HEARTS OF STONE | Daemon Targaryen

Prologue ━ the ballad of the sleeping princess

PROLOGUE 🔥🌋⋆. ࿐࿔
❛❛ The Ballad of the Sleeping Princess. ❞

THE TAVERN'S WALLS HELD WELL against the dances of fire though plentiful cracks have been carved between the wood by time. Since Thomply had first sung there alone he was certain the cracks have all grown an inch. One day, he imagined the candles will spit a spark into some drunk fellow's hair from all the draft blowing inside the humid and well smoked interior. That was the day he should tell his Rose that he'll take her away from this town and somewhere South, somewhere warmer.

As he raised his mug of mead, he could almost hear himself already, When the Dolly Horse starts smelling of burnt flesh, we'll make haste of our departure. 'Till then... He slammed the mug down empty and raised from his tall stool, swaying his footing to the small stage where the candles danced the higher. It crossed his mind all too briefly that perhaps the drunk fellow will be him and he will dance his way back home on fire just to tell his Rose to run. As quickly as that morbid thought appeared, it abandoned Thomply too; he became quickly irritated with the lack of cooperation he was receiving from his legs.

There was only so much blame he could place on himself for the walk of a sailor that he adopted - some of the blame had to be placed on that old lute hanging in his left hand and dragging its bottom across the creaky floor of the Dolly Horse. His father dared call it a family legacy once and now it was cursed to be all Thomply had to treasure on this world, save for his sweet, sweet Rose. Sometimes he loved the lute more than his wife's embrace, hugging it in front of the fire and whispering to it songs that were yet to be deemed ready for the world.

Tonight, however, he claimed his stage at last with a glare cast upon his lute. Tonight, the show would be a ballad he had sung a thousandth times, one his father before him sang a thousandth more. It was a catchy melody, one the people loved to hear, one that made them dream, a state in which all proper artists wished to bring their public. Thomply wasn't a great many things, but he took pride in being a proper artist.

With a cough and a downward stroke of his lute, he brought music to the quiet, fluctuating chatter of the tavern which, as customary after dark, was filled to the brim with all those who had, during the day, worked the unruly fields. They drained their sorrows, dranked away the cold and unloaded a day's worth of fatigue, right there, in the shadow of the Wall.

"In the ash and embers of an empire lost
Sleeps today our princess, not once tossed.
For no one's left to utter to us her name,
Her people are dust, no one's left to reclaim.
She sleeps away the years, on her bed of stone
She sleeps away the days, but she does not sleep alone.
At the head of the crimson statue, slumbers fire made bone
The biggest of the dragons that's ever been known.
They lay there unmoving, a fragment of the past,
Sleeping in the city of death and shadow, as long as sleep would last.

If one would be so brave, so rich, and so careful,
One would walk the rubble, one would be dareful
To find in the ruin, the single red stone
And stare upon the bed of the princess without throne.
Forget the dragon, and stare upon her face,
Past the stone and the dust, you can still see her grace.
You'll forget yourself, and believe she's still alive,
So the legends says, but how could she survive?

Valyria has once been more than this rubble
Filled with dragons, mages, no one there's humble.
Blood as thick as paper rained on rites and unholy songs,
There were no Gods there, little left of laws.
Amongst them lived our princess
Heir to a throne.