garden

Info dump chapter

Chapter 2: Resolutia

Alone in the dark, my head began to hurt so much for trying to figure out what to do. Is this really the past before it all happened? Had I just dreamed of everything? Those horrible things I did in the name of Prince Alex? I leaned to the small dresser beside me and reached for the little diary I kept every night before bed, without fail. It served no reason except to be somewhere I can vent more of my uncontrolled anger, since punishing servants could only sate so much.

Some pages were in tatters, due to the mood I had while writing it. And the last entry was yesterday, about me just having heard that the Royal family had started summoning ladies to the Rose Castle. The past Tia would really wished she would be summoned, and that she will scream at the messenger if they did not visit her family. I sighed to myself, that Tia had been a spoiled girl who will scream to the top of her lungs until things goes her way. Unbecoming of a young woman of 24 years old.

I put the diary down and my eyes caught sight of a blue vase, where Lily would put fresh flowers in every morning, was still standing by the dressing mirror. I had thrown that precious piece of imported ceramics to the ground and shattering it beyond repair. All because the Royal messenger, although they will visit tomorrow, they will not ask for Resolutia.

No. It had all been a dream... right? I'm not in the past...

Am I?

Quietly in the dark, I rose up from the edge of the bed I was sitting, and walked out of the room. I silently made my way towards the currently in construction chapel at the edge of the main building. I had demanded Father to build it for me, because having the Goddess’s statue in the home was the trend of many noble ladies nowadays, and I will not appear to be out of date.

I crossed the floor strewn with tools and dusts, and gazed upon the large marble statue of the Goddess Lutia. I was named after her as my dead mother was very fond of the sound, not of course if that woman was a devout believer of the deity. I was given the name of the Goddess on a whim of fancy, but now it felt heavy to my soul. Like I never deserved to be remotely attached to the divine being that was the Goddess.

Just judging from the incompleteness of the carved marble, I could confirm that I most probably went back in time. The hand that the Goddess will cup above her head, along with the crown of thorns that she will bear upon them, was still down here on the floor, waiting to be attached. The next time I would gaze upon the finished statue of the Goddess would be the day I was dismissed from the Rose Castle, after the hell that I went through.

To the home of that used to be filled with busy servants and merchants visited every hour to meet her father, Viscount Edward Fallias, I went back to an empty and desolated mansion. I had done nothing while Father was accused of illegal trade of weapons, and he was subjected to torture in prison. I barely bats an eye when my stepmother was rid of her possessions and thrown to a whorehouse after an accuse of slandering the Crown Prince Alex and the Royal Family. I remembered myself laughing as hard as I could seeing the neck of my older sister, Eleanora, separated from her head by the guillotine, for trying to protect both of them for being innocent of their supposed crimes.

Crimes fabricated by me... because Prince Alex said that would be the best method to secure my position.

My knees slowly touched the dusty ground while I brought my hands together to my chest, the posture of praying I had seen before in books. No one prayed to the Goddess now, but she was once the one and only divine entity recognized by the people. Nowadays, only women of money and status pretended to pray to her, as Goddess Lutia was only remembered as the “Goddess of feminity and beauty”. Now it was said only nuns of rural areas still religiously worship the forgotten Goddess, and they prayed to her for the same reason I am praying to her right now.

Goddess Lutia, the divine being of Forgiveness.

Perhaps the Goddess showed me those of what will happen in the dream as to stop me and my terrible murdering spree. Perhaps those things really did happened, and the Goddess heard my prayers in the last moment and gave me a second chance. Perhaps the Goddess wanted me to turn away and lead a more quiet life. Perhaps the Goddess was trying to warn me that Prince Alexander will be the monster who will made Foolish Tia into his faithful pet.

Until he lost his interest of that pet, and left me alone, unable to protect myself from the many angry enemies I made for his sake.

“Goddess, I thank you for the second chance. Please continue to watch over me and forgive me of my sins…”

In the lonely night, Resolutia Fallias shed everything she had owned.

Resolutia will be no more but a husk of what used to be - a foolish, childish woman. That ‘future’ the Goddess had shown me might just be a trick of the mind in a dream, but it had changed my heart.

Resolutia will die tonight and be no more.