The princess's garden met me with silence—that special silence that lives in places where time freezes between breaths. Four years... Strange how those words echo in the soul, like an echo in a forgotten well. Four years—and here I am again, among roses that remember the touch of my childish palms better than I remember that lost childhood.
The princess's flowers always seemed like living beings to me, each with its own temperament and whims. White roses—proud aristocrats, red ones—passionate dancers, yellow—eternally melancholic, like autumn leaves not yet decided whether to fall. Their scent dissolved in the coolness of dew, creating a sense of a world where time stood still in sweet uncertainty.
I came here not out of sentimentality—no, sentimentality had become a luxury I forbade myself back when I realized the world is too cruel for soft hearts. I came on business. Vases needed to be made—many vases for my own practice.
My gift—if it's a gift and not a curse in the mask of blessing—allows me to create from ice what ordinary masters couldn't craft in a month of meticulous work. Purple ice, rare and strange, like my own thoughts in moments of complete honesty with myself. But there's one cruel catch, and sometimes it seems the gods have a rather dark sense of humor: my creations live only twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of perfection—and then nothing. Like a metaphor for human happiness.
In four hours, I made nearly a hundred vases. My hands moved on their own, almost without the mind's involvement, while thoughts wandered the labyrinths of memory. Each vase was unique—one graceful like a swan's neck, another stern like a judge's verdict, a third playful like childish laughter. And each doomed to vanish. They melted like tears in the wind, leaving only wet traces on the ground. Perhaps their beauty lay in that—not pretending to be eternal.
My strength melted with the vases. Strange pattern: the more beauty I create, the more of myself I give. As if the Universe takes payment for every moment of perfection I allow myself to craft. And the payment is a piece of my own essence.
It was in that moment, when I was nearly exhausted, the boundary between reality and dreams thin as a rose petal, that she entered the garden. Princess Eley. Time stumbled upon seeing her and for an instant forgot how to proceed.