There was once a lad born from the dirty embers of coal, along with an old man with a wearing heart. The old man took care of the boy until he could no longer care for himself.
The boy, heart broken, desired nothing but to help the old man, and buy him medicine to prevent the inevitable, but he had none to give. He ran into the forest, in search of treasure, in search of guidance, of time, and so, the leaves that brushed past him blessed his flesh, as the stars gave him all they had to offer. He came out of the forest in pearls, embroidered in soft peaches that fused to his skin like tumors.
And so, he made do with what the forest had given him. He traveled all the way to the court, and traded his body, stitched to the gifts, in trade for silver coins. Maids sheared off pearls and silk ribbons as each pluck of a string felt like the cutting of a knife in his skin.
He was left bare and harvested, with 10 silver coins in his small hands, which he had used to buy medicine and cake for the old man. However, once he returned home, the old man was no where to be seen.
And so, the young boy, sat with his herbs and feast. Lay still in the empty shack only to cry the scars from his bloodied skin, and to spread the herbs on himself in hopes they were to sprout bandages.
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Snow is all my eyes were greeted to. I had been blessed to not having the feeling in my nerves express the utter spine killing horror of the piles of snow coating my pale skin. Yet I still writhed on the ground in pain and exhaustion, my blood had melted chunks of ice around me, as not a single tile of silk or cotton had coated my skin.
I had been thrown in my own courtyard bare and freezing as if it was a cell. As if my arms had grown thick patches of hair, my feet thumbs, I had become merely an ape to gawk and poke at, as eyes blossomed from the windows and archways, all pointed down at me.
At first it was quiet, it had just been one small chuckle from the audience that had triggered an uproar of laughter from the surrounding walls, haunting and mocking their own queen! If my lungs were strong enough at the time, I would of ordered all of their heads on steaks. My arms went to my head, blocking the sound as I curled myself deeper within the snow, as my arms, my entire core shook pathetically.
Still, the chatter continued to haunt my ears, it no longer sounded human, instead it had started pouring out of every crevice of the walls to stain my body in a painful golden-colored sludge to mock me, as the pitter patter of bold foot falls creeped up the main hallway, he didn't even need to say anything for them to sow their own mouths closed.
The creaking hinges of the doors sounded open then closed as the footsteps followed up to my shivering form. Not even looking at him, I could already tell he had crouched down to lean into my dripping ear. "Where are your manners?" He teases mockingly, carefully setting an arm on each shoulder to flip my stiffened body around to meet his horizontal pupils. "Won't you greet your new king?" Questions the demon before me.
For a moment, my nerves almost on instinct wanted to grab for my invisible sword again, until I was forced to remember of my stripped status, as the gleaming jeweled blade that had once decorated my body was no longer there, but instead in the sharp claws of the sickly beast that was looming before me. How I desired to slice his hands off, to purée his eyeballs into a fine liquid substance, to tear his heart out, yet all I was able to do was to press my teeth against each other.
My vocal cords take a moment to stretch and clear themselves before I'm able to speak "I will call you as king only when my flesh simmers in the creaky bowels of hell." I am too weak to move my limbs any longer or to take calmed breaths, but he knew that my stance would not budge.
He observes me for a moment as if I was feeble prey. "You do realize that your skin is wearing weak on that flesh of yours. I'd presume that in maybe.... under an hour you'll be surely dead like this" he stops himself for a moment only to chuckle to himself over the thought of my dead bare boned corpse in the snow, my eyes rolling up to my forehead as stomach liquids might leak out of my mouth. "If you intend to survive tonight, I would recommend that you give up the rest of your dignity sweetheart, otherwise your harvest will surely perish."
He had me pinned like a doctor's test subject, unmoving and numb, I already knew the two choices weighted down onto me. If I were to submit, if I were lucky, I'd be kept as a joke of the previous hierarchies for both my generation, and any previous. If I die here silently, the people will remember me as noble, but all traces of my rein will surely be burned from the books, then written again to depict me as eternally a fool.
As for my harvest, anyone could tell that the man before me would ensure my kingdom's next years of harvest be rotten if he were to hold the soul of our nation. If I were to survive this night, there would be a chance of the heart still belonging to me at the end of the day, however, from the moment I first sat on the overly decorated chair upstairs, I had felt what every ruler before me had truly thought was the value of our lives.
It was not in the name of our people or their harvests that we had made such favorable laws upon them. Instead, it had always been in the name of our legacies to remain as diplomatic as we all were.
