They told me that the Princess needed rescuing.
That if I crossed the Swamp of the Dead and wrestled with the trolls of Ⱥsgov and fought the bandits and highwaymen of the Northern Wilds and laid waste to the seven heads of the Dragon Uhu, then soon enough I would find the Castle Ɇllon hanging out there on the edge of the nothing, run-down and battered, its sandstone masonry cluttered with overgrowth and the foulness of witchcraft. And within Ɇllon's crumbling walls, there would be a maiden, pure and fair, hair as black as raven's feathers, skin as milky as the moon's smile.
Princess Ⱥzura.
I was told that she would be there, laying helpless beneath the spell of a sinister sorceress beset on the path of vengeance against King Michon. And once my quest was completed, the greatest of honors was promised to my name and my children's names, that my kinfolk would be blessed with the wealth of all Islecene, and that I live happily ever after with the Princess' fine-boned hand in marriage.
Well, I've done all of that.
I've fought the Northern bandits and was soundly beaten for my troubles, my left eye almost snatched from its socket, my face bloodied beyond recognition. With my entrails in tow, I crossed the Swamp of the Dead and nearly lost my noble stead in the process to the thicket of leeches lurking beneath those soulless waters. I've battled gale-winds and freezing rain, clung to hunger and desert thirst when the elements of Nature and Magic tried to leak blood from my veins and life from my body. Despair was as close a companion to me as my loyal steed, Ⱥvalon. Misery, my eternal cloak.
Yet I pushed through. Forward always toward my prize. Toward my sleeping beauty waiting patiently, desperately, for me to rescue her.
Three brutal seasons, have I seen. Endured. Conquered.
I've proven my worth, as a prince, as a knight worthy of King Michon's Court. I've been sharpened on the whetstone of chivalry and bravery to be a man most worthy of the Princess' secrets. And now, as I stand on the grounds of Ɇllon, broken and bleeding once more from the battles waged against the hemlock and fang-toothed Witch's Weeds that stubbornly beset Ɇllon as the Black Plague upon the sleepy Islecenian countryside.
Yet, I find no vile sorceress to cast down, no seven-headed Dragon Uhu to lay my sword against, no wizardry to defeat in a battle of wits. I find, not an ethereal beauty cloaked in spells and witch-brewed sleep, but a maiden...
...in soiled aprons and filth-colored pantaloons...
...with a basket of grain in her hand...
...feeding chickens.
How ordinary.
"You there, farmhand," I yell to her from atop my pearl-white Ⱥvalon, "tell me, is this Castle Ɇllon? I seek the den of the Dragon Uhu."
She turns to look at me with eyes filled with bored disgust.
"Prince Charming, I presume."
"Aye?" How could she know who I am?
Brown eyes as rich as the soil beneath rolls inside their sockets. She sighs foul curses at the sky that warm my cheeks with shock, for such language is too crude for even a man's lips, let alone a woman's.
"Gods-damn-it! The old man never gives up, does he?"
Could this be...No! It can't. I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. I steer Ⱥvalon closer for a better look. Battered, I am, from my trials. Broken by the weight of this journey that I've undertaken. But this noble quest has not warped my memories or stolen my sanity. I am most certain of this. Yet, the maiden farmhand...
The bones look the same as they do in the portrait that lays close to my heart, the cut and curve of her face having been imprinted in my mind in the pale twinkle of starlight on countless moonless desert nights as I lay dreaming quietly amongst the shifting sands. The eyes are still black and unyielding; although the skin is no longer moon-kissed. Now, it's ruddy from labor in the unforgiving sun....and...where is her hair? Where is the thick, black braid, perfumed with jasmine and sage that I've dreamed of curling between my fingers for so long? All I see now is hair, disheveled and hay-riddled, shorn too close to the scalp to be decent for a proper woman of Islecene.
My Gods, this can't be... "Princess Ⱥzura?"
She sneers when that name falls from my lips.
