Pandora's Last Hope
She was like Pandora, the first woman, and like Pandora, she had been endowed with great beauty and cunning, she was vivacious and curious and there had been many gifts bestowed upon her by those that had come and had fallen before.
The beauty and grace of her mother, and the courage and friendship of her sister, the fervor and tenderness of a lover and even the steely cunning and suspicious keenness of a father who had shown her his love... by denying her his love.
Only she was no myth. She was real and she was truly the first woman, the first woman he'd ever seen, touched, kissed, loved.
And he was like hope, like the hope that remained inside Pandora's pithos after the evil was released by the curious Pandora. He was hope and he was the only person that could save her from the evil, from the curse, from herself.
Unlike Pandora, she had not been given that ill-fated gift, the pithos, that clay jar and she could not be held responsible for the opening of the ancient pithos. She had not released any dark spirits and plagues from a clay jar as Pandora had but instead, had been born into evil, trapped inside a Pandora's pithos, and there upon her head had been placed a dark curse, a dowry that might have become her legacy shorty thereafter the fall of her father, that stalwart ruler of the evil kingdom.
On that bleak day, upon the hour of the changing of the guard, when her loyal sentries were driven out and replaced with armored beasts and the dark ghoulish knight was crowned king, she felt all of the grace and all of the courage, which had been hitherto bestowed upon her, fall away and she hadn't even hope left to call upon.
She believed herself to be but a peon who had been sold upon the auction platform and pillaged by the demons and knights and kings that lay claim to her, and that, without right, sentenced her to their eternal servitude.
At the midnight hour, with darkness upon her, she raised up the goblet until drunken with strong spirits and succumbed to despair and sobbed until in a stupor and felt it wise to surrender herself to the new ruler and prove her loyalty and sell her soul to save her life and complete the curse that befallen her.
But he, that devoted manchild, that lowly, loathsome peasant who'd hid in squalor and evaded the guards with their great helms, gorgets, spaulders and tassets, shields and scimitars. He, who had worshiped her in their youthful age and worshiped her still, rode into the village and entered into her cottage there in her time of desolation and he knelt at her feet and brought unto her her an offering of freedom and of peace.
She cast her eyes upon him and was weary, worn and sore afraid and on that night, she most graciously accepted his offering for he, the peasant, would buy back her soul and freedom and restore her hope.
And it came to pass that the peasant and the first and foremost woman in his life took up arms and shields, and as mighty warriors, infiltrated the battlements of the grand palace and the indomitable tower and engaged in battle with the guards and then stood together in the starless night as the dark castle crumbled and its kings were check mated like those ancient fallen gods, and made to fall, like archaic statues of old.
And then they lived. Not ever after. Not always happily.
She was like Pandora, curious and endowed with beauty and much cunning. And he was hope... her only hope.
