We should probably speak up now, Sophia thinks as the silence crosses a full thirty seconds. We kinda are the invader of his sanctuary: an occupier should be the one taking action. Leave or speak, gotta make a deci…

The young man once again throws a lifeline to the Princess, a small, almost unnoticed smile on his thin face. “I suppose you don’t like social events such as this.”

“I do not, and I cannot believe anyone actually does. And such as it is, I do not see the point of hosting such a pointless event as this one. A coming of age ceremony is barbaric, displaying the heirs of a royal family like a pimp selling their common whores? Do not even pretend that there is a purpose for this draconian ritual that we all cling to. If my purpose is to marry someone to secure an alliance, a bloodline, then what chance would I have to meet them here? What say would I have in my choice of lover? Better to be beheaded blindfolded than watch the ax take my neck!” Is what she would say if she wasn’t already feeling the bile move up her throat, body already dissolving into an anxious wreck…

Instead the line that she manages to squeak out is reduced to a much more simple, “W-wh…at?”

“It’s quite obvious that you don't want to return to this function.” The young man explains his reasoning, an almost supernatural insight hitting her right on the forehead. “You have finished your meal and well…you’re still here.”

“I-I don’t like crowds,” Sophia directly informs him.

“That’s a sentiment I can understand.”

“Really?”

“Large numbers of people create too many unknowns. It's suffocating… claustrophobic.” His accent speaks that final word with clarity, a tidal wave of implication behind it. “You’ll need to find others like you, filtering those who’d want to hurt you. To be in a function of this kind, where all are competing for just one thing and everyone is your enemy? It’s the loneliest anyone can be.”

“Loneliest…” Sophia hangs onto that word in particular.

“I can’t imagine what the subject of this coming-of-age ceremony is going through right now.” The individual tries to extrapolate. “Imagine knowing the intentions of every single person in a room. Imagine knowing that every person who speaks, flirts, and praises you is just after your hand, and it's not even for you either. It’s for something you were born into, something out of your control. It’s almost like a curse…”

That voice quickly corrects itself. “It is a curse.”

He listens to the space for a long time, some laughter passing through into the small alcove. “She has no friends here, in a celebration dedicated to her life. Is that not the most tragic thing imaginable?”

He knows what they’re all here for. A small, ancient whisper in the back of this princess’ mind warns her like the silence before a mid-winter blizzard. He knows that you’re the target of their politics. This boy from the abyss of the sea knows the game that’s being played here.

Sophia has no words for the rhetorical question, and she doesn’t need to answer as the young man continues with a small joke. “Though, I don’t doubt a few of the more… forceful… suitors tonight will fall ill with Ricin Flu soon enough. I’ve heard this fourth princess is one to take her vengeance slowly.”

She almost laughs at that sudden assumption, a curiosity to be processed at a later time.

Oh, come on girl, ANSWER HIM.

“Yeah…she is,” Sophia manages to blurt out, instinct once again taking over the reins of her conversation. “Then why are you here?”

“I don’t particularly enjoy the crowds either,” he honestly tells her. “It’s exhausting.”

That’s a sentiment we can get behind.

The young woman nods along. “Well, I don’t understand how some people enjoy events such as this. It’s absurd, having to entertain so many strangers! I can barely even greet my own family in the mornings.”

He tries to maintain composure, but still lets out a small laugh.

“But really, I meant here in Capital,” she continues with a smirk. “Why are you even here if you don’t want to be? Don’t you have a choice in the matter?”

“Oh…” The young man blinks at the sudden question. “This… My attendance is all for my father’s wishes. If this were up to me though, I’d much rather he handle the politics in full. Perhaps if I were not here tonight I would be in the city, sampling that lauded authentic Amorian cuisine.”

Well, you aren’t missing out on much then…

“No.” He corrects himself, sitting a bit straighter. “If it were truly up to me, I would much rather be home. It doesn’t feel right being here. When those you love are in troubled times, the greatest betrayal you can commit is to leave them. I hope they don’t think I’ve abandoned them, and I hope they don’t come to hate me for this.”

“Why would they hate you?” she asks him.

“I don’t know, and I can’t imagine why. Maybe I’m just nervous, maybe it’s myself that I’m afraid of. If someone I loved went away when I needed them… maybe I’d feel abandoned.”

Sophia remembers how she herself bawled when Naomi first went to join the First Legion, how that childish part of her thought it would be the last time she would ever see her older sister. “I think it’s ok to feel abandoned.” She taps her chin with a slightly sticky finger. “If you miss something that means you just love them, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“If you didn’t care for something, then would you be sad if it went away?”

In the darkness she can see the gears turning in his head, a new perspective on the subject reaching him as a welcome alternative to whatever idea he held prior. He laughs slightly. “I suppose I wouldn’t.”

She winks, some insane part of her carried away in this elevated conversation. “See, abandonment is a pretty good thing, isn’t it?”

They both lightly chuckle at the joke.

Something else reaches him as well, the logical conclusion of the young woman’s concept reaching its end. He quiets his voice. “Then I wonder if they’re welcoming my absence instead… I don’t doubt some of them are.”

“Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know,” he replies, something within him already broken. “I never did know.”

Sophia takes her time to compose a response, taken from deep within her soul towards a wounded… acquaintance? Friend? Sophia wondered what this short conversation made them–two strangers meeting beneath the early summer night.

