Genre: Fantasy
Everyone knows his name but no one has ever called him by it for close to two decades now. He sat up in bed, still hearing "Joven" echoing in his head. It was his bride calling for him in his dream.
He had buried her fifty years ago.
"Why can't I have children, Joven, why?" she asked him a week before she hanged herself.
But how would a farmer know?
"Is it the gods, Joven?"
He didn't know the answer - not then, not now. "You're still young," he remembered telling her. "You mustn't worry. We can always try."
She was twenty years old when he buried her. She was his only family left of the famine. He woke up to find her dangling from the rafters of their cottage. He howled in pain and loss, the anger and shock coming close to splitting his sanity. His eyes were still blurry as he freed her from the rope.
He washed her body in the drying river where the village used to consecrate the dead. Their village was empty, the river was drying, and Joven was grieving alone. He wrapped her in the white wedding blanket stained by their coupling. He dug the dry, packed earth in their empty backyard, deep enough so hounds and carrion-eaters would not get to her. His hands burned with blisters. Still he dug deeper so the smell of her rot would not reach their home where her smell still lingered. He lowered her light body into the hole, blessed her with his tears, and covered her with dirt.
He never remarried; not when the rains flooded the fields once more...not even when his cornfield ripened and drooped heavy with the promise of a bountiful harvest.
All those memories, ushered in by a dream. He sighed and slid his feet to the floor. Cold. He used his toes to search for his slippers. Bending forward tickled his throat; he coughed. Through milky-moist eyes, he saw his attendant rise from the cot near the fireplace. "Slippers, Your Highness?" the attendant asked.
His feet found the slippers. He waved his attendant away.
"Should I call for your breakfast here, Your Highness, or would you like to dine in your office?"
He found the question stupid so he didn't answer. He pulled the robe draped over his headboard and put it on. The brightness in the room suggested a sunny morning, a good day to watch from his tower, and by Lawig he would watch the Lake today. It might help him forget his bride. He had forgotten her name and her face years ago so he shouldn't be able to recognize her now, not even in a dream, but dreams are like that sometimes - they are cruel, heartless. They bring the dead back from where he buried them.
He banged his hand on the curtained door to the balcony. "Open this."
"A moment, Your Highness."
He rattled the door knob. "I said open this!"
His attendant was beside him in a blink and unlocked the door. A blast of cold wind swept inside the room. Joven pulled his robe tighter.
"Would you require longscope, Your Highness?"
He grumbled his yes. No way he could study the view without it. His attendant produced the longscope. Joven stepped into the balcony, longscope in one hand, and welcomed the cold breeze and the warm sunlight. He shuffled in his slippers and stopped when his chest met the high railing of the balcony.
He looked through the longscope. It was a bright, sunny day - cloudless, the sun casting a glare in the lake. He pointed his longscope to the island east of the balcony. "Ah, Danumlawa, mm-hm." The word sounded as foreign to him as it did twenty years ago, when he did not speak a word of Lawigian. He scanned the island of Danumlawa and lingered his longscope on the Lawigian Government Complex. It looked to him like a cat curled up on top of the butte, the highest point in Danumlawa; its citadel walls gleamed golden in the morning. He had seen it turn hazy in midday, burnt clay at nightfall. "Beautiful, beautiful," he said.
