Chapter Text
There was once a boy who knew nothing but decay. Born in the smoldering twilight of an empire, he noted the season's change by disease and marked the years in wars. He didn't know his mother and his father was but a phantom haunting his earliest memories. And he too would have surely been forgotten had it not been for the ring carefully kept round the child's neck.
A small weed of a thing, the boy grew into a feral creature. He stole when he could, and starved when he couldn't. With his black eyes and waxy face, he scared many in the villages he inhabited. Moving like a wraith along the narrow pathways and alleys, he had several priests called to exorcise him over the years. But when they'd bring their holy fury, they'd only find an emaciated boy beyond their crucifix.
With nothing but the dirty clothes on his back, he made his way through the continent. Evading thieves and knights alike, he slept in trees because they were well off the ground and easily defensible with a few heavy stones. His dead-accurate aim forged over several years, no man had a hope against his artillery barrage, nor the skill to scramble after the little rat that slunk about the high branches. And he was proud of that fact, fore loneliness suited him.
So went the majority of his adolescence, until one night when he found himself in an orchard. It was there as he laid upon the tallest bough of an apple tree, under the thick tapastry of stars, devouring yet another of the fruit within arm's reach.......that a line of fire sliced the sky.
Startled, the apple slipped from his fingers. He grappled with it. Stumbling, clumsy, fingers slipped against the smooth skin before both apple and boy tumbled to the freshly tilled ground below.
His yelp crashed against the curtain of deepest night. It echoed about him, bouncing off thick trunks and shaking high branches. His heart pounded within his chest. Damn his clumsiness, his fear, his screams. Damn his hubris! His damned desperation. His hunger!
His stomach growled.
Damn!
He was caught! Surely someone heard. Someone angry. Someone waking up at the witching hour mad as a hare and mean as a boar. Ready to kill the little rodent nesting in his orchard. Curling himself against the spread of roots, the boy held his breath.
But then seconds passed....minutes....and nothing but the nocturnal symphony of crickets abounded. There were no angry shouts, curses fed by raspy whispers, nor the foreboding footfalls of an angry lord awoken by thievery.
Swallowing, the boy's grubby hands searched the earth beneath him. Shaking fingers found the contraband and, without pause, greedily snatched it from its resting place. It tasted of soil and worms, but he licked his lips nontheless.
The residual stickiness wiped away, and his heartbeat settling into its regular plodding tread, his memory lit upon the comet that had cleaved the night. Now frightfully awake, frightfully curious, and frightfully foolish, he stood upon thin beedle-legs, and walked into the woods.
Stumbling through ivy and over stone, his search took him deep into the forest. He held his breath at every broken twig and each wolf howl sent his small hairs quivering. Naught but a small prey animal he shrunk from towering elms and reaching shadows. And such was the total of his journey, that he didn't notice dawn breaking until he stood above the newly-hewn valley.
Mouth agape, he beheld where the earth had shattered. Once gently rolling woods had been torn asunder in the comet's fiery path. Trees bisected, splintered, some even incinerated the closer he wandered. Earthworks had errupted, suffocating green slopes and silvery moonlit meadows. All was charcoal and ash. He would have described it as desolate if he had known such a word, but bleak fit the scene well enough. The boy dropped on all fours and scaled the crater. He kept low, peaking over the top to see down into the trench.
At first all he saw was a bundle of rags blowing in the soft breeze, that was until a slender leg adjusted itself to curl back into shadow. Squinting, he leaned further. No, that was certainly a leg. A woman's leg to be precise. What was a woman doing falling from the sky?
Under his curious gaze, the first rays of sunlight touched the pit, and the woman stood to greet them. Movements, too smooth to be human, unspooled her lithe form from her dusky hovel. Stretching high, she was a flower in the new day. So dignified in posture and sure of foot, she might as well have been draped in a lavish gown rather than dirty rags. The boy sniffed at this display, throwing his legs over the side, he sat there kicking the air.
"Lady, what do they call you?"
