The Black Cauldron and all its characters belong to Lloyd Alexander and Disney, me-sah only own me OC and da story, mon! XD
Chapter 2
The young girl awoke with a sharp gasp, her body jerking once as her eyes flew open wide in fear to stare at the empty blackness that was her ceiling.
She sat up quickly, throwing off the blanket, looking round her room in panic for the thing that had terrified her so, before she took a deep a breath, feeling much more at ease knowing she wasn't inside the Horned King's castle as she had been a few moments ago in her dream.
It had been so real, as nightmares so often are, she could instantly recall every tiny, horrid detail.
A beam of cool, white light shone through her window as the near-full moon came out from behind a thick, white cloud to send its ethereal light onto the world below.
Realizing she was still shaking, the girl climbed a bit unsteadily out of bed, grabbing her night robe off the bedpost as she opened the door. Barefooted, she stepped out onto her little balcony to stand in the moonlight, hoping it would help to chase away the dark shreds of her nightmare that still clung to her like thick, sticky cobwebs.
She could still hear the Horned King's long, drawn-out scream of pure, tortured agony ringing in her ears as he was, literally, ripped to pieces as he died, dragged into the very thing he had so fervently sought, for only the stars knew how long, to possess and control.
The girl shivered violently again, letting the soft light soothe her mind somewhat, and tried to calm herself down.
As her breathing returned to normal, her mind began to slowly function again as she gazed at the moon's pale face, its surface reflected in her eyes. When she had been younger, her mother had told her stories about the Man in the Moon.
The way her mother told it, there had been a man, in the time of the Settling War for Prydain, who was kind, brave, very intelligent, and so handsome the stars themselves were impressed. The stars, who had seen so many mortals come and go, come and go over the countless millennia, favored him. The only thing that concerned them was that this brave, handsome man had been born under one of their more unlucky brethren.
An unlucky star.
And unlucky stars were always hateful things that take pleasure in harming the ones that were born under them. The other stars prepared a course of action in the event anything should happen to this chivalrous man among men.
In one of the first battles of Prydain's first war against its foes from across the sea, the young man was wounded very badly when saving a comrade in combat. He was not expected to live.
The stars knew what they had to do, and to save his life they had no choice but to make him immortal and place him on a large, black rock they called Moon, as a mortal that has been healed by a celestial force such as the stars can never return to the Earth, as touching earthly things are terribly painful, including walking.
As the young man became immortal he graciously thanked the stars for their kindness and asked what he could do for them in return.
The older, wiser ones came to him with a proposal. If he could help them watch the Earth, as the stars were dim and couldn't see very well most nights, they would grant him one night a month to walk on Earth unharmed by its harsh elements to see his lovely wife he had left there.
And so it was settled. The young man lit up the entire face of his rock called Moon that was pointed toward the Earth, giving mortals and stars alike the ability to see around them when the sun was fast asleep, and one night a month the moon will go completely dark as the bold knight visits his beautiful, gentle wife.
But over time, his features slowly changed to become dead looking, although they remained as kind as brave as before. For the moon was nothing but a dead rock, and as ruler of it, he began to mirror his lifeless kingdom.
His wife didn't care in the slightest. They loved each other and that was enough. But mortals die, and his wife was still mortal, and nothing could be done to save her, as the unlucky star had used what little malicious power it had left to prevent the other stars from turning her immortal as well.
So to this day, the Man in the Moon watches wisely over the mortals of Earth. The moon grows dark one night a month, when he mourns for his beautiful wife he loved so dearly, as he grows more lonely and sad by the day, waiting for the time when he can be released from his immortal ties and rest with his wife among the angels.
The girl smiled softly to herself as she remembered the tale her mother had used to tell.
She had always felt pity for the young man, believing that the stars, although they had meant well, had naively interfered in an untimely manner and it would have been better to just let the man die of his natural wound.
But then again, there never would have been a moon without him. She couldn't begin to picture Earth without a bright moon. She could see in her mind's eye, the brave man looking out his window onto the Earth, lonely and sad.
