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Furina looked down at her people from her place, high above anyone else inside the Opera Epiclese.
Today's trial had been entertaining, for once, and she played her own role at perfection, looking more like an amused god laughing at her subjects being judge for horrendous crimes than a simple human that was part of a plan that even she didn't fully know of.
Each interactions, each simple walk in Fontaine under the gaze of the public was a performence corefully crafted for them to see.
A lie became a statement, a gesture became part of her mask, a look on her face became a veil.
Only when she found herself alone in her room would her mask slip and fall, shattering like glass on floor polished to perfection and luxurious and expensive carpets, all for a god they did’'t know was false, as she crumbled and broke down in tears at her own overwhelming pain. The pain of acting like someone you don't know and have never heard about, someone that wasn't you but fooled people into believing that it was, for an endless performence the stage of which was the world itself.
She was so tired. Pretending could be fun, hence why theatre and other things of the sort had becope popular. But still... this wasn't for a few minutes or a few hours... it was for years. Decades. Centuries.
She was becoming weary, yet she had to mask that too. Because they couldn't know of the truth. Not if she could help it.
The mask became heavier everyday, making each lie, each performence a part of it, pressing tighter into her fave to merge with her, staying until she couldn't distinguish between herself and her fake persona.
Did she even remember what she was like ? What she used to soynd like ? How she used to act ?
Or had she already lost her identity to flow of time and the web of centuries-old lies ?
Was she even Furina at all ?
Or just a doll replacing her, mimicking movements it didn't understand ?
At least, the fontainians couldn't see through it. All they could see was a porcelain face, that of a god exercising justice. They were oblivious to the lies of the fraud that truly stood behind it.
They believed her, and that was her only consolation, because it meant she did it right and she just needed to continue.
The weight of her people's fate was heavy, too heavy for a mere mortal human like her, and yet she carried it by herself, day after day, year after year and century after century.
But...
How many more years will she have to act as someone she wasn't ?
How many years of suffering will she have to go through again ?
What if Mirror-me chose wrong...?
What if she could just admit the truth to the people and live as a simple human...?
No. She shouldn't. She couldn't fail now. All her years of work and effort wouldn't go to waste, wouldn't be in vain.
The prophecy loomed over the people of Fontaine's heads, like a guillotine, ready to behead them should she slip up even just once.
To fail her performence was to fail her people, and she would never forgive herself for that.
She just had to wait for that grand trial that Mirror-me promised for me, and all end.
Her pain was nothing against that hope.
After all, if the scales of Justice had herself and her pain on one side and the whole of Fontaîe's fate on the other, shouldn't it be obvious where the scales should tilt ?
So she would continue. Lie every day of every year if needed.
Even if she suffered.
Even if she hurt.
Even if she lost herself.
Even if she died.
Because she wouldn't. As long as she kept going on, everything would be fine, and the people would survive.