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This is her kingdom.

She lays on the yellow grass and looks up at the sky. She can feel the texture of the wheat against her fingers, she can hear the rustling of its edges and see the utmost tips of its peaks. The yellow grass moves with the soft wind. To the left, always to the left. It sways, sometimes, and sometimes it bends too far and breaks. Sometimes she reaches her hand out and grabs one, just one. She wraps her fingers around it and rips, so that it remains in her hand, suddenly useless and without purpose. Her own little plaything.

In this world, she is the king.

In this world, she is the god.

The small and helpless pieces of grass are under her mercy, as she does whatever she chooses with them. Where she decides to lay down, that is up to her. They have no say. They sway with the wind and she watches them do so. They sway too far and break, and she watches them do so. She doesn't help them, doesn't care about them. For her, they are her pointless entertainment. She is their god. And above her, there is the sky. When it comes to the sky, she is a god to it as far as she can choose not to see it, or choose to see it.

So in this world, she is a king. This is her kingdom.

And in her kingdom, she can do whatever she wants. Keep her brown hair to her shoulders and not cut it short, just like how she likes it. Brush through it whenever she gets the chance, just like she likes it. In this world, that is how far her power stretches. But then she sits up, and sees beyond her kingdom. To the place where her rule does not matter, and her say does not sound. A little house, and a little road, standing next to her wide kingdom of wheat. And in that little house, sits a woman and a man, who are the kings and the gods of this little world.

So Maud sits up, before they can start complaining again. About her age. About how she shouldn't be laying on the grass instead of working, because she is already old enough to understand their struggle. Understand that she has to work. Already twenty, already old enough to understand that her kingdom is small and does not matter. Not like it mattered when she was young. Power changes. It felt so strong in her youngest days, now it feels insignificant. Only those few moments of peace, when she can watch the swaying of the grass and the movement of the sky, only then does it feel strong again.

But she is not a child anymore, and those moments are far and few in between.

So Maud stands up on wobbly legs, and gathers her balance. She brushes her fingers through her brown hair, a habit, and shakes it away from her face. She wipes the dust from her cheeks and nose, and sneezes once, just to get rid of the smell of grass in her nostrils. Slowly Maud drags her feet towards the small house next to the small road, where the kingdom of those she cannot control stretches far and wide. As far as she can see, over the yellow fields of wheat. Her legs feel tired and sore, her beige dress dirty and ragged. Her shoes are clumpy and too small, pinching a bit at the toes. A starving feeling grows under her ribs, a cough builds in her throat, the rumbling of her stomach can be heard.

The wind feels ever colder, the sky a bit more cloudy than before. The small wooden house, with no windows and a small door with a crack at the bottom, rises up with struggle. She reaches for the door handle and wraps her fingers around it, pulling it backwards with a creak. Nothing awaits her on the inside but darkness, a single candle standing on a wooden table, and a fire lit somewhere further into the house. One woman. One man. One standing by the fire, one seated hopelessly on a chair in front of the candle. Their faces are illuminated by the light. Dust over their skin, clothes ruined and ragged, hands rough and eyes hollow.

Maud closes the door behind her. She waits by the entrance for a while, just to breathe. There is not much to do in this little kingdom. Every day looks the same. It smells the same, it sounds the same. The striking scent of boiled potato is the only thing she can ever smell inside this hut, more often than not it's the only thing they eat. Or maybe it just feels that way. Maud is really tired of potatoes, but in this kingdom one can not afford to complain. Not even as kings.

She sits down on a chair, right next to her father. The old man drums his fingers against the table as usual, a constant melody and rhythm that is both annoying and their only source of entertainment at the same time. Maud listens to it for a while. It sounds the same as always. The boiled potato is ready. An old woman brings it over, in a black metal pot that is the prized jewel of this kingdom. A wonderful item that costs nearly as much as their house, if their house had a price. Nothing else in this kingdom is of worth, even the fields are of no interest to anyone else. Too remote, too overgrown, not mended or tended to properly. The lack of an old couple and their only daughter, who are helpless against the ruthless nature of their little kingdom.

