Summer's orange-ish red sun had long dipped past the streaked horizon, darkening the sky to blue-black. Stars jovially winked to life one by one, twinkling bright silver almost as pearls woven in darkest hair. Melody had snuggled down into her princess pink sheets and waited patiently for the night to bloom. When it did and the house settled in sleeping sounds she threw her sheets from her and pitter-pattered to bedroom window.
Still in her cotton nightgown, appropriately pink with ruff as well as frill, Melody shimmied through the window on knees then swung legs over. Experienced tree-climbers hand grabbed the branch of oak growing stately-wild beside her window. It was a bit more difficult in cotton nightgown with her heart beating fiercely, but she made it eventually to the cool dew-touched grass below.
A picturesque backyard bordering on green forest, the night made the trees look like tall soldiers standing tightly together to protect something. Fists in nightgown to keep the edges from damp dew, Melody crossed the yard to her mother's raised bed garden.
Where he waited, leaning one shoulder against stripped silver birch trunk. His legs crossed at the ankles and his arms across chest, it was an illusion of sort that repose. Melody thought it was meant to be deceptive. If there was anything he was not it was casual.
Some nights (like this night) she would catch him looking up at her mother's bedroom with a strange mix of emotion that swirled behind blue and brown eyes; almost as if he held a very cruel sort of adoration for whatever lay sleeping within but would not approach. Above him in the tree an owl quietly announced her slowing presence with almost cautionary hooo, the dark and the light of his eyes ticked as switches onto her and Melody stopped all together. When he looked at her she felt crushed, relieved, her stomach wound in knots and her heart fluttered all at once. He must have known it--the corner of his mouth curled slightly as if in distaste.
"Have you the answer to my riddle, little mirror?" He refused to say her name. She did not understand why he chose not to, or why every time she made mention of her mother his eyes flashed like wounded animals in the night. She had learned however during the first few nights with tears and heart-hurt it was best not to push.
"I have," she started, tremulous and not at all brave. Oh, she wished she could have been brave. It was now that she realized her fists clenched in nightgown were wet with sweat and that she'd clutched so tightly she made wrinkled were there were none. One by one, she willed sore fingers to release while he tipped his head and arose one long brow over elfin eye.
Melody swallowed. "There i-is no answer, or at least, there is no right or wrong answer to why a raven is like a writing desk. And so anything I say or don't say would be correct." She had started out strong, but by the time she had rushed to the end of it she felt as if a balloon with all the air out of it: deflated in the silence which her answer was met with. The owl in the tree hooted, a dog barked, a sleeping bird in some distant tree chirped and the wind made the grass whisper sending her a chill that made her shiver.
Just when she thought she could not bear his silence further--"Six children have I asked this riddle," His one blue and one brown eye arose a moment to a bedroom window at the house, then back down to her as he pushed from the chair. "All of them tried to answer," the curl of his lip finally traveled to his entire mouth. Distaste as well as displeasure at these six children registering before it flashed behind a mask of nothing. His hands were long, slim beautiful and inexorable things which presented her with gift. A sword, a very small Goblish sword--one could have mistaken it for a dagger if not for the making of it. In his hand, the blade's metal seemed to own a greenish cast, while around the handle tied in leather was a miniature peach and clear glass bauble. "It is yours, if you wish it."
No other man or creature could make the word wish sound like such a dangerous dream.
"I do not," shakily began, "But if you are giving it as a gift or reward than I shall gladly take it." Melody's mother once as a child had warned her to be very careful with her wishes. For the longest time, she had never understood why and now...
He seemed so terribly amused then, the smear of distaste turning into a thin lipped smirk. "Very well," so regal in his delivery. It did not surprise her however. He was a king after all. Scuttling forward Melody blindly reached forward to snatch the gift and hurry back. She could not ignore her instincts which told her that anywhere near him was dangerous even if her logical mind could make no sense of instinct.
"Than--Thank you," Melody released in a hiss of relieved air, though she was not sure he was even paying attention. He was back to looking at the house, looking up to her mother's darkened window.
"Tell her...." He faltered. He always did really, and his magnificent voice tattered itself into a gravelly road, full of cracks and torn pot holes. "Tell her a sword cuts both ways," whispered. "Tell Sarah..." His emotions were as storm-touched as the sea. Whatever sorrow that might have crossed his face was swallowed by a simmering rage that Melody shrank away from.
"Tell her nothing," he snarled. This too, he always did. The owl took flight from tree and he turned on polished boot heel, snap of black cloak to the woods and silent soldier-trees waiting there. He left her wondering what it was her mother had done to touch him so and, if she could ever do the same.