The Realm of the Sun

Hypocrisy at Tara

            "A story! A story!" Furbaide chanted excitedly as Eirainna tucked him gently into his new bed in a previously empty corner of her bedchamber. She smiled and laughed a little, modestly rolling her eyes away and trying to find within herself the energy and material to tell a brand new story just as she had hundreds of times before, "A knight story!" he added, eagerly, as the thought popped into his head.

"All right, let's see," she stalled, her mind grabbing at threads of stories she had invented before and failing to weave them together in a new way. Furbaide adored her no matter what, but he was impossible to fool when it came to telling a good story.

"All right," she began again, "once upon a time, there was a knight."

Immediately, Furbaide was of course satisfied with the subject matter, but his staunchly critical, expectant gaze was unwavering.

"But this knight was very unhappy," she continued, spreading her fingers on her knees as she thought.

"Why?" the child asked, as he often did. Having expected his insatiable curiosity, Eirainna smiled and said, "Because he did not want to fight."

"Why?" he persisted again, now extremely curious.

"He was..." Eirainna struggled with what plot line to take next, suddenly wishing he hadn't demanded this topic, "he didn't want to fight because he fell in love." His little face contorted in mild confusion and disgust, for the idea of love was as repulsive to Furbaide as gory battle was to Eirainna, "he met a poor, young maiden who belonged to the enemy race. They were forbidden to even speak to each other, so they met in secret and spoke through a secret language of code that no one else could decipher! If anyone were to find out, they would be ruined forever. The evil sorceress would cast a spell on them that would take away their hearts!" Despite his best efforts to remain detached from the romantic nature of the story, Eirainna could tell that Furbaide was now secretly invested and she held his attention securely as she pressed steadily on, "the knight told the peasant girl that he would give up fighting and leave the war completely so that they could run away together."

"Run away?" he asked with his widening eyes. She nodded.

"They planned to leave the whole realm altogether and go far, far away to start their own empire, their very own land. And they would be happy there, always..." she caught her voice from slipping off the steep cliff that rose inside of her throat. Furbaide looked up at Eirainna with such a deep sense of wonder, that his round, blue eyes seemed to grow with love even in that small moment. Earnestly but with patience, he waited for her to regain her composure; he sensed she was sad, though he did not know why. Eirainna hated herself for telling her own story, but it was the only one she had left to tell, and whatever metaphor she could think of, whatever characters and situations and circumstances she could invent to mask it, it would all end up being her story anyway. It would all come back to him.

"Raina?" his little voice caught her attention, breaking the weighty silence of evening like a nightingale's sweet lullaby, "is it a happy ending?"

There was a slight pause as she fought her tears, but soon continued firmly with a broad smile, "Of course it is, dear...they ran away from all the fighting and the evil..."

"The bad people?"

"Yes, the bad people. And they rode off on the knight's horse into an enchanted forest!" she exclaimed, brightly. Furbaide's jaw unhinged with excitement at the thought of such a place.

"An enchanted forest?" he echoed, his lips barely meeting as he spoke because his mouth was open so wide with wonder.

"It had trees that stretched up all the way to the clouds, so high you couldn't see the top! And soft, green grass and beautiful, shimmering lakes and waterfalls with cool, refreshing water so clear you could see all of the little fish swimming around at the bottom way below, with all different coloured scales like rainbows that glistened in the sun."