01. Loom
Start writing here…Eyes, almond drawn, amber eyes; do they have a signature to jolt upon the soul? Is their warmth wanted by an extinguisher? Do they have a warrant for their arrest?
Even now, with Pavelonis’ prince weeping upon his knees, sword carelessly discarded and absent of sheath, Avakian Asokan Metovic isn’t quite certain.
So across his chest he crosses his ivory, gauntlet-clad forearms and wears a neutral score upon his lips, might it conceal the slightest altruistic whisper. An action short of destruction is contravening to the directives issued by his allegiance. Composure is a constipated network to be endured at every turn; at every steep edge adoring a heartbeat’s sinus rhythm. However, if the Pavelonis villagers ever came to know about this, that the prince they adore was even once emotionally deserted under supervision, they would wage destruction upon his Shield for not escalating the prowling antagonist; for not slaying it.
Who or what is the instigator to beslain?
And upon escalation to the king, would the antagonist’s passive abuse cease?
Let him bleed. Let him weep. Do not let him die.
But what if he is crying as something is dying on the inside?
Above, there are teeth. They’re loud, boasting of a severe dominance that a diadem would envy. Asokan does not need to raise his chin too far right to see them bare a hollow snarl.
Loom, does an emerald dome, menacing in its surveillance. Has it made a tantalizing broadcast? Has it paralyzed its reserved receptor by severing all affection? Its mouth is empty. Its perspective is feeble. Its intelligence is superficial. Yet it regurgitates validities, administers judgment and skims stagnant wires for juiced cuisine. It exalts the decaying walls to a stride; to garnish an unwarranted platter.
It is a suspended conductor to vigilant marionettes.
Crown mould flirts on the wall’s highways, in its junctions, flaunting exquisite symmetry. Meticulous stitches chisel an elegant sophistry into the conditioned wood. They encompass every aggressive artery, curve and modest dip throughout Joy. But of what relevance is their journey if tainted eyes view a magnificent sculpture while never appreciating its unquiet master?
It is no wonder Joy radiates enmity, Asokan readily remarks, inwardly.The garden window is an accomplice to the heist. Its vision is manipulated, portraying the sunny estate courtyard as an expanse sedated by gray. Once crisp, flourishing grass peripherally poisoned by a cognitive blow never again to retain its rightful youth. When the ceiling comes crawling, those windows will faint and their canvases will be declared an apparition. And the grass will sway vibrant in its true hue never having been depleted of its youth.
Joy rejoices.
This contemptuous device is deranged. It asphyxiates arteries and dictates the prince’s mind. Its master is an embedded pathogen, undetected; an autoimmunity.
Curious, Asokan’s eyes stir, as does a contemplation to make a fractional exception for one troubled being. For a prince who never wanted such a name.
Dammit. Serving two bodies of command never served anyone.
The hardwood floor mirrors Tophan’s unruly hair in tone. It caresses his writhing forehead, brunette eyebrows and wipes his falling tears like nobody in this village has ever considered. The folk have daily tasks to tend to. King Alger has treaties to sign, as Asokan is to defend tomorrow’s King. The routine is a portrait where all pictured wear a masquerade condoning of an impeccable infinity. The guise reflected is assumed to be accurate pertaining to internal affairs. If their prince were, in fact, struggling, they would know because they would see it in his face or he would tell everybody in an oration.
How, exactly, can a crown’s aspirations and shackles speak if the catapult in which grants their vision and release has been sieged by rust and slathered with a fraudulent trajectory?
He has not said a word, not to Asokan, never mind anybody else. But Asokan has seen it - the deterioration, the vibrancy chipping away day by day that is cementing Tophan’s smitten smile to a brittle core.
Asokan is not your friend. He is your defender.
That’s what the King told Tophan the first day Asokan stepped up the estate driveway, Asokan knows, just as Preceptors warned him that a prince is not to be befriended, he is to be defended.
That instruction is nourishing to Asokan’s momentum, daily, to satisfy one simple objective; to remain perched on a focus and absorb its radiating intensity.
Until now, until this morning and until the sight before him began unraveling.
You’ve got to be kidding.
