The Argument

The luxurious morning sun rises over the mountains and sets itself onto the Divine Sky to give the people of this Kingdom light. That brightness which grows the nature with new seeds of vegetation. And the green trees of ages that cover the Kingdom’s surface shines in its emerald color.

The warmth one feels on the skin when one stands out in the open, though the autumn’s winds have come upon this world, so it’s slowly getting colder and colder while the nights are growing darker and darker.

The City of Tertinum awakens. The streets start to fill with people; the hundreds of stores are opening its doors to new people that might come to browse its merchandise. The three outer layer gates of the City form rows of travelers that wish to explore its wonders.

The great Citadel stands in its splendid foundation. It’s so vast that it takes up one-fourth of the entire City. Its lush gardens are the biggest part of the Citadel's grounds, and the Citadel’s outer estates are only for those who works there; the servants and people who’re allowed to nest there.

The Citadel must be in constant purity to keep up with the standards of the Honored Ones – those that rule the cities which had been granted to them through the ages. Their ancestors had risen up to prominence and were awarded cities for their due, their hard and loyal work to the former Queens of their time.

Here in this City where Xe’Reth lives, a small family owns the City, the Honored Tertins, Malinda’s Honored household.

……

…

In the halls of the Citadel, servants run around early in the morning, moving toward their destinations. Cleaning servants are everywhere. They’re scrubbing the floors, dusting off the walls, the furniture, the many paintings, and all of the different beautifications that décor this Citadel; indeed a home of wealth.

The corridors riddle with small pillars that have vases on them and pots of beautiful plants; paintings of various blond-haired men, women, and children of once lived people hang there on the walls.

While in a spacious dining room, though, where expensive crystal chandeliers hang above, people sit on grand seats beside a dining table, which’s so lengthy that it’s over forty meters long, but the broadness isn’t that great. Only three meters. And on the part of the table where the Citadel’s ruler sits, people are sitting.

At the moment, they're eating.

At the head of the table sits the mighty General of the middle gate himself, while his wife sits on the left side of the table. Next to her is her daughter. The girl who sits there with dead, unmoving eyes. Blank eyes as if she can’t see anything from those glittery eyes of shadows.

The young lady scoops up her soup that she has in front of her with a spoon, a silver spoon of prosperity.

The mother gazes upon her daughter who sits there beside her with sad and lonely eyes, for she sees her blind daughter desperately trying to dine with elegance, but her blindness deceives her, only making her spill the soup, because how can she know if the watery substance resides in the spoon?

Therefore, her mother tries to help her, she wants to feed her, but… her daughter declines her helpful hands. With a stubborn frown, she sets down her spoon to shove her mother’s middle-aged hands away.

She is prideful and tenacious for a fourteen-year-old girl, and she looks exactly like her mother; light brown hair which’s tied in a long braid that rests on her one shoulder, going down to her undeveloped bosoms. Those emotionless eyes of light brown and her pale skin tone that she has on her body, her thin teenaged body. Her beauty is also like her mother, but she isn't what people call stunning.

She's a little bit above average if people go for the sisters' standards.

“Darling please, you mustn’t act like this. You’ve grown much stubborn as of late. Come, let me help you eat,” the mother scolds, not giving in to her daughter's waving hands. “And whose idea was it to make soup this morning? Huh?”

“F-Forgive me, Honored Madam, it was me. I didn’t think clearly how it would affect your daughter. I-I beg for your forgiveness,” a handmaiden stutters who stands by the Citadel’s large kitchen doors.

“Sigh, it’s all right. Try to think next time before you pull this kind of breakfast. As you’re new, I’ll let it go. But I’ll speak to the head-handmaiden… your mother about this,” the wife says as she brings up the handmaiden’s mother who’s the handmaiden to herself, a dear friend of hers also.

“Though... I think she gave you this task to choose the breakfast, to learn from it,” the wife adds as she stares at the handmaiden whose head lowers by the sudden attention, feeling as if she wants to cry.

