St.Romovna

St. Romovna as a cold place, and while she had never meant the weather, that was always what I had imagined. A glittering, frozen city, and whenever we were forced to visit I always tried to pack a large coat, convinced I would be shivering the trip away.

is was not St. Romovna, and here the world was blissfully warm. The garden is wondrous this time of year, flowers filling every corner me as birdsong fills the air. I’m running through the towering hedges, somewhere far from the palace steps. The palace grounds expand over thousands of acres, and we’d always said we could run forever and never find the edge. That ha

The buildings seem so small, wrapped around the twisting streets, with the Dvina splitting and encompassing it all. The water sparkles in the dying light, and I can’t help but smile. He’s right, it’s all so different up here. Seen from the sky, St. Romovna was calm, and truly beautiful.

They had yet to be completely repaired and I ride into the plaza. Workers and guards in half uniform leap out of the way to not be trampled. My eyes gaze over the progress that has been made, and it's breathtaking in a fashion. The skeletons of buildings stretch out far into the city. But at the top of it all is the nearly finished royal palace. A cold chill from memory runs trough my blood as I remember holding the ruins after the fire.

☀t for me to register it all, that this skeleton of a city is the St. Romovna I once knew so well. The streets are like patchwork, filled with scorched and ruined buildings right alongside newly constructed ones. Shacks fill the alleys, reminiscent of the ones that once stood in the slums on St Peter's Island. Even stranger is the lack of people, the emptiness is foreign compared to the crowded, bustling crowds that once swarmed through this city at all hours. For a moment I'm almost convinced we're in the wrong place, because there is no way this gorod—no, this banlieue...this bidonville—could ever be the beautiful old city we once reigned in.

But it is.

Despite my denial, I can't help but see the old St Romovna struggling to shine through. The cobblestones are the same as they've always been, and the buildings that have been rebuilt are all painted in bright colors, exactly like the ones that had stood there before. Despite the season, frigid winds blow up from the river, and the few people we pass are all bent into it, protecting themselves from the ever-present chill in a way that only St Romovnans do. The domes of Saint Therese's Cathedral glitter above, keeping watch over the whole city with an air of untarnished divinity, and the palace—

The palace.

Any doubts in my mind disappear the moment I lay eyes on it, memories flood back in full force, and the past two years seem imagined.

They've rebuilt most of it by now, almost an eerily perfect replica of the grand eccentricity that once stood in the same place. It holds the same beauty, the same extravagance, the same coldness that I always remembered, and I can't help but stare at it in the distance as if it were some horrifying, ungodly beast. Everything I've always tried to hard to forget hits me in an instant, paralyzing me for a moment as the pain and emotions flood through. It is the need to keep moving only that allows me to pull my shellshocked gaze away, forcing myself to look at something, anything, other than that nightmare. I tighten my grip on the reigns and look straight ahead, trying desperately not to crack in the middle of the streets of St Romovna.

Breathe, Maria. Just breathe.

staring straight ahead at the hell we're approaching: Saint Peter's Island, the trushchoby of St Romovna. My breath hitches slightly when I first see it, the memories hitting like a fatal blow. I had never planned on coming here again, but if there's one thing I've learned by now, it's that life doesn't exactly work out the way you plan. So I take a deep breath, sit up a bit straighter, and continue on, pretending desperately not to be shaken by the place around me. It's just another street...just another street....