It Burns

‘It burns’

How odd. That I should remember those words as I watched it burn. It hadn’t been much of a house, more of a hut really. I’d built it after the war, after the bloodshed and destruction. I was tired of men, tired of the constant manoeuvring for power by nobles in their great game, trying to rise higher by crushing those beneath. The battles hadn’t been noble, hadn’t been to defend the poor and protect the innocent. There hadn’t been glory as I’d once imagined. Just blood. Just death.

′In wars boy, fools kill other fools for foolish causes’

Father had said that, he had known but I hadn’t listened.

′It burns’

Again. Those were Persephone’s words, my dearest even now. How could she not be? All those years she’d been with me, away from almost any living soul, far from the grand cities she had been raised in just to live with one broken soldier. Now she was gone and had left only the note.

′I told you once that a day would come when I’d have to leave, a duty I could not ignore. My heart burns, it burns to leave you, but I do what I must. It burns. Forgive me’

She had said she would leave, years ago, but it hadn’t mattered. I haven’t even asked what her grand duty was since it hadn’t mattered. When she left, wherever she went, I’d go to. Then she did go. And I didn’t know until she was too far gone. I’d thought she had gone to the village of Watch Hill, she’d done that sometimes and always returned a few days later. This time she didn’t return and when I left to look I found only the note.

I watched the fire and ignored the storm. It raged around me, a hundred forks of lightning falling again and again as if the creator himself thought to tear the world apart.

fitting, my world has fallen apart

The winds screamed and hail crashed, boulders and trees flew in that ring while I stood in calmness of the eye.

Calm. I wonder how that feels. I’ve forgotten.

It should’ve been dark, but the lightning blazed. It should’ve been quiet, but the thunder roared.

Hopper was in that fire. I’d found the wolf pup a year after coming to the Westwood. Persephone couldn’t bear children, that pup had been almost a son. But it had been 15 years and he’d grown old, he lay within the pyre.

A funeral fit for a King

I’d waited long enough, the fire looked hot enough, it was time.

I forgive you, dearest.

I stepped into the flames and lay down beside him.

Hours later the storm calmed. A ring of destruction in the Westwood, leagues wide, left a single ring of grass at its centre. Within it lay the broken ruins of a house. And within those ruins lay a mans body and a wolfs. Horribly burned, the man lay at the heart of it all, a calm stillness on his face.