HR: #360 in werewolf
Winner of the Eminence Awards, the Aspiring Authors Awards, the Realist Awards and the Blooming awards.
As I was in awe by his perfection, I didn't notice that he was already standing in front of me. Snapping out of my trance, I...
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The forest we drove through was oak-brown and primitive. I was in awe of the size and majesty of the trees. Their knotted arms rose ever upwards, as far as my head could lift. They were hoary fortresses and stood proudly. The orchestra of birdsong we could hear from them suddenly stopped. A pair of jays was screeching high up in the canopy of the trees.
Jays are the scavengers of the bird world. Their cruel, corvid eyes are always on the lookout for a feathered meal. In the winter, they raid squirrel stores for their nuts, often damning them to starvation. They drifted across my vision in a flash of flesh-pink and warlock-black, trying to size us up. That was the last I saw of them, as they are a furtive bird, full of suspicion.
The morning stars peeped down at me like silver asters, glinting and shimmering. They looked happy in their solar-silver isolation. I could see wild basil growing freely on the clumpy, mossy mattress of the floor. The simpering wind carried a fragrance with it. It was spirit refreshing to smell the mulchy mix of the forest's perfume.
I never expected it took look this beautiful. Soon, the castle which was even more breathtaking, rose into sight.
The fortress of Golden is a fine castle, built with a panorama of the surrounding land. From the towers once stood medieval watchers, quiver and arrow ready to fly. Steadfast walls were built for defence in an age that was defined by jealousy, greed and the love of power as much as honour, nobility and loyalty to the crown. Past the iron gates that trapped would-be intruders, lives of servitude were eked, safe from battle-axe and ballista alike.
This castle stood to inspire awe in a realm run on deference to royalty, to title and social status. From cloistered rooms land parcels were given to lords for promised service. It was a world of subsistence living for all but the mighty who guarded their kingdoms of tax payers. So long as they sang the right songs of protection, of greatness, of manifest destiny - they would grow rich for generations to come.
So when my eyes befall the grandeur of the weather-beaten stone and hear the wind in the trees, it is an ode to the selfishness of genes I hear. Whispering in the grasses are tales of peoples set against one another in war by an aristocratic class perpetually enriched by the conflict.
If this fort of stone, built on blood and bone, could talk, you'd beg for deafness. Though I cannot hear the whispers of the ages, tales of lives lost and deaths of agony no-one should ever feel, they remain cloistered in the castle dungeons and echo around staircases of twisted rock. So much to say and no ears willing to hear, no soul willing to feel the torment that lies within. I am no different.
The past is a forbidden land and its people's trials are over. In future times, when gravity has mastered this place, humbled it to no more than pebble and crumb, we too will be in that hour-glass that is now. For tonight the old hearth, the place that once whole ox's turned will be my chamber. Until then it is silence I wish to soak in, anything else portends to danger and I have markedly less interest in ideas of chivalry than those knights of old.
