further distant, until it was nigh unreachable.
It was no mystery to the present-day Alfred that this was why, in years past, he often found himself holding one-sided conversations with his two departed children. He couldn’t bear the thought of them becoming forgotten by their own family, just as his childhood self had secretly feared that he someday would.
For however brief his and Alear’s time with the two had been, it had still been enough for the couple to grow to love each of them deeply, their bonds too strong to be obstructed by the physical barrier of their mother’s womb. Even during Alear’s second pregnancy - despite the warnings against growing too attached to the baby due to the possibility of a repeat of the first’s fate - that optimism and borderline naiveté Alfred was known for had been unbreakable. He didn’t regret letting himself grow so attached, even with the height of his hopes only hardening the impact of the fall when they’d all come crashing down. It only strengthened his drive to ensure that both children would live on in memory, still able to feel from the heavens the warmth of their father’s love.
His duties both as king of Firene and husband to the Divine Dragon Monarch of Lythos left him with little time for paying respects, so he’d squeezed it into his training regimen by adding the cemetery of the newly rebuilt castle to his jogging route whenever he was in Lythos. In the early hours of the morning, before the sun had risen, the final lap around the courtyard of the rebuilt castle would conclude with a visit to the adjacent graves of little Lumera and Florian. Taking a seat on the grass between the two, Alfred would update the two children on the goings-on of their parents’ lives, peppered with reminders that they were both still loved and sorely missed.
On some occasions, he would bring his flute along and play a soothing lullaby to ensure that both little ones were resting peacefully. At the end of each melody, all at once the grieving father was confronted with the chilling, isolating silence of the dawn, too late for the nighttime chirps of crickets yet too early for the morning twitters of birds.
Today’s visit, however, was not one Alfred would be making alone. The afternoon sun beaming down on the royal family, he and Alear led their six-year-old son, Prince Théodore, through the gardens of Lythos Castle. The blue-haired boy followed steadily behind his mother and father as they headed towards the castle’s graveyard. Today, they had told him, would have been his grandmother’s birthday. Visiting and leaving flowers at her grave was the closest thing they could do to celebrating it with her, as she had died almost twenty years ago.
The little prince used one hand to brush away one of the two red streaks that framed his face, using the other to grip the handle of a wicker basket filled with windflowers. He’d been excited to be entrusted with the task of carrying the basket, a small chance to exercise his growing independence. Alfred and Alear beamed at their son while he carried out his simple job with zeal, tightly clutching the handle as though he were carrying fine china. It filled the king and queen with great pride to see how their boy had blossomed into an eager, thoughtful child from the sensitive toddler who would cry each night when his parents had to leave his room after tucking him into bed. Nowadays, Théo was the curious prince who would run up to amused castle staff and list off griffon factoids.
Soon, the royal family arrived at their destination: an ornately decorated obelisk, with two much smaller, simpler graves beside it.
“You see this grave, Théo? This is where your grandmother is buried,” Alear told her young son. “You did such a great job carrying that basket so nicely. Would you like to be the first to leave flowers and wish her a happy birthday?”
Théo nodded, setting the basket down and picking up a small handful of windflowers. He walked over to his grandmother’s gravestone, setting the blossoms down in front of it. He studied the name engraved into the obelisk: Queen Lumera, it read. It was a name the young prince was already familiar with: one his parents had told him of many times before. After he’d finished his task and wished his grandmother a happy birthday in heaven, he watched as his parents did the same, with Alear saying more to her, too quietly for Théo to hear.
He looked back at the basket, which was not yet empty. Noticing that the two smaller graves beside the late queen’s did not yet have flowers on them, he gently picked up a few more, placing them in front of the grave directly adjacent to his grandmother’s.
Tracing his small fingers along the letters engraved into the stone, Théo sounded out the name written on it. Pr-in-cess Lu-me-ra. Princess Lumera.
“Why are there two Lumeras?” Théo wondered aloud. Now that Théo had learned to read, it was inevitable that this question would come up eventually. His innate curiosity had increased exponentially in the past year, reading everything he could get his little hands on and asking all the adults around him countless questions about anything remotely unfamiliar. The king and queen had discussed in private how they would someday explain to the boy what had happened to his two older siblings. It seemed the time had now come to put it into action.
