Clymnea-Jeweled Amber

From Queen Cymnea of Thelusia, Dowager Queen of Amber to King Random of Amber.

On my windowsill sits a sparrow. Its colors are gray and gray, shades of gray. It has several blue feathers. It must have sat my sill before. It hops on my finger and gazes at me adoringly. I suffer its admiration with patience and remember a time when a man stared at me with such adoration. I reach out and stroke its back softly, watching one feather change blue to match the others. It flies off, circling

I remember sitting in a folding chair under a canvas sheet in front of a tent my husband and I lived in while building our first house. The birds flocked to entertain me there too. I stroked their feathers and from time to time turned a few blue. The tent was something he had conjured. It was large, with 12 poles. It had a shade attached to the front that covered our kitchen stove, our larder boxes, and our two chairs. In the evening we would sit in our chairs, sing, talk, and laugh. He would smoke a pipe sometimes and I would make us tea.

Inside a cacophony of pillows rested strewn about. On those pillows, by candle light, we conceived our first son. He was born there as well. We lived in that tent for a year. I nursed my son there while our first house was built. I made three meals a day for my husband there. I also took care of several cats as well as a number of friendly local critters.

We cut the logs from fresh stands of pine. Cut them by hand and built a two story house of smooth cut logs. The house had five rooms on the first floor and four on the second. Near the back was a large stable for a dozen horses. There was a smithy shop, a saw mill, a storage room. There was a privy house. In that house I conceived and bore two more sons. My husband and I raised 3 sons in those primitive conditions. They were the happiest days of my life. Each of my sons built tree houses and played in the mud and rode horses like madmen. One of my sons could never stay clean. Sometimes my father –in-law and my mother-in-law came and helped out. In time my husband and I, with our three sons, began laying out the plans for a mighty castle. We laid out long approaches and designed clever passages. We laid out long avenues and open plazas. We sunk stakes into the ground to mark lines of approach and access.

Random. You are King of Amber. I know that. But you must remember this. That tent sat where the courtyard of the castle Amber is. My husband was Oberon, in his youth. My children were Osric, who I called Sunshine, Finndo, who I called Pouter, and Benedict, who, I called Brown Ben.

The trees were from the Forest of Arden. The house was where the Theater of Malrien os Marin is on the Grand Concourse. The castle we laid plans for is the castle of Amber. In the castle we built Oberon and I sat on the thrones of Amber for a thousand years.

Now you rule there. You have the gall to ask me to leave my seclusion to come and bend my knee and give you an Article of Submission? I won’t.

The Unicorn gave you my husband’s throne because he cannot be bothered to rule there any longer. Your wife, while lovely, sits in my chair. Oberon may have married and his harlots may have borne children, but I am his wife, till the pattern falls and death takes us. I recognize no children but mine as legitimate, though I will not be unkind to any of them.

I recognize you as King of Amber and I render my fealty unto thee as is your due. But I who ruled Amber as Queen for a thousand years will not bend knee before any king except Oberon. Accept this as the most I can do.

Cymnea 'Dowager Queen of Amber. Duchess of Al a Marat of Thelusia