Page 92 - NS 2024

A New Kingdom Grace Estus
“You have to run, the king is going to find you!”
I ran as ast as I could as my sword swung rhythmically at my side. e cobblestone ground echoed
beneath my feet as I joined my valiant companions. We ducked beneath a side door, one that only someone of our size could fit through. e king stumbled past us. If he saw us, we would surely be exiled. Our magical powers were too strong for the kingdom to endure.
“It’s getting dark and cold out there. You kids need to do your homework!”
It was always my mother who interrupted our playtime. e cold and dark forces of the world didn’t seem too threatening to us, considering that our stories consisted of evil kings, bloody sword ghts, and magical powers. It felt like earlier and earlier every day that our mother beckoned us inside. We didn’t understand the workings of autumn. We didn’t understand that earlier sunsets and the chillier nights were caused by nature, not by our mother.
My mother is not here anymore, but neither is the backyard which was once our kingdom. e backyard is still there; it’s not like the grass was ripped from the Earth, but our playset was ripped down once our parents decided that me and my brother’s childhood had ended. e grass no longer seems so bright, and most importantly, I no longer know the feel of the grass like I used to. I used to feel it beneath my bare feet. Now, I can only hold the blades of grass in my hand, wondering if the ground recognizes me aer all these years.
My playmates consisted of my older brother, Owen, and our next-door neighbor, Sienna. Owen is two years older than me, and Sienna is a year older. When I picture both of them, I don’t think of what they look like now. I still think of them as children: Owen, with his blond bangs and large eyes. In pictures, he has the distinct look of a child to him. His expression always wavered perfectly between carelessness and curiosity. To me, Owen always seemed so big.
I remember Sienna by her perfectly patterned braids. A girl in her class did them for her. She tried to teach me how to braid her hair, but I was never good at it. She always had bows in her hair to match her outt. Sienna’s mom bought the bows for her, but it was Sienna herself who picked the bows out each day, not her mother. It was something that never occurred to me as a child, but I can count on one hand the number of times that Sienna’s mom was the one to interrupt our playing sessions. I rendered her opportunity for uninterrupted playtime as a point of jealousy.
Owen and Sienna were inscribed in my memory this way because it was the best version I had of them in my head. Before the funeral, I hadn’t seen Owen in two years. It’s not that we’d been deliberately avoiding each other, we just hadn’t gone out of our way to see each other. We didn’t have much in common anymore.
Sienna moved to a new neighborhood during middle school because her father got a new job. She moved around the same time our parents destroyed our playset. All I ever saw of her was