"Don't go batting titles like that around here," she warns. "'Tis likely to catch the ears of thieves and beggars. But, to answer your question, yes. I am who you seek."
"But...but...I was sent to rescue you."
"Rescue me?" she gasps. "From what? The chickens?"
"The king...he...I..." words spill without meaning or coherence. The Princess' eyes glow with understanding.
"He promised you jewels and wealth, didn't he? A fiefdom too, if I recall the going rate. And oh, yes, my hand in marriage?"
"Why...yes."
"Hmm," she shrugs thick shoulders worked too strong and too hard. "Well, you're shit out of luck, noble knight? Might as well cut your losses and head back home now for 'tis a long road back to King Michon's side."
"Please do not jest, woman!" I huff. "I have no countenance for mockery. Not after everything I've been through!"
"Does it look like I jest?" she offers a laugh that is tinged with bitter bile. "I'm too far past my maiden years to have the time or the patience for such petty things. So, sweet Prince, you have your terms and instructions. Take your steed and turn to yonder before I put you through a task worse than what the highwaymen have put you through already."
There is no joke on the Princess' lips this time, for when she shifts her soiled apron to the side, the glint of cold death peers back at me. A ŧrivon ladened with magic and ready to fire. Only Islecene's best mages and blacksmiths could craft something like that, and only someone like, say, the king's lone daughter – who court gossip says had dabbled too deeply in the dark arts and, thusly, was ensnared by the now-non-existent vile sorceress − could afford to have a ŧrivon strapped to her hip like a butcher's cleaver. But something inside me refuses to give up so easily without a proper challenge.
"I've come too far!" I protest. "Through the swamps and the deserts, surely you must see that."
The Princess nods as if struck by a bout of sudden understanding. "Ahhh!" she sighs, "I see he sent you the long way around, eh? Well, 'tis for the best, I suppose. The highwaymen in Rulzin have come to depend on the easy living they make off my father's hapless knights passing through their lands."
"No-no-no. This can't be!" I'm so stung with shock that I don't even realize when exactly it is that I'd slid from Ⱥvalon's saddle and pooled like piss at his hooves. I'm only faintly aware of the crunch of Witch's Weed and the shift of gravel underfoot as Ⱥvalon stirs uneasily. "This...can't...No. NO!" I feel the tears prick behind my eyelids, for I have walked through Hell and back again, sacrificed my heart and soul to the Devils Below for this woman. And for what? Just so that I can stand here on the threshold of my own ruin, wobble-kneed and paltry? To come so close to Heaven's shifting mists only to see the cruel truth that hides beyond?
The first tear falls from my eyelashes.
The second quickly follows.
The third emasculates me.
And by the time the fourth has fallen, I've become a hollow shell of a man.
Her gaze rolls pitifully over me and my broken steed before casting toward the setting twin suns. The chickens at her feet cluck as they did before, shuffling through their evening routines unperturbed by the going-ons of their mistress. Night crickets surrususs in the surrounding bushes to welcome the coming moon, dogs unseen snarl at each other, hungry for something greater than simply a scrap of meat on the bone. Off in the distance, the roar of thundering hooves hides amongst laughter born of evil deeds and too much beer. And Time itself keeps shifting without my knowledge or approval as the chickens do. Life is seemingly forgotten in this castaway corner of the greatest kingdom in all of Three Earths. The Wheel keeps on its inevitable turn, ever so oblivious to the plight of a poor Prince Charming caught on the backend of his worst nightmare.
"I tell you what, sweetie," she finally says after the suns fall too deep into the horizon to give any more useful light, "I'll be kind this once. You look like shit, and your horse looks like 'tis about to drop dead. In your condition, 'tis too late to travel the roads now, anyway," she shrugs. "Bunk here in the stables, if you wish it. Feast on stewed beaver and days-old bread, if you choose. But come the morrow, you must wend your way back to my father and tell him the same thing that I've told all the others before you. Deal?"
