It took me months to carve the king in alabaster. It took him years to die.
Rumor had it he was being slowly poisoned. His hair was falling out, and he was looking thin, gaunt, and sick. I was probably the only person in the country who was allowed to imagine his majesty as dead. I carved him as a young man, so that all would remember him that way.
His majesty had gone against the people and what they truly believed in. A new god was being set up in the square, a sun god, a god of life and death – life, as light gives life; and death, as too much light can kill. I lived among the dark, no where near the pretty pageants of their majesties. But my work is known, and my father’s work is here and in the Wastes.
I was told to start work on her majesty’s sepulcher as well, though she had not been ill yet. She sat for many portraits, so I had many items that I could use. The sepulcher was not to be next to his majesty, but on the other side of the church of light, in the shadows. I worked by torchlight.
They told me to work quickly. The king’s men had their suspicions, and all eyes had turned to her majesty, with her golden tresses and tiny lips, her almond shaped blue eyes and milk-white skin. So I carved her.
And not too soon, as it was proved that she had poisoned the king, bewitched him and his daughter to love her. His daughter repudiated her; and her majesty was sent to the gallows and hung like a common criminal.
They never used her sepulcher, for which I was sad. I knew the curves of her body and the shape of her face, and it would never be shown to the world again.
The king of Rome died, and so did the light of his church. I worked in the darkness, making a new sepulcher for the next generation…
Prompt: “In his cell, the carver thinks of his family.”