"Why would you say that? The love I feel for you is the only truth I've ever known!"
"Love is often the only truth until it breaks your heart."
There were many times—not many, but a few—when Prince Endymion was glad to be alone. As he walked in the courtyard after dark beneath the lit up windows from the castle, it struck him that this might be one of them.
He settled on a stone bench with his head in wide hands. The savory, fragrant taste of a rosemary spiced pork loin with the tang of pineapple chutney still lingered in his mouth from supper. There were other courses he savored over the night's snail-paced progression. The entirety of his court, it seemed, was far more enthused for his betrothal a girl he'd never met than he could ever hope to be.
The staggering white castle that sat behind his field of view was still hazy with smoke from the kitchens and heavy with the smell of roasted meat and fresh breads. The cold walls were draped in banners, bearing the image of a pegasus struggling to free itself from brambles. Bards plucked the harp strings, reciting ballads and poems, but in the garden their voices, let alone their words, could scarcely be heard. Only the lower mutter of intoxicated conversations of lovers that had, like Endymion, escaped to the garden for privacy and introspection.
It was the final hour of the banquet laid for the future king. His generals, advisers, friends family, and even a few dewy-eyed girls that he'd once courted had sat along the extended benches with him. In honor of the occasion, his lord father had dragged himself out of his sick bed, and in full make-up to give his countenance something more than a ghastly complexion, attended. Endymion wish he hadn't. The rattling of phlegm in his father's voice was painful to listen to; it wouldn't be long before the old man eventually crossed to the other side.
The Lady Beryl had also been in attendance, and she had imposed herself at his father's side all the night long. She had taken an intense interest to him ever since her arrival in their kingdom. Nobody ever said out loud the way she watched him with her eyes and the way her countenance and demeanor changed entirely in his presence, but his generals often hinted their suspicions that she was quite taken with him. Endymion held little interest for her as a woman, but she was admittedly radiant as the setting sun with her magnificent red hair, queenly stature, and her smile that cut like a knife. Everyone called her Lady Beryl to her face and whispered "Witch!" behind her back.
Admittedly, Endymion had felt it difficult to look away from her when she was first introduced to their court.
But she proved to be an ambitious sort, and not entirely whole-hearted. By whispering into his father's ear for the last three years, her imprint on the way the kingdom ran had already been permanently pressed. Perhaps by the time his father was in his grave, she would make a move for the throne herself. Both Endymion and his generals recognized this as a possibility. It made her hand in the setup of a betrothal that much more... bewildering.
When Endymion was informed of the decision himself, he had wanted to drink without stopping, but he didn't. True bravery.
As the festivities came to a close and people began to retire within guest chambers, Endymion pulled his cloak tight against his body to keep from getting cold. Miserable and huddled alone. The sound of music and song had long since stopped spilling out the open windows behind him. Though they were the last things Endymion thought he wanted to hear, he missed them, as they gave him a distraction to focus on other than the present responsibilities at hand.
"Ngh-...Gh!"
The vocalization had not been his own. He rose to his feet immediately, limpid blue eyes alert and searching with a readied hand on his hilt. "Who's there?" He held his breath while waiting for an answer. More than soon enough it became evident that whoever else it was that occupied the garden nearby had also held her breath too, because her untrained lungs burst involuntarily, and her frantic gasping could be heard.
Sword withdrawn, he used the excessive noise as compass and came across a blonde waif of a girl with a most peculiar hair style. Two buns sat on top of her head like buns and streamed down either side of her face like pigtails. A common masquerade mask kept the top part of her face obscured. She'd been caught on a bush of red roses, her silvery gown caught amongst nonchalant thorns.
She was delighted, mouth opened a large, welcoming smile to see him until she recognized the weapon in his hand. Then she began flailing, getting herself more impossibly snared against the bush as she cried loudly, "I-didn't-do-anything-I-didn't-do-it-I-didn't-!" and after a point, her words muddled into one big blubber as her eyes glittered with tears like twinkling stars.
"...What?"
"I didn't! I didn't! It won't let me go, and it hurts, it hurts, it huuuuuu-uhrrrts!"