My father had always said that it is a shameful thing for a man to eek compassion from the depths of pity. Yet, I accept the Princess' offer for bunk and stew without a murmur or misstep. "Aye. Deal."
And so, there it is. A distraught fool being led towards the altar of the Princess' kindness with the wrong end of her ŧrivon pointed squarely at my back, shuffling listlessly along with a sword swinging limply, a head hung low, and an exhausted steed in tow. She guides us to a hovel hidden betwixt another forest of Witch's Weed even angrier than the last, towards a ramshackle collection of stones and sticks leaning against each other in a half-hearted imitation of a stable. After the moon rose to greet the cooling sky and a few morsels of stewed beaver had begun to churn frothily in my belly, my mind ponders the cruel turn of my quest's events. Maybe it'll make sense in the morrow, I whisper upon my makeshift bed of hay and threadbare blankets.
Everything is always better in the morrow.
#
Morrow comes all too quickly at Castle Ɇllon in my opinion. Like a thief crawling upon you through the pre-dawn darkness. And after a restless night tumbling around in fitful sleep, it is disheartening to realize that reality is still no kinder to me than it had been yestereen. Three Earths' twin suns creep from their beds today, only to find me bleary-eyed and foul-tempered, covered in bramble, hay, and, quite possibly, ticks. My breath is sour enough to kill dragons, and since no good Prince should leave himself in such a dreadful condition, especially in the presence of a Princess – albeit a somewhat unconventional one – only the task of making myself and my Ⱥvalon proper for the day holds any meaning to me anymore. So, along the path I go, following the echoes of birdsong and the babble of a creek unseen to wash and relieve myself in the privacy of nature and the gods of Heaven's Mists.
I find the creek easily enough, but my mind is too unsettled to marvel at the cold beauty of the dawn rushing forward to greet me. While Ⱥvalon roots through a tuft of virgin grass to fill his hollow stomach, I simply drop shield and sword by the creek's edge and set my mind to the task ahead. The scorch-marked armor sighs in relief when it falls from my body, and beneath lies surcoat and codpiece crusted over with three-months' worth of sweat, blood, and unidentifiable grime. And when I am finally as nackt as a newborn babe beneath the morning sky, I waddle down to the water's edge and bare my filth to the rising suns without shame−
"You're startling the fish," a voice climbs out of the ether of the burping waters. With a gasp, I jump out of both skin and creek-water, for I don't expect her to be there, standing just a little way up the creek's bend, as still as death, as silent as a thought. She's in the rush of the knee-high waters, her famously filthy pantaloons hacked up to the high thigh and tied off with strings to prevent the hemming from getting soaked. There's a look of determination on her face as her hands reach down...down...into the waters.
I scurry up the banks to find any scrap of modesty still left hidden in my dirty surcoat. The Princess barely even acknowledges my shame.
Plop! A fat trout. Determination eases into triumph and then into the crack of a smile settling on the corners of her plump lips. The Princess quickly drops her prize into the writhing jute bag slung across her back, climbs out and up the muddy banking like a king at the end of a battle won, victory narrowly snatched from the jaws of defeat. Her ŧrivon gleams lethally in the early morning light, her black-eyed gaze is cold as it slides across my barely-clothed skin.
"Morning," she says with a farmhand's countenance to match the farmhand's clothing she wears.
"Good morning, fair Prin−"
She slices me with a sharp glare. I quickly correct myself. "−Ⱥzura?"
"Ura," she corrects me.
"Ura. I...sorry, I−"
"Heard you hollering yourself to sleep last night. You scared the poor chickens out of their eggs this morning."
