March 14th 2020 Writing Club – Wycombe Arts Centre 

Six words: Princesses, engaged, collections, first-born, apple, copper 

Title: First Born 

Two moons cast strange shadows around her as she made her way to the final gathering. 

Two months passed since her election as firstborn princess to the throne.   

Two minds lead to the decision not to stand.  Faced with her greatest fears. Doubt.  Self-loathing.  Persecution.

The crowds bustled and jostled as she divined her path towards the sacrificial pyres.  Murmurings. Mutterings.  Menaces spat into the night sky like sparks from the dying embers.  Doubt. Self-doubt.  Loneliness pierced her mind as she made her way closer, closer to the sacrificial pyre.  Her hair and head cloaked in a velvet caped hood.  Collections of anti imperialists threw barbed jeers as she passed. 

“ Fake! Fake “. “Traitor! Traitor! “each one searing her bodily frame like errant arrows. 

Her hand engaged the hilt of the royal dagger strapped to her waist; its scabbard covered with the copper coloured crest of her royal lineage.  The apple.  The original apple.  The apple of Eden.  She unlatched the safety catch of the mouth of the dagger’s pouch, the click reverberating like a riochet in the still, night air.  The crowds grew angrier. 

“ Whore. Low-life. Peasant. False princess.” 

The smoke, the fire, the insults, the suffocating faces and flames.  She knew what she had to do if all else failed. The dagger would dig dark and deep. 

She suddenly stopped, stood still as a statue half glowing from the reddening embers of the dying fire.  She slipped the hood of her cape softly falling between her smooth, braided hair.  Slowly, raising her arms to the night sky, cupping the two golden moons, slowly, caressing gently one of the luminescent orbs and bringing it down to the earth and ground where the disbelievers stood.  

Whispers informed them.  ‘ The apple of Eden – the apple of Eden. Princess.  Princess ‘ rose like chattering waves on the beach.  Crowds crouched and knelt at the feet of a chosen one.  The Princess. 

(c) O Derry Boy March 2020