The Halfling

Chapter 14

They emerged into the night-lit marble statuettes of the palace, the moon illumining the silver cobwebs and the obsidian ash that reclaimed them as their own creatures from the ground. Below, the rubbles were of cloud-gray clays and fire-gold curlicues lying in wait for rot to come and to bring them back to the ground.

Farther to the left, the shimmers came like a thousand lightning bolts shimmering in the darkened sky. Gemstones of scintillating white and fierce gold pervaded, joined by a million emerald sparkles, a billion amethysts and azures and rubies and diamonds woven into a tapestry that could make anybody's face scrunch up in joy.

Atop it however was the foulest beast one could ever see.

The Dragon, borne from the wicked savagery of the South and their cruel magic, an inebriation of sophisticated claws and sinews and magic and flesh and meat. Its hide was like the white pearls he made his bed, the spikes on his backbone the unforgiving lances and swords of Men. His claws and teeth were knives crunched and hunched, enveloped with shimmering silver.

He could have burnt them right then and there, sent a wave of billowing fire, all in variegated assortments of colors—ending the two of them, rickety Elder and springy boy.

But he continued his sleep, not waking even to the climbing down of the boy and the Elder onto the Great Hall.

"Why, sir?!" hush-hissed the boy. "We'll get mauled by this beast! You squander our lives! I'm afraid my heart'll beat so loud that the monster hears it from here."

"Be quiet. Be still." They perched on the floor, toes tipped so as not to disturb any of the debris. "But you are young, are you not? Be bold. Squander your life. Give in to the feeling of fear and anxiety and embrace it. Face your worries: there is no feeling that is final."

"That is all well and good—"

The Dwarf put a finger to the boy's lips. The boy, relenting, nodded with exasperation scribbled across his face in the form of wrinkles.

"Well," the Elder said, "as you are quite the halfling, you shall prove yourself if you manage to nab a piece from the treasure."

The boy stirred. "A piece, sir!"

"Quiet, boy!" the Elder once more hushed him. "If we are found here, then you would have proved yourself then and there: as a fool!" The Elder looked at his eyes. They were those lakes of unbearable deepness, containing a thousand lives that have ebbed and flown away. "Have faith. Have courage. Have you forgotten those stories where a dragon, faced by the knight, turns into a princess?"

"The Dragon's a princess?"

"No, boy, that is not the point," said the Elder, shaking his head. "But perhaps all our fears, our anxieties, are just that: princesses in the form of dragons who await the time when we shall act with beauty, with courage, facing the wave of crippling nervousness that prevents us from acting. Perhaps that is our life and these are the precepts we shall live by."

"What if they're not?"

"Well," muttered Ulys, "then we are doomed. Eternally."

"Well!"

The Elder smiled. "You once more fall into that habit of doubting. What I ask you is difficult, yes. But we should learn to trust in these difficult things. They guide us to what is true, to what is right, for us." The Elder produced a pouch. He put it in the boy's hands. "Go. Your destiny awaits you."

The boy felt as if he had been tricked for the dwarf's amusement. But with that much convincing sophistry, I must admit that I too would have been duped.