Castles in the Sky

Storm

Yawning, stretching, blinking awake in a bleak morning's weak light, rolling to nuzzle instead into the soft, warm body of his beloved - but Solaris found only cold bedsheets beside him.

A silence that was the loudest...

"Gulf?" - the King spoke out just to fill it, that unfamiliar absence.

Rising up onto elbows in messy bed to scan the room:

Winter's duffle coat not where it had hung the night before - so that was it, the Queen must surely have woken early to wander the gardens, once again. A preferred pastime of late - despite his husband's pouted protests that he should be reposing, relaxing in pampered preparation for giving birth, promising to lock him away in the palace's uppermost tower and tend to him hand and foot himself if need be - alas: "Ahhhh", cleansing both body and mind with the frolicking freedom of freshest coastal air instead.

But then morning's Mew looked beyond - out at the ominous onset of mournful cumulonimbus, gathering ceremoniously on the horizon. Advancing like mourners marching to the doom chime of funeral's gong.

Dong...dong...dong.

He tore eyes away, frown clouding handsome features as he rose and dressed with an unmentionable tightness tremoring his chest.

Something was amiss.

"Tell the kitchen to delay breakfast, I will fetch the Queen from the gardens and we will dine together" - sharp-tongued to Narong, as he hastened from palace's grand double doors in yesterday's clothes and a hooded, indigo velvet cloak of Gulf's, snatched in passing from the back of bedchamber's armchair.

"Your Majesty" - he ignored the palace treasurer's greeting - "King Solaris!", every call unheard...

Because the dong of the funeral gong had twisted, contorted into thunderous beats of his own heart - too fast, in narrowing, strangling sinews' cage of constricting chest.

"Why am I...?" - Mew shaking his head as if to banish the lurk of thoughts that crawled from mind's quiversome quicksand - "He's merely taken a morning stroll. My blossom in the orchard", laughing a laugh that was devoid of any light at all.

Hollow, empty, because somehow he knew, didn't he? With darkest, deadening dread...

Knew that when he reached the orchard just as heavy-lidded, lamenting skies began to weep, that it would be vacant. Only fruitless trees and their long-lost leaves.

Knew that there would be no Ciel, chitchatting carefree with slobbering, smily-and-smitten guard dog at the Pegasus fountain as he arrived to it.

Just as he knew that their cliff top spot would be quiet, as drizzle's tears tipped to rain and colluded with sea spray to sting at his cheekbones until the King stood, numb, waterlogged with every passing second yet rooted there, bare-branched and deciduous, in their place, not knowing which way next to turn.

So like walking dead he arrived back to the palace, teeth chattering below sunken stare, to address the gasps around with a voice not quite his own:

"Queen Ciel is gone since before dawn. Find him" - shaky hand up to silence General Inthawut as he stepped forwards to elongate Solaris's words - "I say only...FIND HIM!"

A roar that echoed about the entrance way, crescendoing with the clanging clash of suited armour crashing to flagstone floors as the King shattered display piece against wall, and past he stormed.

Time,

trudging,

on.

Though Mew knew not how much or how far - with staff and guards and soldiers sweeping the palace grounds, scouring the surrounding valleys, swarming the nearby towns.