Click the green flag and listen. I takes a sec to start. Chapter 4 April 15, 1578 Dear diary, I keep thinking about that boy. Not about what had happened, but what could have. If I had been any slower than I already was. If there had been something in the way. He survived, but just barely. I did not think about clothing at the time. Only later, when my hands finally stopped shaking, did I realize how heavy everything had felt in the water. The fabric, the sleeves, the weight of it pulling at me as though the sea itself had decided I was not meant to move quickly. I suppose I had always known noble clothing was not made for much more than standing still. I had simply never been required to move before. This morning I noticed it again while dressing. It takes two attendants to help me into a proper gown. One to hold the fabric. One to tighten the laces. A third if the sleeves are particularly wide. I stood there while they worked in silence, as though I were something fragile being assembled rather than a person getting dressed. One of them—Lotte, the younger seamstress—struggled with the clasp at my wrist. It was too tight, or perhaps her fingers were simply tired. Either way, she apologized three times before she succeeded. “It is fine,” I told her. And I meant it. But afterward I kept flexing my hand beneath the sleeve, wondering how often I had been quietly restricted without noticing. At lessons I asked Frau Martha about uniforms again.
Not directly at first. I asked why sailors knot their sleeves when they work. She said it is because the sea does not care for loose things—it takes them. Then she looked at me for a long moment and added, “and neither do docks.” That made me think of the harbor. Of wood, and salt, and hands reaching for anything stable. In the afternoon I went to the seamstress room in the lower wing of the palace. It always smells faintly of thread and warm iron. Bolts of fabric are stacked like quiet, sleeping animals along the walls. The women there bowed when I entered, but they did not seem alarmed. I think they are used to me now in a way most of the court is not. “I would like some fabric to make something,” I said. The seamstresses paused. Not because they had not heard me, but because they seemed to be deciding whether they had heard me correctly at all. One of them blinked. Another lowered her hands slowly, as though sudden movement might break the moment. “Fabric?” Lotte repeated carefully. “Yes,” I said. “Plain fabric. Enough to make something simpler.” There was a quiet exchange between them then—quick glances, the kind people use when they are trying to confirm that no one else is about to be punished for misunderstanding a princess. Not refusal. Never refusal. Just disbelief that a princess had asked for material instead of a finished idea already shaped by someone else’s hands. Lotte tilted her head slightly. “For riding, Your Highness?” “No,” I said. Then hesitated. “For walking.” That answer seemed to satisfy no one. Still, they brought me fabric. Linen, mostly. Some wool. Things meant for servants and fishermen, not for court. I ran my hand over them and realized how much lighter they were than what I usually wear. It felt almost improper, like touching something I had not been meant to notice. I asked them to lay one of my older gowns on the table. The blue one. The sleeves alone took up half the surface. “Is it possible,” I asked slowly, “to make something like this… but less?” One of the older seamstresses let out a small breath through her nose. Not a laugh. Something closer to disbelief. “Less fabric?” she asked. “Yes,” I said. “Less of everything that gets in the way.” They did not argue. That is something I have learned about the people who work in the palace. They rarely argue with ideas from above. They simply try to translate them into something that will not get them punished later. She seemed confused but still replied, “it is possible but i dont see why-” lotte shot her a look and she stopped talking. I asked them to bring certain amounts of each fabric to my room after dinner tomorrow and walked into the hallway, but I could not stop thinking about the water. About how quickly it moved, and how slowly I had moved inside it once my clothes were heavy. I wondered how many things in this kingdom are heavy without anyone admitting it. In the evening I saw Mia briefly in the corridor. She was surrounded, as always—two attendants adjusting her hair, a page carrying her gloves, a maid following just in case she changed her mind about something mid-step. She did not look at me at first. Then she did. “Emilia,” she said, as though testing the sound of it. “Your hair looks frizzy today.” “I went to the harbor yesterday,” I replied. “Of course you did.” She smiled slightly, as if this explained everything about me. Then she continued walking before I could say anything else. No one stopped her. No one ever does. I watched her go for a moment. Everything about her movement was controlled by other people, and yet she still looked effortless, as if the world arranged itself for her comfort without instruction. I think that is what people mean when they say she is meant to rule. Not that she tries. But that everything already bends toward her. Later, I returned to the seamstress room. They had not finished calculating. Of course they had not. Ideas do not become real things in a single afternoon. But they had begun sketching something on paper.numbers and measurements for how much cloth i would need.even by taking away most of the underskirts and the Reifrock, it still looked too heavy. Still, I could imagine moving in it. I could imagine running. More tomorrow. — Emilia
