A man sat, hunched in the fading twilight. Round him, the earth was torn and spoiled, wet with sweat and blood and tears. Shadows of trees, shapes of once great pines and firs, lay like splintered twigs, and any stalk less strong had long since been trampled into the mud. But he saw none of that. Instead he only saw the face held across his knees, the face of a friend – cold, stiff, claimed by death's cruel hand.
Long he sat, motionless, but on a sudden he raised his head to the sky, begging reason from the gods. There, searching in the heavens, his streaming eyes found the evening star floating in the gloaming. And he remembered how on a time in the summer, Jas would have seen that glimmer in the east, and he would have called to his wife, sweet Meriya with her gorgeous smile, and they would have gone out into the grass and danced the dusk away to night.
Seeing them dancing in his mind, he almost smiled through the tears. But then he realized it would be his burden to tell her. She would want to hear it from him, Jas's friend, hear that her husband would dance that song no more – hear that he had gone to dance beneath far stranger stars.
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Tales from the Tavern
FantasyAn anthology of the fantastic; tales of magic, of freedom, of peace, of war, of love and loss, of vengeance, of adventure. It's like opening a chest in Skyrim; you never know what'll be inside. Basically, it's where any ideas or musings I have can f...
