The One Knight Stand

.: First Impressions :.

01 | First Impressions

"This is the biggest crock of garbage I've ever eaten in my entire life."

She was frantically pacing the cold corners of her seven-by-seven cell when she met him.

He didn't know what he was getting into, didn't know how intensely this young woman would affect him, and neither did she.

Neither of them wanted to be down there in the dungeons, but there they were. The only thing separating them was a messily assembled grate shielding them from a complete view of each other.

"You guys got me good. It was only a matter of time, I knew I wasn't going to make it far as soon as I took the emerald out the bag. Why in the hell did I take the emerald out the bag? A rookie mistake, I'm telling ya."

The young woman groused in her prison, stomping to and fro. She didn't have much else to do.

The young man remained silent, ducking under the low, craggy ceilings. It was unbelievably dark. His royal eyes locked on her silhouette and he briefly wondered if his father sent him to the right place before he realized she was talking to him.

"Hey, Guard, you got anything in your jail pantry that doesn't taste like ass? I'm starving down here."

The young man, the furthest thing from a guard, couldn't answer. He quickly glanced around the dungeon for anything resembling food before shaking his head.

"Well?" She snapped, silhouette approaching the divider. "You can't hide from me, mate. I see you out there. Rotten dog food can't be the only thing you guys serve in here. I know I'm a criminal but this takes cruel and unusual punishment to a whole new level."

The young man internally cursed, remembering she couldn't see him properly. He settled for a negative grunt, wincing as his vocal chords strained from the noise.

"Oh, so you do speak. Kind of." Blue backed away from the bars, eyeing the large, man shaped shadow outside her cell. The previous guards were content leaving her there to bitch in solitude, and they were the rowdy, haughty sort who didn't mind clapping back as good as they got it, so she wasn't sure how to handle her new, silent visitor. "Alright, here's a better question - if you aren't here to feed me, what the hell do you want?"

On the other side, the young man withered. He couldn't communicate like this. Couldn't tell her even if he knew the answer.

He floundered until Blue broke the uncomfortable silence, unaware of his handicap.

"Fine, don't talk. Didn't want to hear you speak anyways. I'll talk enough for the both of us, one of the few legal things I'm good at." A pause. "You're not one of those creeps who gets off on watching, are you?"

The young man choked, coughing into his expensive, dragon embroidered sleeve. She laughed, arms crossed over her ratty shirt. "Guess not. That's good. Saves me a lot of trouble. I mean, I like putting on a show as much as the next gal, but my current situation kind of puts a damper on things, you know?"

The young man didn't give a response since she obviously didn't expect one. The idea of him getting a seductive striptease from a complete stranger, a criminal villager no less, was as curious as it was disturbing, and he quickly shook the idea away.

"I wish I could say I never saw this coming, but with my luck I'm kind of not surprised. This stuff just kind of happens to me naturally. Bullshit, I mean. You probably know what I'm talking about, having to work in the castle and all. Serving Royals." She paced around her cell again, chewing on her thumb, unaware of the sheer political power invested in the man no more than ten feet away.