In a land barren of the thrusting technology, a pleasure of dawn and dusk might fill it's men. A simple story to the young was often without logic, no right mind would truly scare from such a simplicity.. But in the night time, shadows allowed the minds to dip.. A conceivable tale; a myth. A dark story of a ghost feared but feigned with disbelief.. In the sweet dawn of earliest sunrise, a dank pleasure had been said to sweep between the shadows of deeper night. Some claimed her the Queen of Meridian herself, the late that was suspected by many as death of her son's doing.. An astonishing beauty to tempt the men to join her. A mermaid[0] perhaps, with fonder copulations with which to seduce..

No man hisself's name spoken, but who would admit to such a thing?

To scandal and evil at once.. Men laughed and jeered in the lightness, with bravery and heart...until the night time..

A scentless cool of sudor sweat rolled purposely over young and ocean-coloured skin. A simple man with the thought of his wife, the fear that he was yet to marry her: any seduction, this young man might be unworthy. His strong-set graft of rocky features made to poise. No matter the worth of the castle, the young man's heart lay to his wife. Any day that he might often gaze toward her; as of now he gazed at almost equally fine canvas silks.

This man was rarely wrong, and though admittedly, humbly so. In the rebellion, the youth did not allow it; the mistaken Hero, of Julian's. This current young man was rarely mistaken, a thin hand of navy in the early shade on his weapon. It was too close. Too close to the youth of a Queen.. There was little more; her mother's bedroom where she slept... A rustle in the windless hour. "Who goes as close to Our Lady?"

The brave voice of that rustle merely trembled, much like the focus of the Guard. Prince Phobos had been loud through his servers.. A clater. A simple buzz that droned over and around him. He reminded himself that this would be no act of Phobos at the least...though he might never know if Prince Phobos were to face him. For initially, even the leader Caleb had not been sure...he claimed. The lank guard forced himself pursuit; he would face a ghost. She could never be the beauty all presumed. Through shades of morning velvets, the sheet of blue that would blanket the world. A gossip claimed she had moved on to the foreign Earth anyway.

"I asked, stranger, who goes?"

...

Nerissa smiled with plumping skin. She emerged with fabricated toweling. "Ach, Thero, you should put that sword away!"

"You should have called." The thin boy forced the blade out of the light. He gruffed his words with a stubborn embarrassment and pressed a fat pair of fingers to tweak his nose before walking on beside him for 'Trill' to return him to his initial place of post. "It is my job to protect, not to be checking the maidens doing their chores."

"Ah, hush! Put that pout away too or I shall sought your to-be-wed. I'm no demon!"

"The maidens might argue it though, Trill. You come when you please!"

"I do when I can."

"..and the Queen is only fonder! I tell you, I see a witch."

"And I see egotism in the young man." She slapped over the side of his head and hate her own chubby smile; the thick Queen only held preference to her in hopes of seeming smaller, she supposed. The tainted tramp ought to if she didn't. Nerissa slipped past the door, into the quaint and stolen room. Pale blues and finest fineries.. Nerissa snarled at the antiquity, while the child dreamt of infidelity and interbreeding. The woman's plump fingers laced the towels perfectly with disdain, before plucking a fine bore-hair comb, which had surely belonged to the spider. The lady 'Trill' had spied it lying in the bed room.. Not that the spider had lived out Thanos. Not that she would have for all that she'd done.

Nerissa dropped the brush, with one or two less lengthening dirty hairs, and glanced again at the foul creature.

And then Nerissa was gone.

...

Caleb's silence filled the dreadfulness that came in morning; the revaluations that came as those had a chance to peek at the awful night. Bright sunlight would soon coat the bedroom, and Aldarn would no longer be too asleep for Caleb to see his face. Caleb had not slept the night.

There had been no focus, not in Caleb's mind. There had been no brightly light. If Caleb had only stayed; had bargained for Aldarn's freedom.. Aldarn was desperate to become a man and always had been, but Drake would be the only man Caleb could truly identify..and it was in Drake's stupidity that he had found the complex. And Drake relied on himself, but Caleb had never taught enough to Aldarn. Maybe it wasn't his job. Maybe it was that Aldarn was hardly the mind of Phobos and his incredibility came more from his heart.

He would never have his face again. Not as it had been.

The only way that Caleb could resolve, was resolution that he would make it up. Caleb would have to make it better and in that sense the dawn was breaking: the light was already coming and it might be time to start all over. Caleb had remembered his promise to a girl, but the cold species had evaporated by the time Caleb had turned to face her. Some wise boy had told him to be better, and Caleb watched Aldarn's fragile smile.

...

...In the cool mists, Aldarn watched the sight with unyielding tears. For didn't she know, that she had been saved? Aldarn watched the sight silently, as she paraded in more and less than Aldarn dare' see. The brush of roast on her cheeks to reveal what he'd guessed. He'd had weeks to watch her every day. The Queen Elyon was in love with her brother and Aldarn watched the hatred unfolding..

A surreal mask of clever notions, of silvery eyes slicing into the icy of his. A masquerade that neither would be winning, because she seemed to irk him all the same. Not that Phobos showed it...but Aldarn had watched Caleb for a thrice of years an knew the expression. He knew the pain within her eyes, when Queen Elyon teared in self emasculation; the hatred of her impurity something that would viciously tear at her goodness. He'd once tried to tell her, that Aldarn still thought she could be good, but the frozen Princess within the Queen refused to be hearing. She'd bat him away as he tried. "Aldarn..?"

"Your Grace." Aldarn bowed, in a floral room that he'd never seen before. Of blues and greens and floral lilacs, of all colours that he knew and Aldarn immediately recognised that he was dreaming. If he was in her room at all, he would be hung for the disruption. This wasn't what her bedroom looked like; painted florals coating the walls. But in a dream or not, tears swamped the young girl's eyes. She wasn't yet fourteen, hardly a woman. Hardly a queen, he stepped forward feebly; his gaze on her crying eyes like a dulled night, though patently aware that she was undressed. He wouldn't look at her chemise. She knew he wouldn't look at her chemise.

Not even if he'd wanted to. "I can't do this.."

"I'll keep your secret."

An ironic smile. He was glad that she smiled, but Queen Elyon would be no happier. Aldarn had already accepted that there was nothing he could do. He was a simple guard and it wasn't his place to interfere. It wasn't his place to mark a judgement because he'd thought Caleb was boring enough..

She might be wonderful.


I think it's clear that I think Aldarn, even in his dreams is adorable.. ^^

[0] Mermaids being stuff of legend - they tempted the sailors into the sea's only to viciously drown them, in certain interpretations. It was seen that no man, no matter how good, would resist such a fine beauty.

Another note being the scandal in Elyon taking her mother's room - to the least, Prince Phobos would not be happy.