I don't even try to save face by lying to her. She's right, you know, for I had hollered into my bedding last night. I'd bawled unapologetically unmanly because my quest for selfish glory had come at a cost that I fear I won't be able to repay once I return to King Michon's Court. You see, I'd stretched my family's finances thin in preparing for this journey, set loans and coin against my family and their lands all in the name of future wealth promised and fortune to be bestowed. And what good will it all bring in the end, eh? If my father, the Duke of Umlant, can't get the farmers to pay their shares of this year's harvest, then the entire line of Marchẽ will be destined for the almshouse or the pauper's jail soon enough. With one foolish wish, our family will be even more destitute than the peasants who farm our lands. All our hopes, dreams, and numerous lines of soaring credit had been pinned on my success. Now you tell me, dear reader, if you were in my shoes, wouldn't you cry yourself to sleep too?
"I...just...have a lot on my mind," I reply.
The Princess looks at me, as if knowing some greater mystery that had been lurking somewhere in the early morning mists.
"How much?" she asks.
"How much what?"
"My father's down payment."
My brows furrow. "You know about that?"
She laughs. "The King is a black-hearted, old fox, Charming. Why go through the hassle of all-out war with other royal families when you can just mortgage them into submission? Promises of wealth and riches in exchange for a small down payment on an honorable quest. It's how he keeps Islecene's nobility in check."
"Gods-damn-it!" I curse.
"So, how much?"
I hesitate for a moment, shame clouding my eyes worse than the tears that had flowed there last night. "One...one..."
"Come now, out with it!"
A lung full of morning air steels my nerves. "One million Rubars."
The Princess whistles when she hears that. "That's a tidy sum."
"Aye!" A tidy sum is an understatement.
The Princess shrugs the writhing jute bag from her back. "Can they pay it? Your family?" she asks.
"If the rains had held and the crops came in this year," I nod.
"And what are the odds of that happening?"
I look down at the black mud beneath as it clings to my toes and feel another flood of tears prick the back of my eyes. For the rains hadn't come when I'd left home, and they haven't been coming for the past five years either.
Islecene is a kingdom of beauty, wealth, and wonder. Awe-inspiring even...but only in certain regions − in the snow-capped mountains of Ɏzun that run the length of Islecene's back like a spine of rock and ice, by the cast of Caspin Bay to the east full of the riches of the sea, and the western deserts of Moroc where gold flows instead of rivers. Sadly, down in the southern boneyards of Umlant, everybody knows that there is no more wealth to be had save for the parched earth and empty riverbeds that Three Earths' twin suns gift us. Farmers, merchants, tradesmen, even the Gods-damn thieves flee from our lands in droves each day. And those who remain, do so because they know there's no hope left for them out there beyond Umlant's borders, no way to escape the power of the twin suns.
"I'm from Umlant," I say.
The Princess nods. That's all the answer she needs. All the answer anyone ever needs. Umlant. The name itself is a curse, a blight in Islecene's fertile, green eye.
The Princess' gaze falls to the bag between her fingers and the still-living fish struggling within, her face set in the same determined look that I'd seen earlier. "Clean yourself, Charming," she commands. "Set upon your personal chores as needed. When you're done, come find me by the hearth. I'll have the stewpot boiling." She lifts the bag slightly to hint at the flavor of today's meal.
"Aye," I reply. "Your kindness knows no boundary, Prin−I mean...Ura."
#
I do as the Princess commands.
I set upon my chores and feed my Ⱥvalon. I even clean the Princess' stable for the next hapless knight who'll surely be wandering through the Witch's Weed soon enough. And when my tasks are done, I set myself to finding her, sword in hand to chop away at the jungle of Witch's Weed and cursed magic.
Ɇllon's kitchens are tucked against the southern walls, close to the mid-morning sun. Its hearth smokes with warm spices and mouthwatering aromas while the Princess buzzes about the fire with an easy expertise that rivals even the finest chefs of Three Earths.
"That smells fantastic." My stomach growls louder than the words dropping from my lips. Rather uncouthly, I set myself before the clean bowl at the table, my spoon eager and ready to be put to action.
"Just a few more minutes," she says.
Until then, she invites me to take of the pitcher of beer on the table, which I greedily and happily oblige as the Princess bubbles her way across the kitchen to sit before me.
"What's your true name?" she asks gently while I pour a mug of beer for her.
