Right then Cressida entered the room with a tray of food and saw Faeryn standing at the window.  “My lady, are you alright?  Shouldn’t you be resting as your father the king said?”

            Faeryn turned back to the stuffy room, irritable at having been both interrupted and reminded of her father’s command.  Did everyone now know of how her father had gotten angry with her and ordered her to her room?  “Yes,” she grumbled, “I suppose.”  She couldn’t hide her frustration, and Cressida stayed, quiet but concerned.  “If I may ask, my lady, what is troubling you?”

            “Oh,” Faeryn sighed in frustration.  She was about to tell Cressida that she shouldn’t ask, and that she should know better than to ask, but instead she told Cressida what she was thinking.  “Oh Cressida, I don’t know what to do!  While I was in the throne room with the Chancellor a man named Byerron appeared before the king and complained about the way the people were being treated.  He seemed like a good man, just and honorable, but my father became angry and imprisoned him.  He then sent me here.”  Faeryn paused, painfully conscious that she was confiding in a servant, wondering what her father would think if he knew that she was speaking to her maid like this, and whether or not Cressida was that kind of servant who would tell all the other maids about the encounter once she got back to the servants quarters.

            Cressida seemed to read her thoughts, and said, “You can keep going ma’am.  I will tell no one what you say.”  She smiled her sweet, caring smile, and Faeryn couldn’t help but divulge all of her doubts and fears.  It was freeing, to have another soul hear her mental struggles and how she felt that her world was coming apart.  Cressida listened patiently and sympathetically until Faeryn had finished talking, and then she spoke; simply, yet her words were heartfelt and true.

            “It seems, my lady, that you fear that your world is changing, it is to some degree, but the change is not yet as great as the change in your mind.  You have seen things that you can’t explain with your old way of thinking, and being who you are you are forced to change the way you think.  It is a difficult thing to do.” She looked at Faeryn sympathetically.  “What you decide now will determine the course of the rest of your life.  Changing the way you think always does that.  And I know you don’t want to.  I know you feel that you are a glass vase at the top of a tall tower, and if you take a step in any direction you will fall into a million pieces, but that is not true.  If you choose rightly, you may yet find a safe path.  But you cannot stand still.  We cannot hold moments in time, we can only welcome them as they come, enjoy them while they are here, and let them go when they pass.  If you try to pretend that things will not change, then the change that has already begun will catch up to you in the end, and you will lose everything.”

            “I don’t want to decide, really,” said Faeryn.  Every time I feel that I’ve come to a decision, I immediately go back on it.  I hate change.”

            Cressida sighed mournfully.  “Everyone does.  No one wants to see a good thing slip away.  But life is change, and life is not always bad.  Change brings sweet things as well as bitter.  You can yet find a better path than the one you are on now.”

            Faeryn’s eyes began to fill with tears against her will, and she could barely whisper past the lump in her throat, “I feel that I am losing my childhood forever.  If I let go of what I have now, I will never get it back.  I have no guarantee of finding, only of losing.”  Two tears made their way down her cheeks as she gazed up at Cressida. 

She continued, “Either choice I make, I loose what I already have, and I still have to grow up.  I do not want to become a woman!  Womanhood is cold and silly and vain, and I don’t want that!  To merely stand around for show because of your looks, marrying and bearing children, and then pretending to still be beautiful even when you are rotting from old age, that is no life!  Where is the purpose!  Why be a woman at all?  Wouldn’t it be better to take a man’s role, and die fighting in battle?  I don’t want my value to only be in my looks!  What about my thoughts and feelings?  No one cares about that when you are a woman.”

            “My lady,” Cressida said, distraught that Faeryn should take such a condemning view of things.  “Why do you think womanhood is this way?”

            “I have seen it,” Faeryn said bitterly.  “All the wives of the courtiers, when they come for the yearly feast held in the Great Hall.  The young are vain and parade their fine gowns and pretty faces, and the old powder and paint themselves and pretend they are young.  All their words are idle gossip, and their thoughts are on themselves.  And they expect me, me, to do the same, to be the leader of the throng, even!  I must look finer than anyone else, and know all the latest gossip, and think of myself more than anyone else.  I will not do it!  I refuse!  I will cut my hair and pretend to be a man the rest of my days!  I…I will kill myself, so that I need not endure this!”  Faeryn fairly exploded in a sob of confused rage.

            “My lady Faeryn,” Cressida said slowly and gently, stroking Faeryn’s hand as she spoke.  “I think what you have seen is the worst example possible of womanhood.  That is not what womanhood is.”  Cressida smiled to herself, and then continued.  “A true woman is…gentle, and patient.  She knows when to speak and when to be silent.  She is merciful to all, and she is nurturing.  A true woman is a person, but she is also a place people can run to when they are hurting.  Oh Faeryn, life isn’t all about marrying and bearing children, but you cannot do a better thing than raise a child.  You are their comforter and their home, and they need you more than anyone else.  You make them into people who can love and care like you do.”  Cressida smiled, thinking of her own mother.  “Surely your own mo—“ Cressida cut herself off, suddenly remembering what she had forgotten, and desperately wishing she hadn’t started speaking. 

            “My mother,” Faeryn said, “is gone, and always has been, for me.  I don’t even have a memory of her.  When I think of her I think of sunlight through the leaves in the trees, and a cream-colored warmth, and the smell of vanilla.  Those who saw her tell me that she was beautiful, and those who knew her say that she was kind.  She is a vision to me, nothing more.  She died in childbirth a year and a half after I was born, and the baby died with her. “  Faeryn looked at Cressida, and the dim light reflected weakly in her eyes and magnified the sadness that was in them.  Her face was a haunting vision, plagued by a sadness that could not be amended.  “Don’t you see?” she whispered.  “Even those women who are truly beautiful die or are abandoned.  There is no happiness for a woman.  Only children are happy, and that is because they are too young to understand the cares of the world.”

**Note: As my story is still in the making, all names, places, and events may be subject to change.** Copyright 2008 Cherise A. Do not reproduce at all without my express permission. If you like what I do, you can link to me instead.