Alfred knelt down in front of the smaller of the two graves marked as Lumera and turned to face his son. “This Lumera was your big sister.”
The prince furrowed his brow in confusion. “I don’t have a sister,” he reminded his father matter-of-factly.
“You never got to meet her,” Alfred explained. “She died before you were born.” He placed a few flowers in front of the grave of the girl in question. “Actually,” he began to clarify. “She died even before she was born.”
“What? How did she die before she was even born?!” Théo asked him, his voice raising in utter bafflement.
Alear took a flower from the basket, delicately placing it in her son’s hair. “Sometimes babies die while they’re still in their mother’s belly,” she clarified. “It isn’t always clear why it happens.”
“Oh,” the boy replied. He moved over to the second of the smaller graves, pointing towards it. “Who’s this one? Did they die too?”
“Théo, this is a cemetery,” Alear gently reminded him. “Everyone who’s buried here has died.”
The little prince crinkled his nose. “I know that already!” he huffed, refusing to acknowledge his slip-up.
Alfred gave a small, amused chuckle in response to Théo’s stubbornness. “This was your older brother,” he answered. “His name was Florian. He also died when he was a baby. But he, at least, got to be born.“
Théo reached back into the basket again, gathering a couple more flowers for his brother. “Why did they both die when they were babies?”
Questions beginning with “why” had become quite common to come from the inquisitive young boy. Someday far in the future, it would surely make him a great ruler.
“No one really knows,” Alear replied. “There’s a lot of things that can happen to a baby before they’re ready to be born.”
Taking a few steps back, Théo observed his parents as they took the final windflowers from the basket and delicately left them for Lumera and Florian. He studied their faces, catching a glimpse of the wistfulness and nostalgic longing.
“…Were you sad?”
It was an innocent query, asked purely out of the curiosity and empathy of a child, with little understanding of the weight the words carried. Even so, Alear’s face fell after hearing it.
Alfred took his wife’s hand in his. “We were. We were very, very sad.” He looked into her eyes with a comforting smile, helping to bring her back to the present. “But we never gave up hope that someday we’d have a strong, healthy child.”
Letting go once Alear returned his gaze with a smile of her own, he knelt down to be at eye level with Théo. “And then, the next time we had a baby… we had you!”
He wrapped his arms around his son, giving him a hug as strong and firm as his will. The boy returned the embrace, his eyes shut tight as he nestled his little head against his father’s shoulder.
After a minute or so, Théo let go, before looking up at both his parents. “Are you happy you had me?”
“Happier than you could ever imagine, Théo,” Alear answered warmly. She scooped him up, supporting him with one arm and gently ruffling his hair with her free hand. “You bring so much light into our lives.”
She placed a few sweet kisses atop the little boy’s head. Someday he’d grow too big to be picked up like this, so she savored these moments of getting to hold her little miracle in her arms.
Once Théo had been put back down, he collected the empty basket and said goodbye to his deceased family members. As he followed his parents out of the cemetery and back into the gardens, he stopped for a moment, taking one final glance back at the graves they’d visited.
“What’s wrong, Théo?” Alear asked him.
The prince lowered his gaze into the empty basket in his hands. “I wish I got to have a brother or a sister.”
His parents looked at one another and grinned. Théo heard his father whisper something to his mother, though it was far too quiet for the boy to make out what had been said. His mother responded to it with an enthusiastic nod.
“Well, Théo, there’s actually something we’ve been meaning to tell you,” Alear said, taking her son’s small hand in hers. “But it’s a secret, okay? You can’t tell anyone yet.”
“I won’t tell anyone!” Théo exclaimed, a spring in his step as the family strolled through the gardens together.
Alear knelt down to the boy’s level, looking into his large, green eyes as they beamed with excitement. Alfred knelt as well, resting his arm on a bent knee as he took in the scent of the spring flowers that were blooming all around them.
Théo watched as his mother extended a pinky towards him.
“Pinky promise?”
The little prince eagerly wrapped his own pinky around his mother’s.
“Pinky promise!”
