Prologue
My dream of your face that I softly touch melts in the morning -Rikki
Forty years ago, and it’s still fresh in her mind.
Jillia sat there in an old wooden chair, worn from overuse. She rocked back and forth; it’s how she spent the majority of her time these days. Her hair was a matted black, dotted with strands of grey. The dress she wore was tattered and dirty; a fading piece of cloth that was once red. Her shoes, an obscurely faded black, were just as tattered and dirty.
And her eyes, well, there was a certain hint of sadness behind them. They were once brown, but one could sense just by looking at the dull grey presence of her eyes, no longer possessing the sharpness they once had, that she has been kept prisoner by another. That she is tormented and in anguish each and every day. She was waiting for someone.
It would be easy to pass the woman off as just another old hag gone crazy as she'd aged. Maybe they’d be right, maybe she had gone crazy. And she might be an old hag, but she was once something grander. Something magnificent. She once mattered. Jillia certainly isn’t this pitiful creature sitting here in a pool of her own sorrow. No, Jillia is dead.
Forty years ago was the beginning of the end for her. They’re calling it the Fall of Highland these days. Back then, she was the Queen, King Jowy’s wife. The night before the Allied Army invaded L’Renouille, Jowy had arranged Jillia and Pilika’s escape. He had set up an estate for herself and Pilika to live on in Harmonia-the country she lives in now.
In those early days in the lovely Blight Manor, she had been naďve. Frivolously spending her money, thinking that one day Highland will be revived. She never stopped to realize that the Queen of a deceased nation has no real power or authority. Her only saving grace was the rather large sum of money Jowy had left to support herself and Pilika-and her treasury was rapidly disappearing. She gave money to the poor and bought many unnecessary items, such as jewelry, or expensive art to adorn the walls of the Blight Estate. As queen, she never did have to worry about expenses.
Unfortunately for her, Harmonia had a very strict Estate Tax policy. Jowy had set it up so the taxes were paid annually by a young boy born from a Harmonian mother whose mate was of pure Highland blood. The boy went by the name of Virgil, and at the end of every year he would come to the Blight Manor and collect the proper sum of money, then deliver it to the local Harmonian tax collector. She assumed Jowy had met him sometime during his tenure as King. She smiled sadly. Jowy was always keeping secrets from her, but she realized more than he knew.
Virgil was a wonderful boy, a lighthearted fellow with a kind, gentle spirit. You don't find many like him in the world of finances. He had retained the requisite blond hair-blue eyed appearance that makes you superior in the eyes of the Harmonian Theocracy from his mother.
About twenty five years ago, Virgil, at that point well into his thirties, made his annual round to the Blight Estate, only to find that the treasury was empty. She, of course, simply told Virgil to tell the tax collector that she had run out of money, and couldn’t pay him. Virgil put up a good fight, but Jillia was both arrogant and stupid, and so he went anyways.
Not long after that, the tax collector, Simon was his name, came to the front steps of the Blight Manor, accompanied by twenty Harmonian soldiers and Virgil, whose hands were tied behind his back. Simon was a small, well built man, and a cold, unfeeling one as well. He wore thin black pants made of silk, obviously from some foreign land, possibly the Island Nations. The jacket he wore, also black, was thin as well and made of cotton, and it reached down to his knees. Simon, obviously a Harmonian born and bred, was the proud possessor of blond hair and blue eyes. His eyes had the same sharpness as Jillia’s no longer had, and his hair was combed neatly to the side.
He looked a lot like Virgil, actually.
At a flick of the wrist, the Harmonian soldiers quickly burned down the Manor. Jillia was thrown into the local jail, and Pilika, well, she never did find out what happened to her. Pilika probably died in that burning manor, trapped and unable to escape. Virgil had broken free from the Harmonian soldier who held him down as they dragged away Jillia. He was running towards Simon when two more soldiers quickly grabbed him as a third stepped up and stabbed him in the lower left side of his back without hesitation. They released their grasp, and he fell to the ground in a bloody heap. No one dared help Virgil; the law had taken care of that poor man, who had dedicated his life to the lives of a name that no longer meant anything.
Maybe five years later, when she was released from jail, Jillia went quickly to where she once lived. She found another Manor there, another family. Tired and beaten, she traveled down the street, and found an old wooden chair sitting in the mis-kept lawn of a petite little house that had obviously been abandoned years ago. The house’s paint had faded, and the wood was splintering; it could collapse any minute. She sat down in that chair, and rocked back and forth, her eyes always looking for something, waiting for someone.
That was twenty years ago. And as she sits in her chair, rocking back and forth, she can’t help but think about Jowy. She finally spoke. What came out was not the elegant speech of a Queen, but the raspy and barely coherent voice of an old woman beaten down by life.
“Jowy…”
She began to cry.
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