Long live the Queen!
I thought it would be fun to try translating my text sketch about Deiran/MC into English. It's not my native language, but I tried!
At first, it all felt surreal, like a foreign layer on her skin and a nervous lump of laughter in the pit of her lungs. The Queen's carriage was brought— and then they simply dropped her, freshly crowned (a word that tasted like meat on the tongue), into the ballroom, already beautiful, wrapped in a gown and flowers. The King whispered sweet nightmares, everything around her looked out with moon-sized eyes from every corner, and instead of music, there was bleeding in her own veins. "Is it possible to make your own blood flow like an overture? Apparently, now it is," Diana thought absently. She laughed.
Laughter was the motif of everything in this world. Despite the metaphor of a cage in a schizophrenic world-mind, it was as if there were no boundaries at all: the crooked castle melted under the force of the wind, the strawberry fields streamed fresh berries in all directions, the forest lasted exactly as long as the King and the Queen desired. Now the Queen, too, had power over something.
How wonderful that in some places, "something" can become everything.
Diana, in fact, wanted little — even back then, behind the counter, she'd wanted to go home, lie down and not think, saving her strength for small feats. But Deiran, her dear King, who came dressed as a jester, had never been interested in small feats (unless it was turning a large hat into a smaller one). And his desire to be everything and to be sinuous in every step was transmitted through the air ("Air is also in his head. Air is also him," Diana thought tenderly. Strange how some thoughts become touching after just one day of working in a low-paying job) directly to his favorite artist.
And Diana created, imitating her husband's grand gestures and disregard for material things, cultivating living stars that bleated like lambs, building terrifying huts from tombstones, graciously inviting every brave inhabitant of the kingdom to search for their name within, and changing the cut of her dress every time she caught sight of her reflection — Dairan had thoughtfully hung heavy silver mirrors on every tree. Whenever she changed her dress, the Queen briefly revealed her milky flesh, and the melody of her heartbeat became deafeningly loud — a perfect musical composition.
Her subjects rejoiced, which was both flattering and a little painful when one of them accidentally turned into colored paper at the King's behest. A small hat, a frog with a human face, a tin soldier, or a particularly sad flower could be found here and there throughout the Kingdom. The doll-like quality of such transformations made any moral torment seem strange, as if feigned. In a world of pure imagination, there were no bloody splatters or shreds of flesh, making any crime so childish and ridiculous that it was enough to make one feel childish. Diana couldn't do anything, but it seemed she didn't even want to.
Her fingers were adoringly kissed after every execution "in her honor," and that was far more flattering than any former joys of today's furniture.
So let it sit there. Croaking. Lying and gathering dust. Screaming in its own head. It's none of Diana's business—Diana has a husband, and her husband has a very playful squint. Diana laughed.
The grand gestures continued. Deyran poured a bottle of wine from the window of the tower of the crooked castle, and the wine turned into a sea of blood—the settlement had sunk. Diana clung to her King, letting her hair fall free with one hand, and snakes fell from her locks, immediately rushing to the sea, drinking until they drowned. Unconstrained by a canvas, the artist could create directly in life, and her primary audience — her husband — appreciated each painting.
