The Ballads of The Skeleton Crew

The Ballad of Two Brothers (5|4)

(№5.4)

This staggering metamorphosis of his little brother to ... some other specimen was definitely something his older brother should not totally neglect, but the order given in this shambolic discussion of theirs, where the wish to traverse to an adventure had been put out, combined with the grief of those poor farmers now robbed of their grandest stream of income, had much more importance than his own unnecessary troubles.

Being a child under the Crown with not a tint of blue in the blood flowing in his veins, he was on the source to comprehend and respect any command a monarch or future monarch even so muttered in his sleep, no matter the severity or idiocy put in motion equally. The subjects of royal entity where to dance when a finger was lifted, stiffen when a hand was held out and be tranquil when a corner of their Majesty's mouth twitched in aggravated contempt. It was the life of being a voiceless puppet with strings braided in your bones, and he was not living a much better life than simple, common citizens. It was tolerable to some extent of course, if it wasn't for his anguish pride, that from time to time got the best of him, foaming over. The red puffiness of his stung cheeks and his eyes suffused with blood were proof of the paternal abuse he must bear to stay together with his little brother, pitilessly hitting the hand who fed him not with corporeal meals but rather mental lessons of much more emphasis.

As long as the commands were reasonable, he could reason with himself to abide, the older brother told himself as he mustered to the vague challenge of composing anything they might need regarding the bitter, enduring chase looming to commence and for all eventualities occurring in the thick, dense underwood of their protective forest, where creatures of nobility resided to be replaced by monsters skimmed out of the abysm and the apex king of the food chain amidst those creations of nightmares, the beast whose head was asked for by the decree of the prince.

He could have chuckled as he ordered the servants to gather practical weaponry that would actually sustain their attempts to not get devoured in the night, than any pompous spear would promise, but this was more of a fight of honour and dignity than it was one acted upon of necessity and practicality, the reasoning for his half-laugh though laid not in the gloating he felt when a young slave boy almost pierced his foot clumsily with one of the longer blades, but in regarding how for civilisation and structure and safety they had to display absolute gratitude towards an old segment of a human body, the men barely not falling apart with whom he did not share an ounce of flesh thank goodness, packaged in the greatest, softest fabric, gobbling the best wine and eating from golden plates with silver cutlery, gifting their wives the most luminous jewellery, arrogantly charging the population to serve him every demand from the plush lips, in order they'd be protected from strange and bloodlusty folk. A giving and taking.

This king had never fought nor specifically participated in any war, but just lay lazily around on soft brocade cushions girl servants fanning him wind on hotter days, as the walls of their forest protected them and in exchange only wanted basic respect and kindness, found only in the most decent souls, while everyone else laboured around him to entertain this masquerade, for it was an unjust world with laws supporting suppression where they might discover the warm germ of peace in their enslavement.

Someone should punish him for his greed.

The spirit of rigid revolution ascended sometimes in his blood and boiled in his head with the fiery intensity to be acted upon, when it had to be patted down or the uprising carnage of senseless legions putting habitants in their Civil War again in their humiliating places, chins glued to their chest and their voices cut by the very threads binding them to their puppeteer, the moment of their mutiny marring the counted hours until their fateful hubris to alter things to the better would be punished.