The Poet

[TH3GHOSTWAFFL3 489]

The Poet

 

 

Outside the poet’s window, the first rays of the morning sun rolled in, gently piercing a light mist in the street and staining his desk with a soft light. The sunlight was outshone by a cheap tallow candle which flickered with an odd sort of care-free happiness, creating prancing shadows over the woodgrain and the parchment. Dietrich van Jungingen sat in a pensive mood, his eyes tired from a sleepless night.

 

In his hand was a fine Fennic dip-pen, made from a pallid wood edged with gold; ink stained his palms and fingers, the result of a writer’s habit. He leaned forwards to his desk and put his pen to paper. Maybe, just maybe, he had found the right words. Then, with a sudden feeling of unsatisfaction, he slowly drew back in a manner he had grown accustomed to and threw down the lovely pen exasperatedly. He unconsciously reached for a bottle of Carrion Black, a drink which he had recently begun to stash under his desk, without bothering to look and grunted with disappointment as his fingers felt an empty weight. He inclined his head with a sour gaze and saw with surprise three such hollow bottles.

 

The poet’s mood only decayed further. He swept the many small piles of scrunched balls of parchment off the desk and glowered at the candle. It continued to taunt him with its good mood and light-hearted manner. It danced with a merry flame, as its brothers had done during the long night. Dietrich snuffed the candle, and then only the weak, greyish cast of dawn lit the room. He looked at the waxy stump with mixed feelings of satisfaction and self-loathing.

 

He leaned back against his chair and looked up at the portrait of Marius the Brash, which hung on the wall to his left. He gazed into the King’s eyes. The artist must have had a talent for such features, because they gripped him like a monk in prayer. He felt a strange kinship with the dead man, an odd sense of understanding stirred by his deepest thoughts, and he reminded himself yet again of his own fragile mortality. He studied the portrait for a long time, reliving the days he lived under that unfortunate king. The horrors of war came flooding back to him, and he sat transfixed, until he was awoken by the harsh cawing of a crow.

 

With a desperate sigh he arose and flung open the window, letting a cold breeze flood in, before returning to the seat he so often reclined in lethargically. The royal poet reached again for a bottle of Carrion Black and met with the same disappointment as before. Thoughts ran through his mind as he slowly traced the mortar-lines of the wall with his eyes.

 

The crow cawed again, louder this time, and Dietrich thought of his kinsmen who had been slain by their many foes. How he had caused their deaths, by being at Rubern. How he had caused the slaughter of innocents, the burning of crops and horrific mutilation of men and women across Arcas in attacks of petty vengeance and mindless, endless violence. He thought of that violence that had been released from its cage by a madman, roaring and defiant, with no other purpose than to shed blood and wreak revenge. The mocking laughter of his past spectres rose once again, as they so often did, to haunt him, to torment him.

 

The poet suddenly seized a piece of parchment, inspired by his overwhelming guilt. His eyes, rimmed with the black mark of sleeplessness, scanned the floor for the Fennic pen many times until he finally found it. He took up the pen, lowered it into the ink bottle and went once more to place the nib against the wrinkled sheet.

 

He stained it not with ink, but with tears.