the knight in a glass coffin.

1.

Once upon a time, a young woman is travelling on her horse, and she is doing what every great adventurer does which is getting lost on roads long forgotten. There is no destination in mind because at the end of every journey is some kind of epic battle and some princess clinging to the flanks of her mare, and typically the story made itself. Every road was like this, or at least every kingdom that had a monarchy and a towering castle and plenty of land to roam about. And she had to figure that if there was that much land, then it contained jobs that needed doing, like slaying dragons and rescuing of the ladies.

She always travels light and she's seen the mileage those shiny knights have carried on with their suits of armour. They're always scrubbed well and can reflect the sun's light like a focused beam on an ant. She avoids them and takes to darker paths—the ones more intimidating even for the most chivalrous, where suddenly the sky becomes cloudy and hides all that sunny weather out of nowhere, and how even the birds change their tune to that of a croak of a toad or a crow's shrill cry. There are other telltale signs, like a creeping fog and leaves cracking under the horse's hooves, and the air grows cold and wintry as if in warning of a more troubling foe ahead.

This path was attractive to her, however. Past a dead forest came the usual bramble of thorns and the twist of dry loping branches that can trip up any willing pathfinder. Her trusting steed was used to all this, thankfully, and knew where her master was leading to.  They were accustomed to the dreary conditions and even the occasional encounter of a pack of hungry wolves or a dizzying cloud of screaming bats.  Our heroine knew that these were just pieces drawing them closer to the crux of it all. 

It was only another random adventure that always had the same ending.

And then came the mystery of this journey. A flower garden frozen in time. The light caught in a dewy morning, a gentle mist pervaded its very air and left a cold humidity. Our unsurprised heroine is delighted by the dulled colours, and as her finger traces every soft petal and slick leaf, there is no sound and no reaction to her entrance. Her horse goes to trim the lawn as she always does while her master goes about on her business until it was either time for home or another listless adventure.

A gazebo lies at the centre of the beautiful garden. It is a sombre mood, and she discovers a silver glass coffin surrounded by dozens of flowers of all kinds and colours. When she peers through the crystal clear glass she had expected an eternally young and beautiful woman underneath, most likely a princess or even a queen, or a maiden who is fated to become royal.

And she was wrong. She inspects the figure closer, and it is no woman but a man, and he looks to be no prince. She's seen them all, those princes, how flawless and perfect they were, and they were not so different from the damsels she had rescued. There was never much beneath their appearance in terms of personality; it was just simple traits assigned to them like how nice and good they were and that they treated their subjects fairly.

This man was in formal military regalia, and his expression was peaceful as if he was in deep slumber. He bore no crown and no signifier of great rank. To our heroine, he looked no different than herself: just a person doing their job, no more or less as like any commoner. For once this one was interesting, and she is leaning closer to his visage, inspecting his every feature in sheer and unabashed curiosity.

Until she hears a soft click from the coffin itself, like a breath letting go. The swell of the atmosphere changes within the garden, and she is a blur of motion, quick and slippery as a rogue. She hides just out of view of the gazebo, under the cool shade of a tree and between some conveniently thick brush. But her curiosity demands for her to know what is going on, and she cannot resist that rare urge of what was to happen next.

Cautiously she watches over the bushes. The man has awakened, risen out of his coffin like any humanoid whose nap left them in a state of confusion over a grasp of time and space. He is looking around and she ducks out of embarrassment, because now just like any pawn used as a plot device they are found wanting for answers.

She imagined a sad and hopeless situation where the man just wanders out of the garden in a daze and then he doesn't leave the bramble or the eerie foggy forest and then he just, well, he just dies of starvation or something. Yet perhaps he is more capable, maybe he is a hero trapped for an untold number of years that had passed and he can hunt and forage for himself and live off of berries and a scrap of meat, but what good would that do? He awoke one day to find himself in a world that is not his own and no one to tell him that they found him sleeping in some magical garden all by his lonesome.

So if one argued it, he was some kind of damsel, then. He was a victim of a magical circumstance, and somehow she caused him to return back to reality.

She let out a groan and picked herself back up, preparing for an awkward greeting.

She approaches the gazebo and is met with the man's blade pointed at her face. She throws up her arms in surrender and she frowns. His once peaceful expression had twisted into a snarl, and his first words are as alarming as ever.

"I ought to let your head fall off your shoulders, witch, for cursing me in this way. But I shall give you this one mercy to explain yourself, and you had better measure your words carefully."

She knew better than to give into a fit of laughter when opening her mouth, and boy, was she ready to talk.