"Fayre."
The Princess accepts the mug I've poured with a nod and a heavy dose of her usual farmhand mannerisms. We toast to health and future happiness before dabbling in a bout of small talk. Just the trivial things, you know. The weather. The year's crop. Those nasty men in Rulzin. All the politics and celebrity gossip that abounds on the far side of Islecene. Every now and then, the Princess rises to mutter at her stew and fling more herbs within its chunky thickness. The aromas that creep from the cauldron wreak havoc on an empty stomach that hasn't seen real food in almost two solid days. The Princess' offer of cold stewed beaver and days-old bread hasn't been sitting quietly in my stomach since last night.
"You say you've got a bit of trouble on your hands, eh?" she asks as she stirs the stew to completion and beckons for me to bring my bowl. "And what do you plan on doing now that you're faced with this choice, Fayre?"
I shrug. Sigh. "What else can I do, Prin−I mean, Ura? I can ride home and face my destiny. Hopefully, the highwaymen in Rulzin will leave me in peace."
"Hmm," she says and taps another big ladle full of stew into my bowl, "you're not going to drag me back to the palace?"
Like a child caught with his hands in the sweets, I tap my fingers against the warming bowl and stare down at the rising sea of stewed fish within.
"No good ever comes of forcing one's will upon others. You must have your reasons for choosing a shack and days-old bread over a palace and nightly feasts of roasted duckling, so I will interfere with neither them nor you."
"Do you really hold that true to your heart?" she asks. "It'd be all too easy to solve your woes with a well-aimed threat, wouldn't it?"
"Of course, I do," I say as I try to balance the weight of a hot bowl while navigating my way back to the table. "What am I as a knight if I am not my word? My reputation?"
"Many would count that as foolish," she mutters as she comes to sit across from me again, "letting your fortune slip away on account of one thick-headed, spoiled little brat?"
"Which would you rather be: a thick-headed, spoiled little brat or a miserable, grumpy wife?"
"Hmm," is all she says as she reaches over and taps at her empty mug. I move quickly to refill it with beer.
"No, m'lady. As I've said, my burdens are my own. It would be unfair to force you to partake in something that you had no hand in creating. After all, you didn't hex the rains away from Umlant, and I'm certain that you didn't willingly become a pawn in your father's cruel game of thrones."
The Princess nods, more at the mug of beer in her hand than at me. "Will you tell the others of where I am?"
I shake my head. "As you've said, there were knights before me and there probably will be after I'm gone. If this is his usual game, I doubt any of my stirrings will be worrisome for the King, especially from the jail cell or the almshouse."
The Princess looks off into the distance while my spoon works its way slowly around the edges of the hot stew in my bowl, its vapors rising, beckoning me to have a taste despite the tongue-scorching heat lingering below its surface. I can't wait for it to cool in order to dig in. I'm so hungry...
"Though I must trouble you for a favor before I go, m'lady," I say. "Just a small helping of provisions. And another day to rest Ⱥvalon and prepare for the journey ahead. Oh, and bread and beer, if you can spare it. If Rulzin is as bad as everyone says, I'd rather like to hurry through without stopping."
"Gods-damn-it!" she curses under her breath.
"M'lady, I'm sorry if I'm a bother to you−"
"No! No! 'Tis not you!" she says quickly. "'Tis just that...well, some of the knights who come here deserve being on the wrong end of my father's hustle, you know. Such arrogant assholes. The dumb ones just pass me by without recognizing who I am, and the smart ones...well...most times, I've got to hex them to make them leave. And then, there is the rare breed like you, Fayre. Desperate men lured into an impossible situation only to come out worse for wear on the other side." She casts her black-eyed gaze back at me again. There's so much soul hidden inside those eyes of hers. Beauty lurking beneath the haggardness of poverty.
