Stone Cold

Prologue: Onyx

Prologue: Onyx

Mermaids with fins so fine,

I think about it all the time,

A flash of scarlett in the air,

A lion's mane here and there.


A set of gears I cannot see,

With twinkling lights and a pastel tree.

Mystic angels with rusty wings,

Legends etched on rings.


Gold rims try to wrap,

Around the creatures that cannot adapt.

Marble starts to form around,

Circling until no life is found.


Brought by humans to their lair,

Trying to pass them off as theirs.

What their eyes cannot see,

Is the life that used to be.


*******

Thoughts of the afterlife entered Xander's mind. Sitting on top of the roof and looking at the skyline, he felt poetic.

Almost human.

The thought almost made him laugh out loud, a welcome emotion to his current state of mind. It was earlier this morning when his father had passed away. He never thought he'd be melancholic over his death but apparently he was.

He looked down toward the foot of the castle hill, where the gold roofs were fading into eternal twilight. The stone first started to show on his father's right forearm. Pale onyx veins then spread throughout his body, shining like polished marble. The process was slow like with all powerful beings. But even the most powerful being, the Seelie King, was helpless against it.

The stone had already done its work and woven around his mind. Fae skin did not yield to the stone without a fight. The king's skin glowed green and purple. Sparks flew where Seelie magic started to push out the stone. During the final days, the King groaned and trembled before the stone finally took his mind. Xander had failed his father and his kingdom.

Xander leaned against one of the sooty towers and looked down at the room that housed his father. The world around him was changing. However, the petrified flesh growing in his father had not been sown by mechanical looms or any other modern devices but by the old magic that lived in its forests.

Xander leaped off the roof and and into the arched doorway in which scorched remnants of the castle's main door still hung. He tried to remember when he last felt any spark of emotion. Real emotion that wrecked you inside out. He came up empty.

"He already smells like one of them." Puck appeared out of the shadows of the crumbled walls. He was the Seelie king's most loyal subject. His clothes were as red as if autumn itself had lent him its colors. Puck's tunic matched his own. Red, orange and yellows spread throughout the kingdom, the end of summer, the Seelie court's mourning colors.

Xander shrugged in response and glamoured up. A majestic beak grew in place of his nose, feathers out of his arms, talons on his fingers. A falcon stood in the Seelie prince's place. It wings propped up in flight.

Puck did not say it, but Xander knew he was talking about the mystical creatures that were propped up in human homes. Enchanted creatures such as dragons, gargoyles and mermaids that have fallen to the stone's power.

Xander had to get away. Ride off into the mortal world where the stone had no hold. He had to go to the land where magical beings have always sought refuge and human beings regarded them as one of life's many mysteries, China.

But Xander knew he couldn't run forever. The stone had come for his father. Sooner or later, stone will come for him.


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This is my first try in writing an adventure story. Also my first time in posting any of my poetry.

So I'd really appreciate some input :)

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