Days Union Oneshot Book [DISCONTINUED]

BITCH MOBY COME GET THIS BITCH

The evening breeze sweeping through the kingdom carried the call of the nightingales across the night sky, offering their song to the sleeping residents of Ustinover. After a long day's work, the servants of the Ustinover Castle slept blissfully with the melody of the nightingales to lull them into slumber. The guards posted at the doors fought the weight of their eyelids and silently cursed the birdsong, though deep within their hearts did they appreciate its beauty. Of course, the King and Queen Ustinover slept soundly in their chambers, not a single noise or sensation weaseling its way through the doors and disturbing their regal rest.

Unfortunately, that left them ignorant of the baby's cries far down the West Wing where the nightingales could not reach him.

The poor Prince Ustinover had been startled awake and wailed, calling for anyone to help, but neither attendants nor nurses rushed in to feed the little prince Loch and soothe him back to sleep. Even worse, his very own mother and father would not be bothered to tend to their own son themselves. So the weeping child was left alone in his crib to cry for the aid, company, or anything from any passerby. Shadowy apparitions crept along his walls, and while any sensible person would dismiss it as the trickery of the curtains, the little prince was a mere infant with only fear as his emotional protector and crying as his only defense.

But his cries did not go unheard.

Within the darkness of the room, a strange whir caught Loch's attention. One by one, four bright lights acting as the joints of some strange creature flickered awake as the whir got louder. The prince's unfamiliarity with this strange mechanism in the shadows added to the terror that the dead of night already brought cried even louder, yet his weeping only powered the mechanism even more. Each long, thin limb wriggled and stretched like supple branches seized by the wind until it began to approach the cradle. Lacey and patterned fabrics swayed with its movements as it shambled across the floor toward Loch's crib.

He inhaled a few shallow breaths to cry louder, but the jingle of bells dissipated the fear that had tormented the baby all night.

Now leaning over his crib was a porcelain mask painted with droplet-shaped markings and glossy lips of a blue as deep as the midnight sky. The doll tilted its head to the side as if to amuse the prince with a jokingly quizzical pose. Loch had seen this moving doll before, and while he could not assign a name to it from his limited memory, he learned that this doll was only meant to make him smile and laugh with silly performances.

A jester, as the King and Queen called him.

He reached a tiny hand up to greet the jester and flexed his fingers in a grabbing motion, indicating his wish to hold his hand. The jester's shoulders quivered in a chuckling motion as he took one hand from the crib's rail and crossed the distance between him and Loch's hand to allow the prince to take ahold of his finger. Loch gurgled a laugh and pushed the hand up to his head, and the jester adjusted his hand accordingly to ruffle the baby's curly black hair.

The bell at the end of the jester's hat slinked down, its weight drooping the rest of the fabric down into the crib where the prince's red eyes flashed at it in piqued interest. Loch burrowed out of the jester's hand on his head and grabbed the bell, nearly tugging off the jester's hat with the uncoordinated motion. Its festive jingling amused him, evident through his bubbly giggles and coos, and the jester took the other bell of the hat in between his fingers and shook it around to make the prince laugh even more.

After a long giggle, Loch yawned, the tilt of his head backward nearly dragging him down into a flop on the crib's cushioning. The jester perked at the prince's yawns and realized what he had to do, gently tugging the bell of his hat from Loch's grip and scooping him into his arms; even a jester built for entertainment and energy knew when it was time for rest. He wandered around the room for a moment until he spotted a music box crafted out of finely carved marble on the white vanity, where he wound it up and began to rock the prince to the melody of the music.

Loch looked up at the jester, his slightly tired red eyes expecting the jester to hum to the tune as his nurses typically would. However, the jester noticed the prince's waiting and answered by pressing a finger to his lips—a common motion he used to convey to demanding staff and royals that he could not make a single noise. To his surprise, the prince understood and closed his eyes, the music box's tune singing him to sleep. As Loch's breaths slowed and grew heavier with the relief of sleep, the jester pranced back to the crib and lowered him inside, softly placing the sleeping baby upon its cushion and drawing the blanket up to his neck. Peering down on the prince one last time, the jester exhaled a silent sigh out of his hidden motors at the sight of the prince's face of slumber, bound to be undisturbed by anything else in the night.

Now that the prince was asleep, it was his time to rest.

The jester shuffled back to his corner in the room and stretched out his limbs one last time to prepare them for rest. His head bowed down, the chin of his mask almost reaching his chest. As his body fell limp, the surroundings of the nursery slowly faded away into the black void of his shutdown. Each light on his joints snuffed out, and the world fell to black with one accomplishment gracing the slowing gears of his mind and body.

He had made the prince happy and safe once again, just as he was made to do.