"I tell you what, Fayre of Umlant. I have a second deal to offer if you'll have it. There are just some things around here that even my magic can't do. Mundane chores and the likes. Lend me your hand for a season, help me turn Ɇllon into more than just a shell of the ruined past, and I'll offer you coin for your labor. It won't be one million Rubars, and it probably won't be enough to save your family from utter ruin. But it'll get you on your feet well enough, I suppose, given the circumstances."
To say that I'm shocked by the offer is an understatement. "Ɇllon sits atop a bustling little village, m'lady. Surely, there are tradesmen who'd be better skilled than I am."
"Aye. But I'm a mysterious woman living alone in a castle ruin on bewitched lands," she says. "Moon-cursed and black-cat-hexed are what the narrow-minded say, and that kind of trouble is unwanted around here. But tongues will cease and suspicions will be curbed if someone as upstanding as a Prince Charming could act as my proxy of sorts. So, what do you say, Fayre of Umlant. Deal?"
There's no need for me to put much thought into my answer. Coin is coin any way you slice it.
"Deal."
"But be warned, good sir," the Princess shifts just enough for her ŧrivon to smile at me once more. "I'm no joke with or without this beauty, understand? We will keep our boundaries and our hands where they belong."
"Aye, fair maiden," I smile back at her. "I completely understand."
With new hope settled, I finally lift the first spoonful of cooling stew to my lips.
"Oh, by the way..."
I pause. The spoon of stew dangling in midair, my mouth hanging open and drooling impatiently.
"...I wouldn't eat that if I were you," she says oh so calmly.
"Eat what? The stew? But you just cooked..." I look down at that bubbling bowl before me. "By the gods, did you hex the food too?!"
The Princess simply shrugs at me and takes a sip of her mug.
"I needed a backup plan in case you weren't amiable to my proposal."
"Is everything you cook hexed?"
"I'm a shit cook, Fayre," she says. "So, if 'tis mouth-watering and finger-licking good, then yes...it is hexed."
Alright then. I put the spoon back into the bowl and push the whole mess away from me.
Suddenly, I'm not very hungry anymore.
#
Life and Time turn on their respective wheels. Day becomes night becomes stewed beaver or fish and bread and beer and tasks upon which a man could soundly break his back. Wood is chopped and water is gathered. Gutters cleaned and rooves re-thatched. The outhouse gains a fresh lease on life as Ⱥvalon casts off his handmade Morocan leather saddle in favor of hitch and moldboard. The Princess catches her fish and skins her beavers. She sows the seeds for tomorrow's crops. Potato, hops, and rye. Corn as golden and silken as hair.
Day becomes night. Late summer cools slowly into autumn. The sky cries as the Princess and I share beer-soaked raindrops and, even now and then, a few laughs. She is not as she seems, this witch. There's a sparkle in her eyes that the Royal Painters could never quite capture in their portraits, a hunger for knowledge that stirs the mind, a catch in her voice as it curls on the early autumn breeze when she casts her spells. And the power of nature, of sky and earth and stars above, lay beneath her skin and deep within her bones. This woman...This witch...No fairytale, no word weaver, could ever do her justice. The chickens cluck unperturbed at her feet, the twin suns smile down on her. A few of the village souls brave the Witch's Weed and the vile rumors to seek her help. Medicines for a broken heart or an infected wound, letters to be written or read for family too far away to join mother's humble table next Harvest Moon.
What messages do the spirits have for us today, Miss Ura?
Parents with dreams of a better life send their children to Castle Ɇllon's ruins to learn their numbers and letters. And in return for the kindness extended, they leave freshly baked breads and sweet cakes, most of which end up in Ⱥvalon's belly or mine. Days become nights become dreams. Ⱥvalon is fatter now, and far too content with living a lazy life by the creek's banks to think about the journey home to Umlant. And if I'm being truly honest with myself, so am I.
I savagely cut myself with the sickle one day before Harvest Moon, and the Princess patches me up with her rough hands and her gentle smile. Come Harvest Moon, we dine on a humble feast of sweet cake and stewed trout, and the morrow finds us both too deep in our cups and our merriment to walk a straight line. The glow of Ura's foul-mouthed charm warms my heart more than I care to admit.
