The doors bursted open without warning and the queen marched in together with her guards. Three days had passed since she gave Bozmaroff the most despicable task. The bard shooed away the maids as soon as they left their platter with food and emptied the chamber pot. Well, he tried his luck asking for wine a couple of times but the queen insisted on his sobriety and the fear of her was stronger than the strength of his prayers.

“Are you done?” - the queen asked.

“Done?” - Bozmaroff replied, his back still to the door - “Done?”

“It’s been three days…” - the queen started.

“I haven’t even started and you’re asking if I’m done? Do you even know how long it takes to write a story?!” - he yelled, stirring the guards.

He turned around and the queen’s eyes met a bloodshot gaze of a sleep deprived man.

“Do you have any idea how much this man has written? I need time. This isn’t a mere diary where he complained about his father being stern. It’s his entire life… I have to sift through his musings at breakfast and the dissection of his nightmares. It’s done when it’s done!”

The queen looked at him, silent. Contemplating whether she should have the guards throw him from the window immediatelly or whether she should scold him first.

“I still don’t know how he had half a mind to name me. I didn’t even know the man…”

“No one did” - the queen replied.

“You of all people must’ve known him pretty well. You could at least help me make sense of all this” - he said and waved the papers in his hands

“I knew a part of him” - the queen started after a long sigh - “He had a different part for everyone and chose carefully whom to show which. He had one for me, another for the generals, and a third for his children. I imagine he had a few more I never got to see. They’re all somewhere in these pages, and for some reason he thought you’d find them.”

“Have you read them? The journals?”

“I can’t bear it”

She stepped back toward the guards waiting at the door.

“I’ll come again in three days so make sure you have something by then. And if you dare hold that tone again…” - the rest of the sentence was clear to everyone.

Bozmaroff ignored the dirty looks of the guards who’d gladly break his bones given a sign by the queen. Living in the czar’s chambers, eating for free, and complaning about it to top it off. But they don’t understand the craft, he thought. They have no idea how hard it is to put an idea into words when it’s stuck in your mind, desperately fighting to stay there.

Or maybe that’s the exact thing they knew well.