“Enough, I don’t need you to scold her, I can do that myself,” Malinda’s younger sister says with a tone of annoyance as she sits there unfazed while she sips the soup with grace which the wife’s daughter doesn’t have.

“What’s the matter, Madelyn? You’ve been like this ever since we came home yesterday,” the brother asks because she has had a very gloomy expression ever since she went into the carriage that took her to the Citadel after she had finished her work as a commander.

“It is… nothing… It was rough on the wall yesterday, that is all,” she says with a weary face.

Madelyn still hasn’t awakened fully yet, so she's showing her hidden emotions, but her moving hand that scoops the soup shows no tiredness, only grace flows with every hand and arm movement as she sips.

“Where is Malinda? Is she still sleeping this late in the morning?” the wife asks curiously as Malinda hasn’t even come yet, for the family always eats together, but this time, they started without her because they didn’t want the food to get cold. “She’s never late—Ah, there she is.”

Malinda comes through the opened embroidered double doors which lead to the massive throne room.

“I’m sorry to keep you waiting, dear family,” Malinda greets as she goes to be seated on the right side of where her brother sits, and on her right, sits her younger sister who Malinda looks at with a slight frown. But her face returns to her elegant appearance in a split second.

“It is all right… but you should try to not sleep in. It is not a way for an Honored Lady to act lazily,” the wife scolds as she raises her index finger for such behavior, also throwing a glance at Madelyn.

The wife is very strict on how one should act and how one shouldn’t act. A pure noble to the bone. However, her strictness doesn't extend to her daughter because she can’t really do most of the things that require of an Honored Lady. She only went blind four years ago, so she hasn’t gotten used to her blindness yet.

“Fear not. I woke up long before anyone. I’ve just been preparing myself… I mean… let us continue eating,” Malinda breaks off, changing the topic.

She had awoken very early to pick out clothes to wear because she’s going to meet up with Xe’Reth later. It took her rather long to pick out this outfit of silk and crimson light-plate material, though it hasn’t that much plate on it, only the shoulders that have two pauldrons.

Her chest piece has a woman’s cuirass pushing her bosoms in so it appears that she has smaller breasts. Her lower legs have greaves, and her feet have boots with heels that fit a lady.

All of the other materials are in black silk. Malinda's skirt goes to her knees, and her black long sleeves have frills at where her wrists are.

She’s dressed to her fullest. Her face and hair are polished to perfection also. Those dark red lipstick-colored rose petals and those eyes that have black eyeliner which brings out her fierce yet caring eyes.

Her blond hair is in a low ponytail which hangs over her shoulder and down her light-plated bulging chest while her bangs are on either side of her face.

She has truly prettied herself up this time, but nonetheless, one of her handmaidens helped her because she was rather flustered by this sudden meeting that she’ll have, this conjoining with Xe’Reth.

Malinda has prepared in her mind hundreds of times of what she’s going to say. Those simple but emotional words…

Her handmaiden that joined her doesn't know who she’s going to meet up with, though from how her Mistress has acted up ‘til now, she can see that it’ll be a passionate moment for her.

The handmaiden is now sitting behind her on a chair by the wall. She had followed right behind her and drawn out her Mistress’s chair that Malinda is sitting on right now, then she went to sit after making sure everything was in order.

An invisible ghost that shouldn’t be noticed among their Honored Masters and Mistresses.

“My dear, where did you go yesterday? You just left us without saying a word. We waited for you, but you never showed up at our Ebon Wall’s estate,” the brother asks because she indeed just left without saying anything. She wanted to catch up to Xe’Reth, who she saw vanish into the crowd when no one was looking.

She wanted him to forgive her sister, so no hard feelings were between her and him because her sister is his commander. And as a leader, she must have her subordinates’ trust and respect… But her sister is very slothful when it comes to her duties. She’s just treating her job as a commander like a chore since their brother decided that she had to do it so she wouldn’t laze around every day.

