Merlin 2:30 “Bound by the Moon”
With sunset behind them the blue sky remits to dark space filled with diamonds and a full moon, Troy upon phoenix Alerion fly for the lunar satellite, a ball of fire with wings darts from the bright orb far into the sky with a clarion meditation not his own, a sound ringing between the shared consciousness of both rider and creature soothing on a single course and disharmonious any other. Ana’s horse walks with Nickolas riding on the left and Merlin riding on the right, without conversation Ana struggles with boredom and exhaustion as Nickolas leans forward utmost and looks to Merlin staring elided at the dark horizon and the glittering sky. It is difficult to discern the difference between magical properties and the reflections of stars.
Nick: “Merlin, whither are we going?”
Merlin: “It is rare the shadows of trees are cause by fire and the moon.”
Nick: “Is he with grace?”
Ana: “Is it raining Merlin?”
Merlin: “It isn’t raining on the moon.”
Ana: “He is good for now…come along.”
Ana rides ahead of them both in asking Nickolas to join her readily, of darkly vex, by swiftly hex, of tarry carry after.
Nick: “Check for wounds.”
Ana: “You’re hurt?”
Nick: “Check you love…”
Ana: “I’m well, it’s you fret I.”
Nick: “Pray tell.”
Ana: “You men will tear Midgard asunder.”
Nick: “You would rather a woman ran the world…?”
Nick twists and takes a glance at Merlin whose eyes are solid and unwieldy to ascertain.
Ana: “If a woman ran the world, men would clean and cook well.”
Nick: “If a woman ran the world, there’d be more wars and fewer problems.”
Ana: “Do you remember the first time you died?”
Nick: “I do.”
Ana: “Do tell.”
Nick: “Well, I had left home a year before because of a drought, the town had many boys and too few girls and I was pleased to go, I was left to search for myself. At the time Solmani had not been burned and was inviting to travelers, I took to drinking and working with the butchers and tanners, and soon into shepherding and hunting, spending days with abundant sport training the squires howsoever sharing the countryside approach to accurate strength for their hasty disposition. Fringe supporters separated with each repetitive year of mild winter and pallid summer of sparse rain, and ran they went into the highlands, until their massing numbers were enough to pillage and plunder with the insane bards, in my squalor of experience I ran. The city was subjugated by principality and no longer republican, I was not pleased.”
Ana: “How you died, not how you killed.”
Nick: “Because of such they were one in the same, I sought to raid the city twice provocative, and luring with the help of others we killed in the forest of the mind unfamiliar with which we killed, but pious death hungered for us, we were hunted from a city outnumbering the ranks of the dead and deserters, four score nights after it had begun in the night four riders set upon the last of us with bolt throwers and spears and I was shot in the heart then drug to a road nearby a farm and left for dead in the great blue yonder. I was coughing blood and bleeding thoughts not unlike the disguise of dying men to hide from death, in my heart was foremost a great pain and discomfiture, and soon I was dead and staring at the stars of dawn, but I did not die as you know. I tried to crawl to what could be safety but my limbs would not move as my bones became thick and my muscles became stiff, satiated by the sun burning in my eyes, until a farmer and his son made unto me, I watched them jump from their wagon and pick my pockets, I watched them return to their cart then return to me with shovels, and I watched the ground slide tother way whilst they drug me to the dry meadow and dig me a grave, soon quite unto my death, which life had cursed my reckoning. I don’t remember the texture of the soil being tossed on me but I remember it brought a cool betwixt the sun and my procession, a rain came and made mud in my eye, and soon dried in the passing time as steadily I was separated with tactility of my limbs, where my anger was utopian light eventually I was left to my thoughts and swallowed by the mouth of hell, and then, in the breath of darkness, I awoke, free to move I dug myself up from the tepid earth. First my hand fingers outstretched burst into the air, the packed soil disastrous suffocated me and again I pulled my likeness from the depth. Gasping in the sweltering daylight of high noon I lay on my back and looked to see an eagle watching me.”
Ana: “You were not certain you had died.”
Nick: “No, in fact I had even thought it was a poison survived by me, but my clothes assuaged my confusion, and I took to hunting and torturing them over the next few days, composed of disbelief I was especially cruel because I assumed they’d buried me alive, I was victorious and did not know wholly until my second death a few years later.”
Ana: “Why did you interfere in the first place?”
Nick: “I was a boy familiar with council known to towns and villages, and history is nothing without revenge, now I am accustomed to both council and queen.”
Merlin: “Monster.”
Nickolas: “I am right with no choice.”
Ana: “History has a unique way of giving the sacrifice that people without introspection endlessly demand of others.”
The crystals in Merlin’s eyes slowly melt against the breaking daylight.
Merlin: “No, liberals, look..., a monster flying across the horizon.”
Merlin points ahead of them to the light blue wall rising from the end of the earth, a tiny plume of smoke and a flying creature so distant that it looks like a moth.