Little tragedies often forebode great tragedies. This was the case when prince Aster discovered the pet mouse he kept in a leather box under his bed was taking a very long nap from which he could not be roused. At the time it had seemed as devastating a tragedy as there could be to the young boy. He was old enough to understand death, but still young enough that he could make himself believe this was just a long nap, because a nap could be woken up from. And after all, mom had taken very long naps sometimes and she had returned several times before she didn't. But the truth of his pet’s state tugged at his throat and made his voice hoarse.

He went to Rowan first. Because his eldest brother was wise and kind and always knew what to do. He wandered the palace halls with his hands clasped against his chest. Within them he hid his mouse from passing servants and guards, but he also prayed. He prayed to the Great Empire that his mouse might return to him and then he threw in a quick prayer to the Goddess of the wilds too, which felt very daring. The Goddess was savage and cruel and had done something very terrible to the kingdom. But Aster knew that animals mostly fell under her domain and maybe there was a chance she would help him.

Rowan was not in his room. He was not in the dining hall or the gardens or the sunbathing spot atop the east guard tower either. The mouse’s body was becoming stiff in between his fingers and it was harder and harder to convince himself it was only napping. The corners of his mouth wobbled downward as he searched for his brother.

He finally found Rowan exiting their Father’s chambers, which was an odd place to find him. He wore a strange expression, something stiff and vacant. There was a look in his eyes that he’d seen once before, in the eyes of a feast lamb just before its throat was cut. Their father had insisted all his sons watch the slaughter, but Aster had been so upset by the event that he had not set foot near any butcher ever since.

“What do you want, Aster?” It was the kind of greeting Rowan gave when he was in a bad mood. Aster’s heart sank just a little bit lower.

“My mouse…” He said.

“Your mouse? What? Oh, the one under your bed.” He spoke slowly, like his mind was only half present, the rest of it fixed on some other matter.

Aster opened his hands and lifted his unmoving pet to his big brother, “What are we going to do?” He whimpered miserably.

Rowan’s thick brows pushed wrinkles into the bridge of his nose, “Not now.” He said with a practiced calmness that exceeded his years. He was only fifteen then. “Not right now. I’ll help you bury it later.”

“Bury it?!” Aster was horrified. He could not accept that this tiny thing in his care was dead. Tears swelled in his eyes. The worst kind of tears, the kind that are hot and sudden, that come with shallow breaths and a broken heart. Little boys’ hearts are such fragile things. “Noooo,” He moaned, “Rowan, noooo! We can’t!”

“Stop it, Aster.” Rowan said. There was none of the usual warmth, there was nothing of the refuge Aster expected in his big brother.

“Please! Please don’t let it be gone!” Aster wailed.

“Stop it!” Rowan said, seizing his brother by the arm. He tugged him down the hall, away from their father’s chamber. As he did he said, in a low voice, “There’s nothing I can do. And there are more important things- worse things to worry about than a stupid mouse!”

This did not help Aster’s wailing. He turned back towards his father’s chamber, a windowless room in which the king worked and ate and slept. Aster’s had only been inside a few times and did not enjoy the grim austerity of the space, nor the presence of his father within it. But his father was the most powerful man in the world, this Aster was sure of. All the servants whispered of a great magic trick the king had once pulled that might ‘save them all.’ Aster did not know what this meant exactly, but if there was a chance his father could fix this… He caressed his mouse’s whiskers with his thumb.

“I’ll ask Father, maybe he-“

Rowan's grip clenched painfully around his arm. He whirled around on Aster, his eyes wide, fearful, and furious. "No! Stay away from him!"

Aster had wanted his gentle brother, the one who bandaged his skinned knees and who snuck him food from the kitchen when the cooks served lamb. The one who always knew what to say when his caterpillars never hatched into butterflies. This was someone else. This was someone afraid, someone who didn't know what to do, someone as helpless as he was.

"Go bury it in the garden." Rowan said.

Aster yanked his arm back. "I hate you!" He cried and ran away down the hall, clutching his mouse to his breast.

He did not stop running until he reached the crumbling look-out post atop the southeast portion of the palace's outer wall. He dislodged a loose stone from the wall and retrieved the rope ladder behind it. Rowan had hidden it there in the night a few weeks ago. He meant it to be a secret, of course, but Aster had watched him hide it from afar. The southeast borderlands that lay below had the scarcest patrols between the Kingdom and the Evergrowth.

He scaled the ladder down the wall, which proved difficult while craddling his mouse. An angry wind surged up from the forest and crashed against the stone hide of the human domain. It rocked the ladder and blew the tears right off Aster's cheeks as he swayed a hundred feet above the ground. But he made it safely down. He had not felt grass, truly wild grass, under his feet in some time. Even the half-tamed borderlands grew fierce and free compared to the rigid stone innards of the kingdom. This close to the wall, weeds still sprang up to tickle his knees and tiny white wildflowers threw their petals to the wind. There were no patrols in sight, so Aster took his chance. He ran as far as the edge of the Evergrowth. Against the setting sun the forest extended tree shadow fingers to swallow up the Kingdom. Something deep in Aster's guts urged him to continue, to give himself to the verdant dark that lay before him. In the call of the wild he heard a faint echo of home. But his real home lay behind him, and so he stopped at the edge.

There he buried his mouse. It was dead.

"I'm sorry." He moaned as he stuck wildflowers around the tiny grave. "I'm sooorry." He stayed there and cried until it was nearly night. He was crying for his mouse, his precious pet that had been taken away from him for reasons he could not know. But he cried for many things also. He cried because angry mobs at the palace gates were commonplace lately. Because the servants carried saddness and whispered darkly when they thought he wasn't listening. Because there were never any children to play with besides his brothers. Because mother was gone. Because his cold and fearsome father had only grown colder and more fearsome since her death. Because when Rowan had hidden that ladder, he had been crying too. All of it for reasons he could not know. His world was falling apart and he felt he had to face its demise alone.

He would have to go home soon before his absence was noticed. If his father found out he'd been so close to the Goddess's lands, he'd be locked in his room for a week, or even longer given how draconian his father had become. Even the Kingdom outside the palace gates was forbidden now. 

When his tears dried up, he stood, dusted the dirt off his knees, and turned for home. But a glint of color caught his eye. There, near the grave of his mouse, crept a sizable horned beetle dressed in sunset ruby and royal emerald. It was also a prince outside the boundaries of his kingdom. But Aster did not know this and thought it might be a pest come to dig up his pet. He knelt to shoo it away. 
But it did nothing to disturb the little grave. Aster watched with fascination as it rested its horn upon the little mound of dirt and fell still. It seemed a reverential gesture, a mourner come to pay respects. Someone older might have dismissed the possibility of such things from an insect, but Aster welcomed the moment of wonder and catharsis. 

"Thank you, Mr. Beetle." He said.
As if it understood, the beetle took to the air, humming a spiral around the fellow prince. His magnificent wings were no less colorful than his carapace. Aster marveled at the rainbow they fashioned out of the last few rays of sun. He held out his hand. The beetle landed, horn held proudly up toward Aster's nose. He smiled and the beetle seemed to smile back, in some unexplainable beetle way. 
"Thank you." Aster said again. 

From a human standpoint, it was an absurd encounter. Boy and bug could have no deeper a connection than a child and his crawling toy. Yet Aster nonetheless felt something deeper. Perhaps it was the Goddess within him ever-pulling him to the forest and its creatures, but he knew at once this beetle was special. It had a magic about it, and there was a magic between them. He knew, somehow, he would be with this beetle again.