The hall ceilings were high. So much higher than they needed to be.

With almost disdain, Hyacinthe looked up and noted that it wouldn't have been impossible to take the cottage he'd grown up in, and place it and a twin of it on top of each other, right in the middle of the hall. He then felt a pang under his stomach. An illness that he had never known, but one very like the yearning for more that he'd known all too well.

Homesickness, he decided to call it.

He dropped his eyes back to the floor.

--

The halls seemed to stretch forever and ever. Eternities. Lifetimes. King's lives, deaths, and legacies. Even the windows that looked out from the hall, into a courtyard, had a never-ending, lifetime quality about them. Everything looked surreal.

Maybe it looked surreal because Hyacinthe was in no way used to a building like the Kingdom, or a place like the Capital. How could he be, as a child raised in the Wood? He may not have been born there, but it seemed as though the Wood was more a mother to him than the Queen Mother that had come before the woman who currently held the throne, and Hyacinthe's supposed father's heart.

Maybe it was because Hyacinthe resented being there.

His gut twisted, turned, and acknowledged nothing solid about the place. "Nightmare," his stomach knots said. And it kept saying it. Until Hyacinthe came across a doorway that didn't seem as without-time as the rest of the palace.

The door wasn't timeless, and the unlocked room he found beyond was even less timeless. If anything, it was frozen in time. The dust was thicker than a light snowfall, lightening everything and aging it to a point that Hyacinthe couldn't place, but which set a lump in his throat that he couldn't quite swallow past.

It was a nursery.

He left it, feeling a bit sicker to the stomach and a bit less comfited about the entire situation.

He ran away from the room. Or, rather, he tried to. He ran, headfirst, into a maid coming out of a guest room.

"Sorry," Hyacinthe managed, backing away from her. He glanced into the room she'd come out of, and felt all the sicker when he noticed how clean it was. It was like dust only existed in one place, in the whole palace. The nursery room. "What... why is the other room..." Hyacinthe looked back up at the nurse, feeling pale.

"What?" the maid asked. She looked in the direction he pointed.

"The baby room," Hyacinthe said.

"Oh! Oh," the maid covered her mouth and shook her head. She dropped her eyes a moment later. "I am sorry," she said. "I have work I must do."

"It's just one question..."

"I must get to my work." The maid bowed to him, rigid and afraid, and turned away from him. He didn't think she had to walk so far from him, or so fast, to continue work she'd already begun. Logically, she should have been headed to clean the next of the main rooms. Instead, she chose to retreat from Hyacinthe.

Hyacinthe frowned after her, all the less concerted.

How he ended up in the chapel was beyond him, but he sent up a little thanks to the Lady of the Wood...

Rather, no.

He didn't send thanks up. He sent it out.

He sent thanks out to the Lady of the Wood. He knew of the gods, yes, and he could see who the chapel was dedicated to in the stained glass and the other portions of iconography of the chapel, but it was the Lady he thought was most deserving of the thanks. Even if Hyacinthe didn't quite know if being in the chapel would be a good thing, or something otherwise worth being thankful for.

The chapel seemed both ageless and frozen in time. Both very old and almost nonexistent.

It was comfortable, almost in the way the Wood was comfortable.

Almost.

Hyacinthe took a fortifying breath against the renewed influx of pallid homesickness. He wondered if he would find himself bedridden with the sensations of missing the Wood.

"Well, hello," greeted a warm, motherly voice.

Hyacinthe looked up. The clergywoman before him was neither familiar nor unfamiliar, which was as frustrating as the sadness he felt when he saw the nursery. "Who are you?" he asked.

The clergywoman smiled and bowed her head briefly. "A pleasure to meet you, prince. Again, rather. I was the clergy asked to christen you Aurore. My name is Eibhlin," she said.

"I don't know that name," Hyacinthe said.

"Which one, little prince?" Eibhlin asked. She was shorter of stature than Hyacinthe, in spite of her use of the word "little," which left Hyacinthe frowning a littler. "Which name?" she clarified.

"Neither," he responded, frowning.

"And what brings you to this church?"Eibhlin said, nodding. She didn't insist the name was his, or that the other was hers and that he should know it. She took his answer, processed it, and moved on. "What brings you to this pure and peaceful place? And how may I assist you, dear prince?"

"I don't know."

Hyacinthe frowned to himself. He didn't. He simply didn't know.

"I don't even know what I'm doing in this palace, under some name that doesn't belong to me and, frankly, never will," he felt like he should be bitter. But all he felt was weariness. "But, whether I know or not. I think I like it... here." He motioned around, to the noble statues, the precious metal decorations, and the straight-backed pews with their cushioned seats. "I like the way it feels. And smells. It's not home, but it will do. For a short while."

"Only a short while?" Eibhlin smiled at him fondly.

She smiled so fondly.

He hated it.

He shied away from her, backing toward the exit of the chapel. The structure itself was homey and inviting. The clergywoman, however, was not. Her aura was of very specific gods and worships, and they didn't allow for prayers given to earthbound spirits, be they of a magical Wood or not. Moreover, her expression of recognition and almost parental softness made Hyacinthe feel disgusted. With himself, the situation, his lack of memories of this place and these people, and, most of all, with her, for the way she looked at him.

Why did she get to recognize? Was that pity?

"It was... nice to meet you," Hyacinthe said.

He ducked out before she could return the assertion. He didn't care what she would say. No, that wasn't it. He did care. He didn't want to hear her say "It was nice to see you again, after all these years." He didn't think he would be able to bear it.

--

Getting back to his room was a trick, yes.

However, it was getting to the gardens, and getting away from servants and gardeners and groundskeepers, that was the real trick. All he wanted was a walk, he said. He just wanted -- needed -- to be alone.

Or so he said.

But, once he was alone, he bolted for the sound of horses and hoofbeats. The stables.