Conflicted feelings (4)

Thanks to her not so short power nap with her father earlier, there was no sense of drowsiness in the girl even late into the night. Moreover her mind was working overtime trying to figure out the reason why her father seemingly wanted her to stay home.

Sitting in front of the fireplace with her hands outstretched, the girl thinks to herself.

'Why would he not want me to go? This is important to big sis, I should be there with her!'

Death was a difficult and scary thing to face but that only served to motivate the girl to go with her sister even more. Her sister should have someone there to be with her. Yes, their parents were going to be there as well, but the girl wanted to be too.

"Ha…"

The more the girl thought about it, the more frustrated she became. However her father not wanting her to come with them was not the only reason for her irritation. 

'This isn't working.'

For weeks on end the girl's been sitting by the fireplace trying to tune her body to the mana it was releasing. It was something that she read that would help induce her awakening, at least in theory. The books never actually mentioned how to do it exactly, only ever describing it as "something you'll feel". Frustration was building up.

'Ha… okay, okay. Maybe I should stop here for tonight.'

Closing the covers of the fireplace, the girl crawled back into her bed and tried to go to sleep. However, even after an hour of trying she still felt too rested to fall asleep. Sitting up from her bed, the girl looked outside and caught a glimpse of the moon from her window.

Seeing the symbol of a goddess, the girl thought back to the book that she rediscovered earlier. If physical means had yet to work, maybe divinity is the answer. The book had a lot of tales relating to the gods both old and current. However with it being a general book it only had a brief description of a god and a story or two before moving to the next one.

'Maybe I can find a book just about Lady Sol.'

She remembers having read a tale about Sol and the imperial family resulting in them always receiving her blessing. Maybe there was something she needed to do to get the blessing to seem more apparent.

'Yeah, okay… that might get me something.'

While she already read the tale regarding the imperial family, there was no way that that was the only case of Sol giving her blessing. There had to be more than just them. Standing up from her bed, the girl headed to the library.

****

It was already the dead of night so there was no need for her to use the vents to avoid the eyes of the servants. While she was a princess she was also still a young girl, meaning her parents have a curfew in place even without accounting for tomorrow's events. She was going against their request of sleeping early but as she had been trying for an hour with no hint of sleepiness, the girl would rather be productive.

The imperial palace's library was massive. Unlike the other areas of the palace which were limited to just one room, the library was the size of a building itself in the palace, taking up three floors. It would be quite the hassle for someone who came to the area for the first time. But visiting enough times, one would naturally figure out where everything was. 

Contrary to what her actions with her studies would suggest, the girl was quite the frequent visitor of the library. Her laziness towards her studies was more because what she was being forced to study was of no interest to her. Reaching the library, the girl found that someone left the lights on.The girl paid little attention to it and went down to the second floor of the library, immediately going to the section about the gods.

Scanning through the spines of the books, she found a few related to the goddess she wanted to know more of. Tales regarding the goddess of the sun Sol. There were quite a few of them but there was one with a gold lined spine that caught her attention. Disarming the enchantment on the book and pulling it out, the girl found herself even more intrigued. The cover depicted the goddess handing down a sphere of light to a group of people beneath her. The girl stared at the silhouettes at the bottom of the book for a bit.

'I hope one of them can be me.'

With a heavy sigh and an even heavier heart the girl opened the book. Though it told of history, unlike in her usual studies it was actually interesting as it was mostly about the goddess. Stories of her coming down from the heavens and mingling with the common folk or granting blessing to those she had deemed worthy of them. The blessings in particular caught the girl's attention and she paid extra attention to them.

"Hmm…"

Reading through the accounts of those who were blessed and the ones close to them, a small pattern formed.

"The old Okiryo family, the Ramfurah family, the Yomelza family…"

The blessings were earned only by one person originally but afterwards it was given to the rest of their family. Supposedly the blessings were lost after a member of the family did something deemed horrible and caused the entire family to lose the goddess' favor.

A terrifying thought came to the girl's mind as she read that the blessings were able to be lost.

"Ha-have we done something? H-have I… done something?"

Something that could cause them to lose favor with the goddess. That was highly unlikely. There was no way that anyone in her family did something that would cause such a thing. They were the perfect depiction of wonderful people that would earn rather than lose a blessing. Not to mention that they all had the blessing as they could all manipulate light magic and their fire had a golden hue.

That meant that the imperial family had not lost the favor of the goddess that much was obvious. Then, what about her? Why has the blessing not affected her? Was her not awakening really the cause or did she somehow lose favor with the goddess?

"No… no…"

The girl slowed down her beating heart and stopped her train of thought.There was no way that she could have done something like that. She was overthinking things. It probably really is just because she has yet to awaken on her own. The girl closed the book and put it back in it's place. It had only been fifteen minutes since she came to the library and she was still nowhere near sleepy. Trying to kill some time, she picked a few more books related to the other gods to see if there were some things that could help her there.

