KING, ROOK & RIDER: Ayrqthon, The Black Son
(C) 2025 Kyrinn S. Eis All Rights Reserved Worldwide
The horses and mule were easy. The trail well-worn. The hours, short while yet the land familiar, ranged by in the occasion of comment or rarer converse. It was a good pace, under fair skies, and hours yet before dark. Sunfall came early behind the clouds, which in stealth, had formed at horizon unseen. Then, at an hour’s preceipt, the dark came hard upon them. That saw the animals rested and securely roped.
Fire and food, sparely given to his wife; her notice unsaid, and her expression undimmed. They had sat a while in the rumbles distant and the lightnings few. Then, the night wild sounds emerged. Heard in the waves of birds to roost, and the animals and creeping things innumerable as settled-in became. Then, those who prowled stretched forth their dayslept limbs in preparation for the slithe and climb. They, hungry in the hunt, to secure vittles before dawns would them send to slumber anon.
Into her he had slid, and from her issued sighs, and soft cries, and whines, and sounds unnamed, as his labours sought their mutual good, and love sown in ashen seed, in womb prepared for barrenness through bitter herb and other kens. Complete.
When, after held, she slipped asleep, he stood unclothed beneath the stars, and touched the ground with palms full down. His back he arched, and stretched thews given strain, and loosed bones ill-sat in gyre of saddled hours. Again erect, upright stance, he twisted and turned until the column of science upon which sacral girdle anchored above for skull’s security he wrang-out kinks gained in battles. They, his slain, had been local brigands. And tax-shy stillsmen maize-mash sold while Kingsrook’s share had been held-back, unkindly. While many mehre were the Oestmurmen of the Eastern Ocean. – Altogether, taught their red-errored ways.
She had, from his youth, remained inviolate, chaste, and pure. – Rosy tinged fired clay and glassine glaze, upon velvets red and black, in that place which was both unto him hallowed and abjured. Mind, back, then, – he had already known in some small ray, like that door through which his Father needs provide shade, – what he was, would become, and never cease to be… At far, in lands not near, in time or place, his heraldman, in the inward parts of the earthen dark, woven then, not yet born, would in that day, of foreign tongue – speak the bitter truth to unwilling ears, and suffer for that succour for them for which he’d been sworn – hence – known by a measure; horizon arumble, sorrow, blood, and …fire.
-- “Excited?”
Back again, and in his flesh, he looked down and her face with kindled eyes her crown as ever fiery worn, she, the incarnation of his adornment. Ayrqthon smiled, strode, and at Geaselle’s rise to hip, another round of living for the life of it was warmly formed, and she gave a loving kiss.
===
Morning’s meal and then the blankets flapped, the dew discarded, and another alma each one given, including yon lonely unnamed beast of burden. Watch brew warmed through, the stirrups seemed steady, and other leagues lain in dust and frosts disturbed behind were trodden. As Prudenz joined the sky’s sight, the day seemed that much warmer, – a fantasy, learnt as children, all upon The World shared. In their arcs twain the horizon rose to meet the golden star, and Edwn arose to take her ending place, but slow in rise for its nearer, distraint pace. Its peculiar light signalled night, and he too raced upwards from the west towards the east as Avistra, in her passage, her sanguine rays shined down in a peaceful segment, their two reds mixed in contrary passing, and like a rose of Samaran on Sisters worn, the vault above seemed brief at peace of night’s fiery dawning. More words had been spoken along the way: their hopes for sights seen, collected memory-tokens, poem-play, and then with orange and violet and pink and lilac, daysend came sudden-like upon them.
Provender, and food for thought, days-rations preserved towards naught; Geas, never once complained, as he remembered her armed service did preced his birth. She sat across the flames which licked her face, grey-bronze shadows gold gave chase. Her adoration of him undimmed but in smoulder, and his coldness had grown for all alive but her soul. Silent, on all fours, each crept closer, nuzzled, muzzles of pups which had been tendered in that track to find his mother, Geas had partaken as had his father – Da, his Ma, and she, his Tsawbrer. Her spell, cast into his sea, brought forth dark fanlike life, of saline abyssal trees. Complex their lace, and each with monstrous mouths her sighs to render, bade.
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