Khayman's Solitude
The opal of the moon was almost painfully
bright to behold, that night. It's swelling full orb, almost iridescent,
dominated the shadowed velvet of the sky, spreading it's silvery light over the
landscape. A surface of a smooth rock highlighted here, a leafless branch of
tree there. It looked beautiful under the clear moonlight. The harshness of the
glaring sun did not forgive imperfections as the moon did.
A kind of
magical essence poured over the land at night, healing the pains, forgetting the
ugly, stark nakedness that resided in reality.
Khayman supposed, his mind
forgetting the truths he knew to be reality, that the stars had once been a part
of the moon, too. But they had drifted away. Broken free and deserted their
body, soaring to aspire to new things on their own. Trying to out-sparkle the
moon with their innocent ambitions. The crystalline points surrounded the
sphere. So close, yet with a vast distance between them. The stars seemed to
have a language of their own, speaking to each other with glittering signals.
But they no longer knew the moon. They had become so separate, that they would
never join with it again. But so close... He could almost reach out and
touch...
Khayman's eyes closed, unable to look at this self-created
metaphor any longer. He rested his palms against the coolness of the window
frame, his eyes now looking downwards, at the plummeting blackness
below.
That was where he belonged. In the perpetual darkness, where he
would blend so perfectly with the shadows, that his grief would become an
irrelevant addition to it.
It was late into the night-time, but the hour
didn't matter. What did time matter anyway? Just the persistent ticking, eternal
cycles that meant so much to some - meant nothing to him. What was an hour when
you had spent an eternity in pain, and had yet to spend another in the same
hell?
He allowed the moon to shine down on him, if only for its healing
properties. It healed his soul to see the land he had once ruled over so
powerfully, returned to something that was, at least in his own mind, an echo of
its former glory. Magic swept the vision and made it almost whole again. Yet it
lied. The moon was nothing but a deception to his eyes. But he didn't want to
see that. It was all he had.
He slowed his breathing to a hush, and
listened to the night. He could no longer hear the soft heartbeats of the people
in their beds, across the miles of his kingdom. So beautiful. He realised that
now. Their harsh daily noises and frenzied activities had vexed him in the past.
How he missed them now.
If only... If only. It consumed his thoughts. He
had lied to himself again. Time did matter, because he wished the clock's
damnable hands would return him to years past. So that he could have prevented
the crumbling and stagnation of his land. He wanted to be amongst the commoners
who had once disgusted him. To hear their ringing laughter, to feel their sweet
breath, their life touch him.
Everything was dead now. There was no life
in this land. In this castle.
He had failed them. Failed each beautiful
star.
A battle that he had not prepared for. A stupid, arrogant mistake
let him be taken by surprise. The lives... Oh, God, the lives that had been
ended so quickly. So proud he had been... So sure that his kingdom would never
fall... That was what had killed it. That pride.
He could still hear the
icy screams as they had fallen in their hundreds. Some cursed him as they
fell.
So now... they had all left him. The battle was in the end, won. A
duel. A lonely kind of war. His kingdom was his. But what was a kingdom without
people? Those who had survived had fled to other places. They hated him now,
resented him for his failure. No, that was wrong. He had probably been
forgotten. After all, what was he to them? A weakened being - not a leader any
longer. A man who had betrayed their hopes - been unable to save them.
He
moved from the window, the slight breeze touching his back as he turned away
from the night; his cloak moving with the air, across his tragic frame. He could
not think about this. It was over. It had been so for far too long a time. Yet
his troubled soul was torn over and over again. He would never be released from
this dark pain, this guilty torment. He supposed that it was his fate, and never
ventured beyond these stone walls. He ruled silently, over nothing.
As
the years had passed, his magic had become useless, and his kingdom had begun to
fade. Buildings crumbled in the villages that were now nothing but ghost-towns.
Their grey stone monuments cracked and worn, beaten down by the storms that
shook the kingdom. Flowers refused to bloom, and birds never cheered the
mornings. It had all aged, become nothing, a hollow thing, as a dead as the
petrified, ugly branch of a tree. What did it matter? He didn't care for
it.
He moved to the cold stone smoothness of his throne, and placed himself
upon it, his body becoming weary as the night shrouded the day. He was tired of
the thoughts which tormented him and drained him physically.
With a
shattered heart and a searing pain in his head, he sighed, breaking the perfect
silence. Perfect, compared with the lively din of the past. Compared with their
dying screams.
God, how he hated the silence. The sound of his own voice
too, was equally cruel to him. He just needed a little sound. Something
unfamiliar to bind his broken soul. But it was not to be. As it had not been for
the eternal nights that had passed since, and he knew, was not to come either.
He stared for one last time at the glittering sky outside the large window. The
moon and stars reflected in the dark azure of his eyes. The silvered strands in
his darkly coloured hair caught the light, moving gently across the worried
lines of his face.
He rested his head on a gloved hand, and slipped into a
troubled sleep, filled with nightmares and
truths.
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