legend

She was always obsessed with legends and legacy, with the stories we tell about ourselves and the ones we find ourselves trapped in. I don't think she fully realized how many of her decisions were based around that--not on what was the best course of action, but on what would make the best story, would leave the most lasting legacy. All of us went along with it, to some extent. Sure, some of us managed to convince ourselves that we were merely humoring her, but she had a way of carrying people along with her. Sometimes she did it deliberately, but usually, I like to tell myself, it was simply her nature.

When she needed to escape the city, when she told me she needed someone to take her place while she raised an army, so the usurpers wouldn't suspect anything, when she told me that there was no one else she trusted with this task, the strength of the story she was trying to tell was almost enough to convince me. There's a romance in it--the noble sacrifice, the tearful departure, the heroic rescue--a whole army, a whole war, fought just for me. She had it all planned out, and it probably would have been beautiful. The problem is I had other plans, and she did not particularly care about them.

So as soon as she had fled, I did, too. Whatever legend she was going to craft, she would have to do without my help. I'd spent too much time being a character in someone else's story, and by the end she had lost the ability to see me--to see anyone, I think--as anything else. She knew that she had a great destiny, and she was terrified that that destiny might somehow be out of her hands.

Perhaps that's why she drowned her city and broke the world. And perhaps that's why, when I found a new life far from that cursed place, I never told anyone her story. I could grant her that much--I wasn't going to be the one to ruin the legend she crafted.