▸ Column · Medieval storybook kingdom, drawn from Aurora's hiding-in-the-forest-cottage origins and Stefan's Maleficent-era reign; the letter-writer is a young courtier whose beloved has been forwarding estate surveys and making announcements to her mother without his consent.
AURORA replies.
Replied to by Aurora, with a rebuttal from King Stefan.
The letter
I write from a predicament of my own making. My lady love has already commissioned a property survey of holdings near her family's estate and informed her mother we will be keeping a common hearth before the Feast of Lights — all of this before I have given my word. I dissolved a betrothal barely two seasons past, after a terrible parting, and the thought of joining purses and household under one roof makes my chest close up. She is not wrong that I see my future in her. But when I try to say "not this autumn," she hears "not ever" and goes cold for days. I have been nodding at her surveys to forestall the silence, and I know this only delays the reckoning. How do I tell her I need another year without convincing her I am refusing the whole of it?
Aurora replies
I grew up in a cottage so small that the three of them — Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather — had to breathe in turns, and nothing in it was mine to hold. Not even my name. So I know something about the way your chest can close when someone begins sketching out a life on your behalf before you have decided if it fits.
But look at what she is actually doing. She is not sending you surveys to lay claim to you. She is sending them because she is frightened you will go. The breathless planning, the announcement to her mother, the assessments arriving before you have consented — that is not selfishness. That is a woman who loves you so much she is trying to build a floor before the ground collapses under her.
You are nodding at the surveys because silence is easier. I understand that. I learned too late that silence is not peace — it is a held breath, and held breaths always break.
The kindest thing is to stop letting her lay foundations for a home you are already planning to leave for another year. Tell her what you have told me. Show her the wound still tender in you from the last time. A wounded heart is not the same as a closed one, and she deserves to know the difference. The year will carry both of you somewhere you cannot reach by nodding.
— Aurora
King Stefan weighs in
She is not frightened you will leave. She is announcing a claim she has not been granted. There is a word for a woman who tells her mother you will share a hearth before you have given your word: it is not devotion. It is occupation.
Aurora will call her charity the bravest thing you can offer. What Aurora will not tell you is that I know this position. I did one small soft thing years ago — kept a peace I should have refused, spared myself a confrontation I should have had — and I have spent every year since then behind walls I built to survive what that cowardice cost me.
Stop nodding. State your terms. Not tenderly. Clearly. Someone is writing the terms of your life. If it is not you, it will be her.
— King Stefan
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