"If you keep struggling like that you'll make things worse, you need to stop-"
"I don't want to stop!" Seeing Endymion step closer to her, her tears renewed a fresh with ten percent more panic.
Endymion paused, dumbfounded. "Listen," he slowly explained, "I'm putting my sword on the ground. See?" When it was by his feet, he exposed both hands to reveal he had nothing else. "Let me help you. Don't you recognize me?"
She wailed a tearful, sniffling, "No," and bit her bottom lip. And yet, she held still, arms held high above her shoulders to keep her bared skin from getting further scratched than they already were.
Speaking of that bare skin...
Earthlings came in all different shapes, sizes and colors. It's safe to say there's always a good variable even with what's considered the norm. The girl caught up in roses was distinctly as far from the normal as Endymion could fathom, but in such subtle ways that it would take more time than the situation allowed to ruminate over them.
Her blonde hair wasn't just blonde, it was platinum. Her gown was an ever so slight variation of iridescent white with silver thread woven into the weave, yet her skin was of moonlight itself, save for where thorns had scraped down her forearm in long angry welts.
She was striking.
"Really, you don't recognize me?" he checks with her again, incredulous. "What a bizarre creature you are. Now, shhh... Shhh. If you place your hand on my shoulder, and lift your foot just a bit... There you go. Shh, shhh, it's okay now."
She was very quiet after he finished plucking her free from the roses. She kept her masked head bowed with her fists clenched impossibly tight into white-knuckled balls. Unable to help himself from wanting to assist her, he gingerly while directing her to take a seat, "You are okay now, right? If you don't know who I am, then do you know where you are?"
Still no answer. But Endymion could tell she was flustered. Her ears were beginning to darken to an endearing blood-quickened pink.
They were getting no where.
"Tell you what. It's late. Let me escort you back to the castle. Someone can-"
"Oh please! No! I can't!" She clutched his arm and implored him with her sapphire eyes. "You can't! You can't even tell anyone I was here, because... Because, uhm... If you did... Uhm..."
The sweet quiver of her voice went straight to his cock. "Then it's our secret." Removing her hands from his arms least they make the stirring of his own blood more obvious, he added, "But if it's to be a secret I must keep, then surely I should get something in return. What's behind that mask of yours?"
"It's another secret!" As though she were afraid he might reach out and snatch it from her face, she shrinks back, holding either side of the masking fixture. For good measure, she sticks her pink tongue out, but just briefly enough to provoke a hearty and surprised laugh from Endymion. "Besides, masks should only come off at the end of balls, and we're not at a ball at all. So. There."
"Fair enough, lump-head."
"Yes, I—What? What did you call me?"
Endymion smirked wryly.
"They're not lumps, they're buns, and I should put lumps on your head—!"
Endymion touched a finger to her plump lips. The gesture was enough to shock her into silence. "If you keep talking that loudly then everyone in the castle will know there's someone out here whether I inform them or not. So if you're truly not supposed to be here, I suggest you leave, as I'm about to do the same."
Her head followed his finger back an inch, as though her lips had been stuck to the pad of his index. "Y-..you are? Already?"
"Already." He paused. There was a want, an itch to hint that a future meeting under normal, formal and proper circumstances would be a pleasant one. But in light of the day's earlier events, it seemed somehow inappropriate. And yet... "Don't look so contrite. Here. You were after one of these roses, weren't you?"
Using his sword, he took a budding stem with a sanguine rose that had yet to uncoil into a full blossom. He skimmed the thorns off with the blade before returning to the extraordinary blonde to take her hand and press the gift into her cold fingers. "Cut the bottom of the stem an inch and put it in water when you get back to your home, and in a few days it will bloom. When the petals begin falling, you can come for a second."
"Uhm... Uhm...! Bunny." She clutched the flower into her chest.
"Hm?" He blinked.
"Bunny. That's what my friends call me."
"Well then, Bunny. After I leave you should wait here and hide in the hedges a little longer before leaving yourself."
AN: I'm so thankful for those of you who have read and reviewed thus far! It really is a writer's bread and butter. Trying to write character perspective for a male is hard as a female! I imagine one day I will have to go back and clean up my writing at some point when it is all finished.