“I apologize, brother. But I had prior engagements to attend to, so I had to leave. Also, I’ll be leaving after I’ve finished eating—Celyssa can you take care of my workload for today?” Malinda asks as her eyes wander to his brother’s wife who handles the business of their Honored domain.

Both the brother and his wife are way older than the two sisters.

Malinda’s mother and father got her brother very early in their years. Their parents were only sixteen when he was born, and they didn’t even get another child until years later.

That’s when Malinda was born.

Her brother is soon reaching his forties, and Celyssa is the same age as him. While their daughter is only fourteen. An age where she should be out and about. She should find herself a noble profession as her two aunts. But because she’s blind, her parents doesn’t want her to do anything. They just want her to live her life as she sees fit. And if she does find someone to love out of luck, then they will arrange anything for their daughter. But with her current personality and affliction, that won’t happen anytime soon.

“All right, dear. I’ll take care of everything, you do what you need to do. This month is pretty light with labor, so it’ll be handled with comfort,” the wife says with a smile as she gazes upon one of her family members. One can even say that she’s the mother of Malinda and her younger sister, for she’s steaming with adultness about her. Such an elegant middle-aged woman.

“Ooh?” the brother sounds out in complete surprise as his eyes shine with astonishment, for he witnesses Malinda wearing her finest light plate armor that she has, which makes him slightly dumbfounded, but he also wants to tease her a little bit. “Who are you meeting up with my dear little sister? Ah! Is it… Is it perhaps a man?!"

"Ooh! You’ve finally decided to spread your womanly charms! Ah, the Divine Sky has finally answered my responses! I thought that you would be a woman of celibacy like the Divine Queen herself and not a woman of love! Ah! The joy that has sprouted forth inside my youthful chest!”

“Brother, please. Stop acting like that, you’re embarrassing me... Though, it’s true that I’ve met a man, but…” Malinda hesitates as she bites her lower lip.

“W-W-What? I was right…?” he asks in disbelief, his eyes beginning to flicker, and his mouth going agape. But he grows wary as he recalls the last word Malinda said. “But what?”

“I don’t think you, brother, would allow myself to be with such a man,” she replies with a slight saddening tone as she averts her eyes from his two questioning blue globes.

“Hmm… So it’s one of the families that we dislike where you’ve found your man, huh? But you know you can’t form a bond with an Honored One, you know that right? The Queen doesn’t allow it,” he says with a hint of hatred as he grips tighter around his spoon, because some of the other Honored families that he has had contact with, can be bothersome to handle.

Especially the nobles that aren’t a part of his domain. Trade routes to the Ebon Wall are in high demand since they go through Tertin land.

But over the years, he has formed friends with different benevolent Honored families, like his own household. Though, only the regular noble houses would come with engagement proposals to his beautiful sisters and even his daughter, which he most generously of his being declined, for he wants them to find their own true happiness, as he had found… his.

“No…? Then is it a man from a regular noble family then?” he keeps asking, but he gets no response from his eye-avoiding sister, though his now scowling expression turns into worry as he presses onward with interrogations. “An even lesser noble family then?”

“…” she doesn’t answer, she has her eyes closed as he keeps on guessing.

“Hmm, so it’s a commoner, huh. Well… I can see where you’re coming from, dear sister. But I’ll let you choose who you want to be with, as I promised before if you remember that promise. Though hopefully, it isn’t someone that’s too unreliable to be trained to learn the ways of being an Honored One,” he says as he stares intently at Malinda.

He would’ve never thought that his eldest younger sister would find someone of low birth, but his promises are there to be kept, so he can’t betray Malinda’s trust by throwing those promises out the window.

“Aaaaah… You’re a grown woman, and you can choose whoever you want. Who’s this lucky man you’ve fallen in love with then? Is he handsome? Is he ugly? Is he average? Is he smart? Dumb? Or just plain?” he asks nonstop, for he wants to know who this man is that has gotten his stone-faced sister to crack and blossom into a flower.