Unfortunately they were almost the same. After skimming through a few books and putting them back, she glanced at the clock and saw that she had been reading for an hour. Finally she was tired.

"Mission accomplished I guess."

The girl put the last book back and turned off the lights of the library.

****

It was rude to turn off the lights of a room when there was someone else still there but the girl had no idea that they were even there.

"Princess?"

Unbeknownst to the girl, Arsu also happened to be there getting some new books to read before bringing them back to her room.

"I wonder what book she was reading."

Turning the lights back on, Arsu headed to the spot where the girl was reading. Much like how one can tell if a lightbulb has been turned on recently, the books in the library also had a similar feature.

"Hmm…"

Arsu ran her hands across the shelves and found what she was looking for. She pulled out a book that was slightly warmer than the rest.

"Under Luna's light?"

Arsu quickly skimmed through the book and tilted her head.

'Why was she reading at this hour?'

Though she tended to not leave her room most of the time, Arsu was still somewhat aware of the happenings in the palace. She knew that the girl had yet to have her awakening so she expected it to be a book about helping her with that.

'Why read this? Of all things?'

Thinking to herself for a moment, she made a guess. As the imperial family was going to the cathedral of gods tomorrow, perhaps she just wanted to know more about the gods. 

"Not the most unthinkable thing I guess."

However, the appearance that the girl had was lingering in Arsu's mind. The choice was rather odd as well. Choosing to read about a different deity from their matron. The time that she was reading was also suspect.

The library was open to everyone at all times, so why was the girl reading this at such an ungodly hour? While it could have no deeper meaning, Arsu's intuition was telling her that there was more.

"But what could it be…"

Considering that the girl was basically reading in secret, asking was probably not an option. Though that was the case, there were some people that Arsu could ask about this.

As she was considering going to their quarters now, Arsu catches a glimpse of the outside.

"Ok, maybe another time."

While to her it was practically noon but to everyone else it was midnight. Though she would be a bit restless about it, waking them up at such a time would be rude.

With no more progress to be made on the problem, Arsu looked for a few books to bring back to her room and closed the lights of the library behind her.

****

"Princess Mira? Princess Mira? P-please wake up."

"Ngh… what time is it?"

"I-it's just after six o'clock but the empress told me to wake you up now."

"Ngh…"

Even in her groggy state the girl knew why her mother would ask that of her maid. But knowing and doing are two separate things.

"Five more minutes…"

Much like a siren's trance, it required either an immense amount of willpower or the help of someone else to escape the grasps of a warm and cozy bed. Add in the fact that the girl basically only slept a few hours ago, which made it that much more difficult on her own.

"P-princess, y-you've been saying that for an hour now."

Peeking through the gaps in her eyes, the girl saw her redheaded maid with eyes looking like they were holding back tears. Her voice was shaky and she was trembling as she tried to wake the girl up. Seeing such a sight, the girl pulled herself away from her bed's warm embrace.

"Alright, alright… I'm up…"

Well she was physically up anyways. Mentally she was still very much in that bed. However her maid was thankful just for that.

"Thank you Princess. Let's go downstairs and get you some breakfast. Kara's by one of the parlors arranging the dress you'll be wearing today, so we'll head to her once you eat."

"Ok…"

The girl rubbed her eyes as she responded to her maid. After a quick combing of the girl's hair just to get rid of the bed hair, she's escorted to the dining hall.

There, the rest of her family were already in their seats.

"Good morning Mira."

"Ha… good morning dad…"

Her maid mentioned it was six o'clock which was around an hour earlier than even her sister would wake her.

"You look… awfully sleepy still. Did you not go to bed early like I told you?"

"N-no! I went to bed early."

Technically, the girl was telling the truth. Of course she knew that her mother was talking about actually going to sleep early and not simply going to her bed. Her mother squinted her eyes at her before seemingly relenting.

"If you say so. Sit down, let's eat then get you ready."

"O-ok."

The girl sat down next to her sister facing their father and mother, then the family began eating as the food arrived course by course.

****

After eating they all went to different parlors to get ready for the day's events. The girl was escorted by her head maid to the parlor where her other maid was. Upon entering, the orange headed maid stopped looking at the clothes and gave the girl a greeting.

"Good morning Princess."

"Good morning Kara."

"See anything you like?"

Her maid gestured to the array of clothing behind her. They were all rather fancy, lined with gold trimmings, dresses fit for a princess. 

"Why are they all so… dark."

"Well…"

Her maids scratched the back of their hands before answering her.

"You are… going to a funeral Princess. It's sort of a custom to wear clothing that is on the darker end.

"Is that so?"

The girl scanned the rack of clothes once again. If that was the custom, she would follow suit.

"Anything on the rack is fine right?"

"Yes Princess."

"Then I'll choose this one."