Because it's not their kingdom, is it? Nothing is ever theirs, really. In the end, they are only a piece of grass under the real king. In the end, their kingdom is nothing but a useless field of wheat, and its workers are mere ants, apart of a huge colony of other ants in the same fashion. In the end, their life has no meaning, their power no real sound or say. In the end, they are just seated on these wobbly wooden chairs, eating boiled potato inside a dark worthless cottage, while their overgrown fields continue to lose value around them.

"Did you get rid of everything?"

A useless question. The same question every day.

"No"

The endless amounts of weeds that grow and destroy their fields, those are under her mercy. And despite having power over those wild creatures, there are too many of them for her to keep up. The fields are useless but vast, and therefore she is unable to get rid of all the weeds growing in them. Whenever she has finished one field, the next one is full again. And while her father works tirelessly and she does too, while her mother drags on working despite her bad leg, their lives only grow more silent and miserable, and their souls more and more useless.

What is the point of living when there is nothing to live for?

This little routine that they have built for themselves, perfect and yet so small, it should never be broken. Maud wants to live like this forever, but she also wants it to end. Waking up every morning before the sun, in their dark little cottage, and going to sleep in the same place. Dragging her feet through the endless fields of yellow grass. Watching the sky move on its own. Eating the same boiled potato and listening to the same drumming of her father's fingers. She wants to live like this forever. No, she can't take it anymore. But it can't change. But it has to. Something has to change. But it's too much for a simple girl like her, change, don't change, live, don't live, keep on dragging her feet through the endless fields of yellow grass. Keep on walking. Keep on drumming. Keep on boiling. Keep on pulling. Keep on watching. Keep on working.

Don't stop.

Don't ever stop.

She wants to stop.

Two knocks and a yell.

"This is the royal guard, open up!"

But they don't wait for anyone to open the door for them. The breakers of their mundane life. It's different from all the stories she has ever heard, where change takes time and happens slowly. It's fast. It's rapid. It comes like a slam. They break the door down without giving it a second thought, because the worthless piece of wood is as insignificant to them as a piece of wheat is to her. It falls to the floor with the loudest sound Maud has ever heard in her entire life, and it wakes something within her. Light suddenly enters the cottage, almost like an explosion of all things new and bright. Her father stands up, her mother shields herself, Maud squints. Away from the light. Away from change.

Four men step into the room. Their boots are dirty, you can almost hear it. The sand and rocks drag against the wooden planks of their floor, they sound heavy. The intruders have arrived. They are tall, so tall that they have to bend down in order to get inside the low roofed cottage. All of them are dressed in a dark and deep green, with black boots, golden buttons on their jackets and well built bodies that cast a stark difference between familiar and other. They are stronger, so they have more power. Before anyone has even uttered a word, before their presence has been acknowledged by the small family of three, the four guards have already shown more power than anything else they have ever seen.

Maud stands up once she has gotten used to the light.

"Who are you to barge into our home?"

Because despite her position in society, the lowest of the low, she still speaks up. Despite being an unmarried, poor peasant woman in a society that hates women and people without money, Maud holds no fear over those that supposedly reign above her. She is the ruler of this kingdom, this plot of land, this piece of grass that she still clutches in her hand. They might be rulers of a bigger kingdom, they might have power, they might have money, whoever controls these guards... but Maud is her own ruler, and that will never change.

No matter what.

"Are you Princess Margaret?"

A tall guard asks her, straight out, without hesitating. Maud is quick to shake her head, honest.

"No"

Her name is Maud, and she is no princess. Nothing about her is like a princess. Her brown hair, reaching just above her shoulders, is ordinary and filled with small pieces of wheat from the orchard. A princess has beautifully styled, long hair, with jewels and handmade shining locks, washed and brushed and fixed. Her hands are dirty and nails cut short, a peasants hands. A princess has long nails with pretty colors on them, sharp like knives. A princess has beautiful clothes, Maud owns nothing but the rags on her body. She is not a princess. She doesn't look anything remotely close to a princess. A princess wouldn't be able to stand anywhere near her presence, that's how unprincess-like she is. So why is her mother standing up from her chair, and nodding her head?

"We haven't told her anything"

They haven't told her anything.

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