“Y-Yes, he’s very handsome indeed. He’s as tall as me, he has such a build, and everything about him is… well, perfect in my eyes. His intelligence is also high from what I’ve gotten to know about him. He has been very kind to me. I fell in love with him in just a couple of hours as I spoke to him. He confessed to me his feelings, his fears, his plight, and his hatred. But that only made him more lovingly. He could say all of those things to me who he had just met, and that trust is something I want from him,” she fawns with a blush as she longs to meet him at his place, his rundown house.

She had gone through her feelings in her bedroom, and this feeling that she wants is… Xe'Reth's love. Even though she has only spent a short time with him, she is dead set on her emotions. She’ll finally know what it means to have someone she can embrace like everyone else, to give her love away to him…

“See, my wife! I told you she would find someone! Hahaha, our family will finally grow as she’ll bring new life into the world!” the brother shouts with pleasant feelings as he raises his spoon up in the air like a sword while splattering the watery soup onto himself and onto everything below.

Those feelings of kinship, those things that are necessary to extend their small family to even greater heights.

It’s hard to keep up with the times when you don’t really have a strong family, a strong family of relatives. Their own relatives aren’t extensive, it’s only because their mother and father were the single children of their own parents. And the only other family they have are their distant… distant relatives who hasn’t contacted them in ages.

Though Celyssa’s family tree is very extensive, and most of them are situated in Tertinum City.

“Please brother, I’m not planning on getting children that fast. I’m soon reaching my mid-twenties. I’m still young you know. Our mother even got us two later in her years, so…” Malinda says as she just goes with the flow of the conversation, but she realizes what the conversation is about. “L-Let us not talk about this anymore.”

“S-Sister, this is fantastic news. What is the name of the man you’ve fallen in love with? For I have actually also fallen in love with someone, but it’ll take a long while until I have enough courage to confess my feelings to him. Though as it stands now, it won’t be happening anytime soon,” the sister says with a warm smile to break the ice between them. “So what’s his name?”

“I will not tell you his name. I don’t think he would want me to spread that I’ve him as a lover… yet," Malinda answers with a frown on her eyebrows because she hasn’t even responded to his confession yet, but as she has decided to accept it, it’s already set in stone. She can openly say that she has a lover now, and that makes her get butterflies in her stomach. Even thinking about him makes her smile. However, she keeps up her appearance of complete control to not show her weakness of love.

“Oh... I-I see…” she whimpers as Malinda peers at her with such an unpleasant gaze all of a sudden, which makes Madelyn lower her head in anxiety.

“Madelyn… Do you remember what happened yesterday? Where you acted so dishonorably towards that young man who didn’t even do anything to you?” Malinda asks as her face turns stone cold. “As a commander, is that how you act towards everyone in your squad? Or is he the only one you attack with such means as cutting off his well-earned pay?”

“What are you talking about…? Madelyn, explain yourself!” Celyssa shouts, hearing such blasphemy because she has taken care of everything regarding the City, the Citadel, the domain, and Madelyn’s squad of archers.

Madelyn is very careless in her duties, so she gets help from Celyssa from time to time, which in the process, Celyssa has met many of the archers in the squad. She has gone many times to the training ground to watch how Madelyn was handling it. At most times she was pleased, and some other times she wasn’t so happy.

Celyssa is an intelligent woman.

Her skills in understanding the component of archery were learned so fast that she can now handle the art of the bow with ease; she isn’t the best by far, but Celyssa can hit a target in the middle if she wants to.

This unexpected news makes Celyssa fume with rage that shows on her lowering eyebrows while crossing her arms. Her husband too gazes at the guilty person who sits there beside the table with a face of anxiety and fiddling hands.

