Brian's World

Queen’s Throne

Short story time.  I am going to tell you about a queen.  Recently, she had gotten tired of spending the past 4 years cramped using a small bench for her throne.  Sure, it fit her well and everything but it wasn’t really convenient when she had company joining her on the altar and it required really strangle sized cushions (the peasants didn’t have them in stock at the local market).  She commissioned a new set of thrones to be prepared, two distinct seats to provide her with a much more legitimate (and hopefully comfortable) seating arrangement.

Yes, you would be right to think why did she get two of them?  She certainly hasn’t been married off yet, but she does have a friendly prince that hangs around every now and then.  I think she got it because her family doesn’t usually commission new thrones to be built very often so they wanted to plan for the future.  It’s a fairly optimistic thought and probably makes sense from a the-carpenter-might-die-soon perspective.

Unfortunately for her, whenever she sits in her new throne she immediately recognizes the seat next to her is empty and feels a bit sad, like a part that belongs is missing.  She tried like filling it up with books once and using it for storage but that really didn’t change her mood.  The fact is that the seat is built for a person and can only be properly filled as such.

Sometimes when she sits down she thinks back to the weird bench she had.  While not as nice as her current seat, it never made her feel inadequate or like she was missing anything.  She finds it strange to miss something that she was never really attached to, but it’s strange how you miss something until it’s gone.  It is especially apparent when there is such a clear void.

Unfortunately the bench has probably been chopped up for firewood to help heat the castle or shipped of to a museum somewhere.  I guess she can only wait for the throne to be filled someday, even if it is just by the court jester to make her smile or laugh for a few minutes.