Strange thoughts enter out heads sometimes. Unbidden thoughts that come wholly of their own accord, it seems.
As the girl stared at the benevolent, nearly full circle of light sitting in the black heavens, one of these unbidden thoughts came to mind.
'The Horned King must have been so lonely.'
The girl blinked in surprise as the thought descended, wondering where in the world in had came from, but pondered on it nonetheless. Her parents had always told her she had an extremely fanciful imagination, able to imagine anything she wished, it seemed.
Suddenly, she could picture the Horned King, staring out a window of his castle, looking down on his realm, that was just as dead, lifeless and heartless as he. His cold, dead gaze slowly travels over his domain below him, stopping to rest for a sliver of a moment on a fresh sprig of grass snagged in the clinch of one of the shoes on a horse one of his men ride.
He watches, as, right before his eyes, the fresh, green grass withers and dies once it touches the earth of his dead realm.
Was that a sigh the Horned King uttered? It may have been the wind. His eyes reveal nothing.
The girl huffed softly to herself, breaking the little scene playing out in her head.
'Why am I even thinking such thoughts?' She asked herself irritably. 'The Horned King was a bloodthirsty, power-hungry, completely heartless monster that never cared about anything or anybody in the entire world except himself and his ambitions. He was the true embodiment of pure evil. He slaughtered more people than I would ever want to know. He nearly took over all of Prydain as well before he could be stopped. Not to mention, he was absolutely hideous! Not even a mother could love that face!'
The girl paused at the last mental statement she had made.
'His mother. . .I wonder if he had one?'
She shook her head.
'Of course everyone has a mother, you goose! But. . .was he born looking that way, I wonder? With horns? Like a monster? Was he despised by his own parents? What if even 'They' hated him, for his appearance?'
The girl shifted her foot, disturbed by the way her mind was heading.
'What's it like, I wonder,' she mused silently to herself, 'To never feel loved? To never even know what that emotion is, what it means? To never feel wanted? Ever? With not even your parents to love you, to be completely rejected, hated and utterly despised. . .by 'Everyone?' Even if you had never did anything wrong? Would it be enough to turn someone, who may have had a kind heart at one time, into a. . .monster?'
The girl closed her eyes, slowly trying to imagine the feeling, of being unloved and truly hated by everyone in her young life she cared about and knew, but she was met with a great void, so deep and so black she couldn't begin to fathom it.
It had no end.
She couldn't wrap her mind around its empty vastness, and it made her chest constrict suddenly in terror.
'If I was trapped in that. . .I would feel so. . .hopeless. . .so completely lost. . .afraid. . .so. . .so. . .'
She could not find a word powerful enough to describe the torrent of agony she felt deep in her chest at that moment.
'Is this an inkling of how the Horned King may have felt?'
She thought numbly.
'Was this why he was so determined to take over everything, destroy anything that stood in his way, to keep his mind off this abyss?'
She felt her eyes brim with tears.
'Oh gods, he must have been so 'Lonely!' So completely lost and so. . .broken.'
The girl's long train of saddening thoughts, coupled with the remnants of her horrifying nightmare that was still fresh in the back of her mind, made her eyes water suddenly as her chest ached with a deep, breaking pain she had never known before.
Suddenly losing all strength in her legs, she sank slowly to her knees in the moonlight, overwhelmed by her despairing feelings. She stared up at the moon again, and whispered, no longer able to keep silent,
"I pity you, Horned King."
A tear worked its way slowly down her cheek, leaving a glistening trail in the moonlight, as she spoke again, nearly sobbing entirely,
"I pity you with all my heart."
On the other side of Prydain, lying on the bottom of a massive lake, were the remnants of the castle the Horned King had temporarily taken over.
The stones rose in spooky formations from the bottom, looming into view like unworldly creatures. They were all covered in silt and slime. Motionless. Dead. Stone.
It may have been a current in the water. The slightest imbalance that water sometimes does to itself that makes things in and occasionally around it move, but there was a sense of purpose in this that could not be simply shrugged off as a freak happening.
Down, down, down, deep in the watery depths of the lake. . .
One of the stones shifted.