Autumn yields to the crack of winter. Short days stretch into long, cold nights beneath the aurora's rainbow streams. The Princess stares up at the lights, bewitched by their beauty, just as I am bewitched by her confidence. There's nothing like this in Umlant. Nothing in the King's Court that could rival the savage pulchritude that resides here. And lately, I find that when I turn my head to my own bed now warm and free of ticks and nightmares, my mind wrestles with the thought of having to leave these ruined stones and the vile sorceress who calls these cursed lands her home. But my family awaits, eyes collectively turned to the horizon for any sign of my promised return. Their hopes and dreams hitched to the stack of coin my toils have earned in Ura's keep. I cannot abandon them to poverty and misery.
#
She leans against the old, wooden chair, swaddled in woolen blankets and the warmth of the hearth. Her gaze is adrift in the crackle and spark of the roaring fire, her thoughts afloat in the secrets that even I can't read. Outside, the sky gently weeps, the first rains of spring beat down in the dark night, wrestling the kingdom of Islecene, it seems, to an unnatural type of ghost-quiet. As the fire whispers its mysteries, the remnants of tonight's half-eaten dinner lay forgotten between us. Roasted fish, fresh cheeses, and sweet bread, last year's wine brought up from the cellar to toast this special evening. A feast for all eternity which the Princess and I happily ate until we realized that every bite brought us closer to the dreadful truth that lies in wait on the other side of the night. My usefulness at Ɇllon has come to its end. Needless to say, we lost our appetites soon enough after that, choosing instead to sit here in the warmth and the stillness. To save the night, or at least, what's left of it. For the Morrow brings with it the dawn and the suns and the first reluctant footsteps bound for home.
"I'll miss this," the words tumble out of my mouth without much thought behind them. They stir the heavy silence of the room ever so slightly.
The Princess doesn't shift a single muscle, doesn't bat a long eyelash. Instead, she keeps her thoughts adrift and her black-eyed gaze forward. Yet I know that her heart echoes the sentiment as her own. I've come to know her, this Princess who needs no rescuing. It turns out that I was the one who needed to be rescued from my delusions, after all. I still do, I suppose.
The fire crackles. The sky weeps. Time turns on its wheel on the slow grind forward.
Finally, she turns to me, eyes steely, mouth set in straight lines across her face. She stares at me for a quiet moment before a hand wends its way from beneath the shield of blankets to reach for me. Calloused hands touch, searching, needing. Fingers entwine. The wooden chair moans when she rises from its arms.
The fire crackles. The sky weeps.
The Princess' kisses are as unexpected as they are demanding, her fingers ravenous as they tear at cloth and flesh. I respond to her lips and tongue, the hunger in me so extreme that it even frightens my soul. She is a wildfire raging across the lands, as untamable as the spirit burning inside her, and I happily throw myself on the fevered coals. Spilled wine splashes on discarded clothing. Sweat and grime and the heat of passion mingle to become a miasma of animalistic grunts and savagery. And when the thrill of ecstasy finally curls our bones and boils our senses, we fall into each other's arms like piss pooled on the ground.
The fire dies. The sky stops weeping.
The languid night surrenders to the bustling dawn. Life stirs impatiently between the first sunbeams. Never before in my life have I so loathed every chirp and birdsong, every crackle of hope that comes with morrow's suns. Yet I rise without whispers of promises to be kept or haikus of love to be sung from atop my noble steed, for we both know in our heart of hearts that my place isn't here by the Princess' side. It never was and it never will be. I am too tame, she is too wild, and before the memories of us get too soiled by the delusion of eternal love everlasting, it is best to leave our fairytale at the point where it currently stands. A happily-ever-after oh so precious and fleeting, captured only for the here and now.
The road calls louder than before. And now that the morrow has risen, I mount my steed and turn my reins to the south, never to look back at the Princess who needed no rescuing.