Finding Contentus

Chapter 80: The Funny Joke About Power (1)

"Conditia... Condini... Contra."

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It was like being sucked into a horrifying nightmare of hell for nine long days with no way out. During the nine days Neosa slept and recovered from her hellish assault, she dreamed, and in her dreams, she was trapped inside the memories of Ramoth.

In the same way he had access to her mind through their contract, he decided to do the same, randomly, to close the gap of misunderstanding between them.

An inundation of things penetrated her brain to the point where she lost the ability to scream from pain. At least, audibly for anyone but herself to hear. It was all too much. Far too much to process wherein each day was a new form of mental torture that only got progressively worse like some twisted game of ascending agony.

"Just smile and laugh habibi," a melancholic voice said. A voice that only a mother could have.

Neosa saw several flashes of Queen Nephthery, smiling sadly at her children. In all of Ramoth's memories, his mother always hid an abundance of misery behind her smile.

From the time he was a young child, to the time he underwent his deity ceremony, Ramoth always forced a smile on his face, just as his mother did. The difference between mother and son was that Ramoth developed something for himself as Prince when it came to entertaining people.

He developed masks. So many masks and roles that he didn't know what to do with them. All of those masks had forced smiles that never deserted his face to the point where he couldn't tell the difference between acting as the clown and being the clown.

To cope, he moved to become a jack of all trades within his deck of cards. He could never understand people, but with his masks, he acted like he did when no one understood him.

Except Ramela. She was the only one that understood him the most.

The twins would constantly compete against each other in every single thing they did, including card games. They both shared the same favorite card, the King card. The only difference was in their second favorite card. For Ramela, it was the Queen card, for Ramoth, it was the Joker card.

"Do you ever take anything seriously?" Ramela would sigh with a giggle after a royal tournament amongst the elites in which they both won and lost the same amount of games before facing each other in the finals.

"Where's the fun in that? Māma says we should smile all the time, so that's what I'm going to do! Life's so sad already don't you see? Now come and laugh with me like the roaring sea!" Ramoth took his twin's hand and danced with her after a draw.

She obliged and joined him accordingly. Ramoth's style of dancing was unrestrained and aggressive, while Ramela's was more restrained and passive. Both switched in sync and never failed to appease those who watched the gorgeous-looking twins of royalty.

His clown act allowed him to uphold his mother's words, and it allowed him to connect with humanity when he felt so ostracised, being the son of the inhumane Pharaoh Ra who would always call on him and Ramela to attend to him during his educational lectures.

They were the worst, unimaginably boring and suffocating, but they couldn't refuse their duties. All they could do was listen and answer his questions. Ramoth never wanted to admit it, but the microscopic manner in which his father looked at Ramela, compared to him with his featureless face, always confused him.

Ra would approve of Ramela's answers more than the ones he gave. He was far more strict and harsh with him than he was with his sister. Not that he was jealous of his twin—