Wishes and Whispers and Sibilant Hisses

When loneliness is all she's known, what will she risk for the promise of love?

Bound to a life of unending isolation, a young woman squanders her days in a castle overgrown with ivy and abandonment.
Her mother slumbers, unwaking, on a canopied bed, a queen's imperial body breathing without a soul.
The king bends over her like a crooked twig, mourning, weeping constant tears that become a stream which flows down to the village.
The young woman, consigned to this solitude, roves the echoing chambers of the castle, with their rat-gnawed carpets and unslept-in beds. She seeks joy in dancing through the orchard, the herb garden, humming off-key, her fingers stained with blueberries, her melancholy smiles redcurrant-bright.
Until he arrives.
A stranger clad in dark attire and unknown intent.
He turns her father's tears to blood and hunts the young woman down.
He corners her in the orchard, ensorceling her in place, and asks: "What will you sacrifice to save him?"
But as she ventures into his offer and dares to meet his desires with her own, the question really becomes: what will she do to save herself?
And how much will she risk for something that might become love?