Rosalind - Amby Awards 2023 TOP PICK

3- The Little Rabbit. The Little Wolf.

The bastard night comes for one, it comes for all. Under the black blanket of the sky, everyone is the same. Monsters and men all look indistinguishable to the lethargic eye of the moon, yet it is those put on the earth that can see the vast differences in each of us for souls and hearts are difficult to hide.

-Agnes Vauclain

Lord Caspian watched his wife and young son from his seat at the head of the long dinner table. Sitting on his right was his wife. The lord regarded how his wife daintily raised her wine glass to her lips, how she carefully cut her roast beef with the silver knife and fork. Caspian's gaze lingered on the small butterfly ring resting on her finger, the one he gave her when they wed. His thoughts drifted to that day momentarily. 

The lady's hand in marriage had been given to the lord by her father, the Baron Carberry just two weeks before Lord Caspian's departure to Transylvania many years ago. Baron Carberry deemed it right that two people of noble English blood should marry and breed more English people, even if they were to live so far away from their native land. Twenty-two-year-old Lord Caspian and his betrothed had never met, not until the day of their wedding, when eighteen-year-old Calla made her way up the aisle of Saint James Church in London in her white lace wedding gown to meet and marry her new husband.

It did not take the young pair long to fall in love for Lady Calla's gentle nature and delicate words were a small sliver of sun in the lord's gray world. Even though he was not a man who favored the show of affection nor took kindly to people portraying their love for one another, Lord Caspian did care for Lady Calla as much as a man like him could.

The newlyweds shared their first year of marriage fixing up their new home. Lord Caspian had inherited a tremendous sum of money and the stone manor in Transylvania, which had been his family's since the 16th century. The manor had been restored and refurbished to suit the couple's needs. Sprawling grass and looming trees went on as far as the eye could see. The house was dark stone with twin gargoyles situated on a small Crow's nest balcony above the double doors. The statue's eyes were polished onyx which glared at any passerby maliciously whenever fragments of the light caught them.

Calla and the servants made the manor into a home. Pictures of landscapes and portraits of their lineage covered the walls. Candelabras of the finest quality lit the halls. Fine tapestries threaded with gold, red, and blue hung in each room. Though the manor became a beautiful place, the brown and gray stone of the floor and the darkness of the stone walls never made the large house feel anything but cold. Even when Calla became with child.

When his son was born, Lord Caspian thought that he could love the child as much as he loved his wife since the babe came from his wife's own womb, but that was not the case. Caspian's son took after his grandfather in looks, with his striking auburn hair and brown eyes. 

In the now eighteen-year-old Troy, Lord Caspian would never be able to see the image of Calla. Caspian's soul was bitter for he would never have a beautiful child with black as night hair and eyes greener than emeralds. The small shards of affection he did manage to find for his only child were given sparsely to the boy since Troy reminded Caspian too much of his own father, a man who never ceased to remind Caspian that he was at fault for letting his mother die during childbirth.

Caspian's father, the noble yet distant Lord Tyrell, taught his son how to be a Lord, how to hunt, but taught him nothing of empathy or affection. Whatever bits of love Caspian did later find in his life were solely Calla's doing for the lovely woman was the only person, on this land and on any other land both far and near, who could give and find any love within the brute of a man Caspian was.

Perhaps Caspian could not have even been able to love a child that looked like him. But every time the lord saw Troy he saw his father's face. But the boy's character did not mimic his grandfather's. Troy was a sweet child, quiet, preferring the company of his own self rather than to take company with others his age. In the marrow of his bones, Caspian found it bothersome that the lad did not have a fierce attitude and behaved more like a little rabbit instead. There were days Caspian wished there was more spirit in his delicate offspring.