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Unsacred Sunday

Story Reclamation Series 01 – Week 2

The Book of 21 Night Mothers

Chapter 2 – Part I: The Feast of Greed

By Petra Nein

(Has not, and will never, bend to altar or empire.)

The child blinked at the fire. The rain was still falling.

She reached for the last piece of dried plum by her elbow. Petra watched, then nodded.

“You’ll need that,” she said softly. “This part is heavier.”

The child sat straighter.

Petra cleared her throat—not to draw attention, but to prepare something ancient in her chest to be spoken again.

“They called it the Prosperity Table. Built of sandalwood, ironwood, bloodwood—anything that once lived and no longer could. It ran the length of the palace like a scar. The Last King of Capital sat at its head, his chair higher than the rest. No one knew his age. His crown was heavy with gold but lighter than the hunger he’d ignored.”

The fire cracked suddenly. Petra didn’t flinch. She had seen greater flames.

“They brought delicacies from fields that no longer bore anything but dust. Beetles ground into pâté. Melons chilled with the last of the glacier ice. Eggs stolen from birds who hadn’t nested in years. Every course was rarer than the one before, and every guest louder in their applause. Outside, people chewed the bark off trees. Inside, they toasted to progress.”

A low rumble of thunder passed, slow and muttering.

The child’s fingers curled around her knees.

“But among the serving girls was one whose mother had been stitched out of the census. Seamstress’s blood. Her name is not important yet. What matters is her silence. She carried the wine. She carried the knife used to carve the roast. She carried the poison.”

Petra leaned forward just enough for the firelight to catch a line beneath her eye. Not a tear. Just time.

“She did not weep as they laughed. She did not bow. She listened. She watched. And when the King took his goblet, she placed it in his hand without trembling. The nettle root was steeped in silence, and silence is what it gave him.”

The candle hissed. The wind snapped at the door.

The child’s voice came, quiet:

“Did he die?”

Petra looked at her. The corner of her mouth curled, not in a smile but in something older.

“Not right away,” she said. “Some things must suffer before they fall. But fall, he did.”

“Even the stars watched men devour the soil, and blinked in disbelief.”

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