HOWL

18

In the end, we'll all become stories

"Don't tell me that you are still thinking about someone that you hardly even know?" Leondre rested on the chair and folded his arms, his gaze went up and down the ceiling of the little place that they currently stayed in. The place was built with woods and so was the ceiling but the ceiling had holes in it. On a rainy day, the palace would be a complete mess that one would find it difficult to inhabit the place.

His words had snapped her out of her reverie plunging her back to reality and the fact that the young boy that she had attended to earlier was gone.

Immediately the sword had gone across Alair's neck, Cyane had clamped her mouth shut muffling the scream that threatened to pour out like a broken dam. She found it difficult to comprehend the event that had just taken place. This was the first murder that she had ever experienced and it had to happen to someone that she knew even though it was just for a short time.

The crowd had gone silent too, not a single soul jumped or cheered like they normally would.

Even up in the platform where the king stayed with the nobles there was an engulfed silence. None of them had seen it coming but they weren't surprised that it happened, people died all the time.

The crowd broke into murmurs and whispers, some of the people there began claiming that they knew the boy while the rest just gave their sympathies.

Cyane looked away from the scene as her eyes welled up with tears while Leondre remained indifferent to it. What was before him was little compared to what he had experienced when he was still a boy. It was an experience that traumatized him and further haunted his sleep.

He had seen dead bodies scattered like ants all around the castle, on the same grounds that he walked on years later. Those same grounds which have been stained with the blood of the innocent and guilty had been washed away by years of rain and the stench of blood had been blown away by the night air.
Walking on those grounds years after made it feel like nothing ever happened on them but he could still picture it the way it was on that day, memories like that just don't leave.

"I did kind of know him though not much but I had attended to him this morning" 

"I see"

"He was full spirited and confident that he had a chance at winning this tournament. I even told him to try not to die"

"You meant well Cyane but people die all the time"

She was stunned at his lack of sympathy for the dead, "You don't know how it feels, you have never lost someone"

Leondre became quiet, a vivid image of his Mother flashed through his mind, "I lost my Mother"

Cyane was shocked, while feeling pity for the deceased she had unknowingly brought up a buried memory within him. She had been too fast to conclude, "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to..."

"I know" Leondre got up from the chair leaving her alone. Cyane felt that her words might have gotten him angry so she further apologized, "It's ok, you didn't know" and with that he walked away from her and towards the table that Alair's friends were seated as they mourned their loss.

Before approaching them, he had been hearing their laments from where he sat.

Their voices wouldn't be clear to a human but to him it was audible enough. He knew that probably Cyane would have heard it if she were concentrating but she wasn't at that moment since she happened to also be mourning.