Thread: Sleeping Kingdom (Collector x Autumn Queen)

Nethys awoke in the place she usually did in a small little cupboard in the Queen's room. Nethys had never known anyplace else. Sometimes she dreamed of a forest, with noonday light filtering through the leaves of the canopy, creating dancing shadows on the ground. She'd shared these dreams with the Queen once, when she was much younger, but had only been laughed at. It was just more proof that the little elf was nothing more than a beast after all, she had been given accommodations in a castle and all she could dream of was the outdoors. Only an animal did that. Everything Nethys did was used against her in one way or another. She was a savage for using one too many sugar cubes in the Queen's daily tea, a brute for scrubbing her back too roughly during a bath and a wanton for accidentally making eye contact with a visiting noble one time during a feast. Nethys was never mad at the queen for yelling at her, though. After all, the Queen was the wisest and most beautiful woman in the kingdom of course she would know better than stupid, sub-human Nethys. Still, the elf tried her best to please the Queen, and any other member of the royal family, really, hoping to one day hear the Queen praise her. And she knew that the Queen was capable of praise after all, she praised Prince Caspian all the time, so there was something Nethys was doing wrong that he was doing right. If she could figure out what that was, maybe she could finally figure out how to be a good pet for the Queen. Nethys was a petite little thing even for elves. She stood at 5'3 with lank, dirty brown hair and deep green eyes that always sparkled when given a command, a chance to do something right, and became deep pools of sorrow whenever she invariably made a mistake. She was thin, practically skin and bones, having survived mostly off of table scraps her whole life, and had a pair of long, pointed ears that moved to capture new sounds or to reflect her emotions. There was a chip missing from the top of her left ear, about an inch away where her ear met her skull, that had been torn out in a particularly vicious beating she'd received the previous year when she'd been ill and accidentally stumbled into the queen. Nethys wasn't allowed to look her betters in the eye, let alone touch them, and her clumsiness had caused the Queen to drop a wine glass, staining the rug with wine. Needless to say, the cost of the rug had been taken out of Nethys' hide. Today was not a special day for Nethys, though it really should have been. Had she been told when she was born, she'd have known that it was her eighteenth birthday. But Nethys had never celebrated a birthday. Birthdays didn't matter for animals, though she'd always been confused by this statement since the king liked to celebrate the birthday of his favorite horse. Nethys had simply decided that the horse was a more useful animal than she was and strived to be as beloved as the horse was to little success. Nethys slipped silently out of her cupboard and tiptoed across the room to make sure that the curtains were closed tight. The Queen did not like a draft, nor did she like to be awakened by sunlight in her face. Nethys picked up the bell beside the Queen's bed, moving with silence and grace that no human could ever hope to attain, and held it against her palm, making sure that the bell made not a sound as she walked towards the door to the Queen's room. Opening the door just wide enough that she could slip through, but not wide enough that the light would disturb the sleeping Queen, Nethys slipped outside and padded silently down to the end of the hall, where she finally rang the bell. Nethys had discovered this spot after endless trial and error, determining that it allowed the sound to travel to the servant's quarters without the Queen hearing it. The bell signified that a bath should be drawn and ready and the breakfast should be served to the Queen as soon as possible. Nethys then slipped soundlessly back into the bedroom, making sure that the light didn't wake the Queen, placed the bell silently back on the Queen's bedside table and climbed back into her cramped little cupboard and hoped that the Queen would wake up in a good mood for not having seen her at all during the process of waking up.