“S-Sister, what, what are you talking about? He said that I was right, remember? He first lied about his arrows being homemade. B-But, then as you came, he stated that he tried to deceive me. He lied about not taking from the buckets that are placed by our designated post on the Ebon Wall. You heard him say it, so why are you putting the blame on me?” Madelyn asks with eyebrows ascending and wide eyes of bewilderment, trying to weasel her way out.

“You still lie, lie, and lie… He only said that to not get into trouble with you afterward, because I caught you red-handed. He wanted to give you face, that’s why he confessed his untrue lie. You made him say words that were untrue, and you still dare lie to me!?” Malinda screams, slamming the table with her one fisted knuckle as her anger for her sister’s lying floods out of her.

“I… I’m not lying! You’re going too far! But… But I decide what I do with my own squad and not you! So stay out of it!” Madelyn fights back as she pushes out her chair to stand.

Her venomous eyes shoot out poison because of her meddling elder sister that’s attacking her with words. “Sister, you’ve changed… Why are you taking such a nasty person’s side over your own blood? He’s a disgusting dog of the slums. Have you no sham—?!”

*Slap*

”Ah...! I-I am… I’m sorry, I…” Malinda stutters as she stands there also with a chair pushed backward and a red palm pulsating.

As Madelyn touches her throbbing cheek with one shaking hand, tears start to form around her eyes. With a swift turn, she sprints out of the dining hall while being followed by a speechless handmaiden that’s trying to keep up with her Mistress, which causes Malinda to regret that she even brought up the topic about what happened yesterday.

She’s a caring sister… but she doesn’t even understand why she’s doing this. Is it because her dear sister bullied her new found love? Yes… That sense of safeguarding a loved one from any harm. She has just made it worse by speaking about it, and Madelyn will probably take it out on Xe’Reth next time they meet.

“Malinda, dear…” her brother sounds out with concern filling his eyes and a saddened curve downwards upon his lips. So, too, has Celyssa, a face of worry about the sudden slap that Malinda just gave her sister.

The slap was rather hard, so she worries about Madelyn’s cheek.

This was actually the first argument she and her sister has ever had which escalated this far. There have been quarrels before, but those were so small that they weren’t even compared to this one.

“I am… not hungry anymore. Celyssa, please do check up on her… I think I hit her too hard…” Malinda says as she begins to also walk toward the double doors that lead out of the dining hall. She turns around as she’s about to leave. “Tell her that I’m sorry. And that I went too far. I’ll be gone for a while… so… *Sigh* I’ll come back later.”

Malinda vanishes through the opened double doors while her handmaiden shadows her.

The three remaining family members, the brother, his wife, and their daughter just sit there at the breakfast table. He looks at his wife with confusion written upon his frowning face. She sighs as well – she has gotten more work to do.

“I’ll go check up on Madelyn. She has probably gone to the garden labyrinth,” Celyssa says as she stares into her husband’s troubling eyes.

“Thank you, my love,” he says with a loving face.

Celyssa does genuinely care about his sisters as if they’re her own children, adult children in her eyes.

As Celyssa rises from her seat, she waves instructions to the handmaidens of her daughter, to take care of her in her absence. And the handmaidens bow in confirmation.

Then Celyssa leaves the dining hall with womanly strides without saying goodbye to her daughter, because the little lady will meet up with her later. She spends most of her time with her mother, or in her own quarters, or in the garden where Madelyn is mostly located at when she’s at home.

“Father…?” she asks with a spoon in her hand while turning her head to her father’s direction, but her eyes stare into the void, not able to make eye contact because of her blindness.

“Merissa, my dearest, what is the matter?” he asks as his daughter gaze at him, but his heart still can’t mask his expression when he sees his blind daughter sitting there with slowly blinking eyes, staring at the darkness in front of her.

“It is nothing… but… wasn’t that a delightful argument? I have never heard them act like that before, so this experience was… pleasant.” Merissa reveals with a smile as she then sips the soup from her now raised spoon gracefully… with no effort at all...

As though her disability vanished within an instant.

Thanks for reading!

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