She pushes her authentic self towards him, reaching out her own will to intertwine with his. To reach out and touch that dread, that shame, that fear within his heart. “Yeah, that’s like…really rough. Like…that’s crazy dude.”

Dear young girl,

Long ago your ancestors gave worship to the old ones: primordial gods that brought humanity to this distant world from a ruined Eden eons away. And although your people have long forgotten us, know that we still live.

Our fragments are scattered in the world spirit, living in the tiniest motes of dust that you breathe, in the distant radio signals you listen to, and even in the Goddess you now worship in your tiny, half-hearted prayers. Know that we, the ones that carried your people to this new world across an ocean of stars unfathomable in depth, are still and always will be with you.

But know that, at this point, you’re on your own.

Don’t take this the wrong way, we aren’t giving up on you; we just need a break. We’ll be back, maybe in the next meal you eat or the words in the next book you’ll read (hopefully not in one of those trash smut-romance penny novels that you seem to be addicted to at the moment). Just know that those words that just came out of your mouth could’ve been put in a much, much better way.

The young man, shocked for a full minute, suddenly starts to laugh at her statement. Not out of any sort of pain, or offense – but instead a genuine laughter at the absurdity of that resignation. Like the floodgates of an old dam, he can’t stop himself, tears almost forming at the edges of his eyes. “Oh gods, I… Goodness!”

Sophia just sits as she gauges the unexpected reaction, her own laughter starting as the infectious noise begins to eat away at her own composure.

They both try to return to themselves, trying to gather whatever is left of their psyches before being sent into another breathless series of faltering laughter.

“Please forgive me,” he lets out, trying to take a deep breath in a desperate attempt at stemming this insane loss of noble control.

Sophia tries to rebuild it as well. “No please… I apologize for that…crass answer.”

“Don’t,” he seriously informs her. “It’s good to get a perspective on the absurdities of your own thoughts. You know, it isn’t all that bad in the end. At least they’re not openly celebrating it yet! A-and…that really is the truth, isn’t it?”

“Yeah…it really is, isn’t it?”

Sophia lets out a smile, both at her good fortune and at the young man’s reaction. Goddess damned it we’re actually having fun!

Time to find something to continue off of.

“I should take my leave.” She stands, the dress of hers clattering like jewels tossed casually into a waste bin.

She bites her tongue at those automatically spoken words, that single line said so many times in the quiet moments that it was, at this point, a reflexive act to fill in any given awkward silence.

Oh, wow really, just when we were having fun, her thought processes sarcastically compliments. Great work, us.

“Of course.” The young man moves to stand as well, matching her in the graces of the court. “It was wonderful meeting you…”

He is slightly taller than her, and now with a better look at him he is most definitely not from the central belt of Ensolia with his fair skin, angular features, and deep brown hair. And not too bad looking either. The lizard part of Sophia’s brain whistles.

There’s another awkward silence as she awaits for him to continue his sentence, before realizing the actual implications of that unfilled finisher.

He’s asking for our name. Quickly give it to him. Make this comedy complete, the climax of this encounter will be something he will remember for the rest of his life. How he met Sophia Elise the Eighth, the Fourth Princess of the Ensolian Imperium, and how he made her laugh!

“I am Sophia Elise the Eighth, Fourth Heir to the Silver Throne.” Would’ve been the correct answer to say before disappearing back into the crowd, but instead Sophia just regurgitates a line from I’m a Priestess, but My Love is a Werewolf: Volume 2 as she walks back out into the Grand Ballroom. “I’m certain you’ll come to know me before our next encounter. Goodbye…”

Wow.

STUPID, she internally yells out, the realization of that absurdist answer hitting her like a freight train as she walks back into the Ballroom. STUPID. STUPID. STUPID. STUPID.

She resists the urge to tear out her beautifully dressed blonde hair as she cringes so hard, barely holding her stature together. The Goddess is probably about to smite the young lady for her apostasy, of such a divine gift tossed aside like garbage.

Sophia probably still has a chance to go back, to apologize and continue that small conversation. All she has to do is maybe retrieve a few refreshments for him as well; a bribe never could hurt right?

But what did he even eat? Obviously, he wasn’t from the Ensolian Belt, or the Greater Imperium for that matter. No national colors either (at least not that she could tell in the dim lighting). Maybe something neutral, a universal food? Like donuts. Everyone loves donuts, right?

Well, maybe except for father…and Beatrice…and Natan…and Alice but she was probably lying…

And why are we so obsessed with returning to a conversation all of a sudden? A thought process suddenly raises this question to this committee of consciousness.

The patheticness, the dread of her own self-worth, comes in with a dose of ice cold reality. Because you have enjoyed a conversation with another human being. Tonight, in your twenty-first year, someone has come to you without any expectation of anything more than conversation.

And you just fumbled it.

She panics, a mind racing in recovery before someone…no something forcibly grabs her forearm.

The cold ceramic gripping her skin transfers a lifeless temperature, and she looks up to stare at the bone white armor plating of an Impericutta, a royal legionary in full battle dress.

It is so quiet in the Grand Ballroom, like in the moments before the start of a state funeral the entire roster of guests huddle together in their own groups beneath the barrels of machine guns whispering to each other in a state of palpable fear.

Sophia watches as seemingly an entire battalion of those guardians (they didn’t look like harmless toys anymore, with their heavy weapons and lifeless facemasks) sweeps the space clear. Weapons raised, pulling apart the guests as they search for something… no someone.

Uh oh…maybe she did lose track of time…