A boy and a dream

[Jentos 6875]

Spoiler

 

 

 

[Current inhabitants of Tor-Praeth may roleplay knowledge of this posts dialogue]

 

Flames danced on the walls.

 

The shadows they cast danced softly about. 

 

Line great branches of a tree, the shadows of root-like horns were cast over the temple halls. 

 

The creature turned its head, limb-like shadows from his horned head twisting with every movement of his head, every shudder from the kiln over which he hung. 

 

"I remember." a voice like gold. A voice like thunder. Deep, and resounding. Burning, and thrumming across the black halls. 

 

"I remember a boy." the creature's three eyes were like rubies reflecting firelight. 

 

There was a throb in its jaw. It had never known, never truly, the boy-king Edmund the Second. But his death was reminiscent, reminiscent of old and dead days. 

 

Days where the horned creature could have yet been called a man. And yet with every passing day, the feeling of what it had been - of what it had meant to be human, slipped from him like the cold dead hands of a murdered lover. In its stead, there was something serpentine, something ancient, something that was more than man. And yet, the An-Gho had come to realize that it was pain that was the greater goad, the one thing that could make him reminisce, and remember what it had meant to be human. 

 

An old man with a white beard, a bent back, and a single eye hunched over the kiln of flames with a great black cloak about him. There was such a sadness in his eyes, one so profound the tears glowed like gems before the brazier. 

 

"When Edmund died." said a broken, tired voice.

 

"I remembered." 

 

"I remembered Edward York." 

 

The flames did not answer. The old man bowed his horned head, but his shadow did not stir. 

 

That night, he would not pray to his Father.

 

He would not pray to Dragur.

 

He would not pray to God.

 

He would pray to something else, something far smaller, something five-hundred years had made the World in its entirety forget;

 

A boy that had dreamed to be king. 

 

[Caranthir_ 2088]

Edward York, that little boy of Norland, slumbers in the bliss of infinity now. A long time dead - too close for comfort still. Were he to think - for the dead were not thinking things - he would have recalled that man of the Black-wood, that Jentos, who bade him calm. Who bade him to peace. Who bade him do good.

 

But he didn’t think; he was dead. And so the story goes.