By CB Droege

She came out of nowhere.

She had to have come from somewhere, of course. She must have been someone’s sister or wife or daughter. It’s not like she didn’t have an origin, or that the universe dragged her from its vast brow fully formed to place her in our path.

It seemed like it though, that dark evening when she stepped out onto the balcony of the palace and stood, waiting for all of us. She did not call to us. No trumpets blared. No criers came around to announce her. She simply stood out upon the balcony which overlooks the great gardens. She wore a sky-blue gown which billowed in the wind; she held the great copper scepter, in all its beautiful simplicity, in the crook of her arm; her silver hair trailed smoothly over her shoulder, and she stood.

The word spread slowly. Over the course of an hour, children woke their mothers, and men grabbed their brothers away from their late-night work, and all of us came out to stand in the gardens. We were silent and stunned and staring up at her. When all of us had gathered, she raised the scepter high and spoke in a clear voice. “The king is dead.” She waited a moment for this to sink in, and for shocked whispers to finish running through the crowd. Then she continued. “I claim this throne by right of conquest, and by approval of the council of elders.”

The already deep silence grew deeper, and we could, for a moment hear the stars turning in the sky, then one voice rang out from somewhere near the foot of the tower, “Long live the queen!” And we all took it up as a chant. We intoned for a quarter hour at least, her lack of any reaction at all to our voices serving only to amplify us. We stopped only because the mysterious woman quit the balcony. Then the bells rang out, and a new era for us began.

Author Bio: CB Droege is a fantasy author and poet living in Munich. Recently his fiction was collected in RapUnsEl and Other Stories, and a selection of his poetry appeared in the Drawn to Marvel anthology. His first novel, Zeta Disconnect was released in 2013. He recently edited Dangerous to Go Alone! An Anthology of Gamer Poetry.
Learn more at cbdroege.com