The woman started at this sudden question. She turned to look up at the unexpected guest perched atop the crater. The boy's heart skipped when he looked upon her face. Bright green eyes glinted against her olive skin as her lips curled into a dangerous smile.
"And who is this imp who has the audacity to address a queen?"
"Queen?!" he guffawed, "Queen of rags more like!"
The woman's eyes flashed at his jest, her smile waning, "I say again, what is your name?"
"I haven't got one, miss."
"Impossible, you must go by something."
"Boy mostly, Welp other times. I told you, I don't have one."
"Well then...Boy, if that is indeed how you go by. Come down here, I wish to see you better."
He fidgeted. He didn't like her expression. It simmered like a cauldron upon a fire...bubbling beneath a half-cocked lid, "I much like sitting up here, miss-"
"YOUR HIGHNESS," she was quick to interrupt, her mouth dropping into a snarl, "If you please."
"MISS!" the boy jumped to standing, "I know what you are Miss, you're a demon! And I'm not gonna talk to you any longer! Certainly not, no way!"
He made a brisk turn away from the hole only to find the lithe woman staring down at him. The boy gasped, stuttering back, his toes caught on the edge of the great chasm. His arms windmilled as his sight swung from ride-side up, to sideways, then further. His stomach slid against his spine. No...no, no, no, he was fall-
With a beleaguered sigh, the woman grabbed the front of his dirty shirt and pulled him away from certain death. He landed on his knees at her feet, his heart beating in his ears.
"There now," she cooed, "Was it really all that hard?"
The boy tensed and scuttled away. Crawling backwards, he never dropped eye contact," I want to go home...your highness."
"Home?" the queen crept toward him, "But you don't have one, Boy."
"I-I never told you tha-"
"You didn't have to," she reached where he had stalled and knelt down. Her slender fingers brushed the mop of hair out of his eyes, " I know a wild animal when I see one."
Her face so close to his, he was again struck by her beauty. She was the perfect marriage between ethereal and earthly, his heart paused in his chest, "Who are you?"
"I am Cassiopeia, queen of Aethiopia. I'm sure you've seen me in the histories."
The boy shook his head, "I read no books, your highness. I don't know how."
"Pity, you seem intelligent enough." The queen stood and extended her hand down to the stupefied boy, "I can teach you to read."
He shrank from that delicate paw, "But only noblemen read. What use do I have for that?"
"Intelligent yet daft!" She laughed, turning her head up to the lavender dawn, "I offer you opportunity you silly creature!"
He continued to stare, a rabbit unsure of the wolf hovering over him.
The queen softened her voice, speaking in lilting tones, "I can keep you from starving little one. You can have all the finest clothes and the richest cuisine. You can possess knowledge older than time itself and even beat back the decay of age. Boy, I wish to make you my king."
"King.."
"Yes, just take my hand and it will be done."
The dream of satiated hunger, of warm clothes, of beds, linens, and mattresses...yes...perhaps even a mattress every night, floated behind the child's eyes. The woman's hand glowed in the new day, open and soft. His dirt-encrusted fingers reached toward her, hovering just an inch away from her grasp before he caught himself. Swallowing, he stared down those brilliant green eyes, "That sounds like the kind of deal a devil would make."
She chuckled to herself, "Well it's your decision to make. Am I a devil or aren't I?"
The boy chewed on his chapped lips. His mind whirled with the possibilities. In his short life he had been assured of very little and wished for even less. Loved by no one, his was an existence bound to be erased from history. But there he was, at the foot of a queen, pondering the possibility of monarchy....What was he doing? This wasn't a hard decision at all! He shook his head to clear his superstitious thoughts and reached for her. His roughed hand entwining with hers.
A flash of light nearly blinded him. His free hand flew before his face. Through slitted sight the petite figure of a girl appeared. Trying to blink away the sunbursts, all he could see was her eyes as they faded from emerald green to hazel, never once dropping their stare. He gulped, "Y-your majesty?"
The girl's laughter was light upon the morning air. She pulled his hand to her cheek, "Call me Amaya."