dizzy

I never liked crowds, but it got worse over the years. Every time I was forced into a large gathering, I was afraid that I might lose a piece of myself to the crowd and never be able to find it again. Sometimes I was afraid that I would return diminished; others, that I would return different, changed. It didn't help that I was good at people--not as good as my sister, but we had both learned to use a smile as a mask. So inevitably, when we needed to win someone over, one of us would be sent. And every time I would steel myself, hide behind my mask, and try my very best not to drift away.

It worked right up until it didn't. The princess needed allies--this was just before she got too paranoid to continue trying to build a coalition--and she wanted any support we could muster. I tried to protest, as I always did, and she brushed off my concerns, as she always did. So I traveled, I dressed up, I tried to steel myself, and I put on a smile.

Panic gripped me as soon as I walked into the ballroom. My heart pounded, the world spun, and I stumbled my way into a corner, murmuring apologies to the guests, hoping this would eventually pass. Someone--my traveling companion, I assumed--guided me out to a balcony, and sat with me until I calmed down.

"I'm fine," I said, once the imminent sense of being attacked had faded into something somewhat tolerable. "Just got a bit dizzy." And I smiled immediately, while my companion frowned at me.

"That must be it," she said. "Poor rations on the trail. Entirely my fault."

"Right," I said, and spent what felt like another eternity trying to get my breathing under control. If I could just get my breathing back to normal, everything would be fine.

"You know," she said, "if you're feeling faint, there's still some food at the inn. I could cover for you here." She hesitated, then added, "It was, after all, absolutely unconscionable of me not to take care of you on the road." And there it was: a way out. Give up, go home, and take care of myself, or hope that my fear of crowds had abated enough that I could endure the evening and maybe achieve someone else's goal for them.

She escorted me through the crowd and out the entrance. We'd think of a story to tell the princess on the road. Much later, we'd wonder, over a bottle of wine she nicked from the cellar, if this was what sent her down the road to paranoia. None of us were quite the same after.