The Clouds of Everbloom

The Clouds of Everbloom

My palm over my chest, I sensed the swirling energy within my body. I gripped my left hand and flinging it away from me I opened my fingers.

A small spark erupted from within my hand and flickered and shimmered two feet before its brilliant orange light flickered out.

"Boroven's Hole," I cursed.

I heard a snickering laugh and a soft voice muttered, "If father heard you say that Leola he'd make you go to bed without dinner."

I turned to face my brother, Harte. He leant against the long-dead oak tree standing in the middle of the grassy courtyard. His hands were busy twisting and bending a twig as he gazed toward the curtain wall of the castle.

"You swear far more often than me! Besides the only way father would hear me is if you told him," I said pointing at him, "You're not a traitor are you?"

The twig Harte had been playing with snapped between his fingers at my accusation, "Me? A traitor? God's no."

I watched the boy for a moment. Our parent's absence had forced him to mature faster than I would have liked. Now the thoughts of a child became tempered with the words of adolescence, a disturbing fact.

Around us, like besiegers surrounding a castle played the other children of Everbloom. A dizzying display of colourful shirts, childish laughter and boundless energy.

Beneath the children's unstoppable gambolling lay a crushed and broken field of violets. The purple splashes the namesake for the castle they now played within.

Still, the violets clung to life with the persistence of a disease. Like a beautiful illness upon the landscape, they spread. Infesting, invading and strangling, no soil was too barren, no shadow too dark for them to live. They thrived upon hardship.

A smile touched my lips as I remembered what one teacher had told me when I asked where the violets had originated. She said a handsome and powerful King who had married a foreign Queen inhabited Everbloom.

Every day the Queen lived away from her homeland the more this happy girl faded into misery. The King loving his wife and wanting to please her planted violets from her homeland every day. He worked until a dull lifeless fortress in the middle of nowhere became a beautiful reminder of his love's country.

Two young boys chasing each other came too close to the oak tree for my liking. I fixed them with a glare.

Being both older and larger than they were the boys retreated, the blood draining from their faces as our eyes met.

"They want to play under the tree too, I don't know why you're so mean all the time," observed Harte, "Why can't you be like normal girls?"

"This is our tree..." I said, ignoring his question, "... tell them to find their own."