Tragic Innocence

Chapter 59

            It was high noon and the birds twittered joyously.  The heavens were a soft baby blue and the horizon a gentle and happy yellow.  The Enon’s bright golden beams of light yawned from the long slumber of night.  This meant nothing to Pentulla, for she had dearly failed.

            She remained faithfully rooted, watching upon bloodied and bruised knees, the flattened castle where it once stood tall and proud.  Then, suddenly beneath her fatigued body, the grounds groaned and shook again.  She leaped up to her feet and hesitated.  Then, with a tightening dread, she noted a huge jagged break in the ground flying with terrifying speeds to where she stood.  With one powerful effort to remain alive for some unknown reason, she barreled out of the way, feeling air-borne for merely a few moments that seemed to freeze and suspend her in the frosty air.

Soon after landing, she raced to the edge where the rupture had kissed her toes and bent down to gain a better vantage point of the entire scene.  The entire precipice, along with the accursed castle, had succumbed to defeat as it growled clamorously in a haze of dust and debris not too far below into the snaking, glittering river.

Pentulla gawked numbly at the final destruction of the imposing edifice.  Her Mikash had remained inside, not as Rolac had promised.  A mixture of livid hatred with twisted humor punctured the stunned forest as Pentulla laughed maniacally.  She dropped to her jagged elbows and shook her head back and forth all the while plucking long yellowed grass from their roots.

“Rolac had promised me your safe passage!” she guffawed while tears thick and blinding fogged her vision.  “Did I truly believe his words?”  She stood up, ignoring the ridiculous shaking of her knees.  Vertigo grappled her head and she longed to lunge in after her dear Mikash.

“What does it matter?  You are gone!  With him!”  Pentulla screamed until her throat felt blood oozing down the back of her tongue.  “Gone with him…” she whispered hoarsely, not taking heed to the sheen of stinging liquid that blurred her vision yet again.

She did not know how long she stood there with the glowing Enon behind her back casting warm colors of sienna mixed with shimmering gold and melting pink.  Her shadow grew and stretched, like a yawning mouth of a hungry void deep in her heart’s corner.  She had won.

She had failed.

Pentulla sniffed and realized she no longer had any tears to cry.  There would be no more songs for her to sing.  Would life ever be the same again?  She had lost Mikash once before and it was of her own doing.  And now…

She allowed an ugly frown to slowly creep over her pretty face.  Her brows slashed angrily over her dry eyes and she hurled a sharp stone against a tree.  She greedily drank in the tree’s pain as it shuddered, many leaves floated down softly to the grass.

            Slowly turning around, eyes scanning the wide countryside that held no pleasure for her, she began her aimless journey.  Pentulla did not care to find the faces of Crow nor Zolata.  She would soon enough forget them as she would drown her sorrows into whatever would come her way.  She may even welcome a goblin raid again, that would give her something to do.

Rawl’s faint bark was faintly heard under the uproarious thundering of her surrendering heart.  At first, she did not comprehend it nor did she bother to.  She kept walking without any purpose until the creature had practically barricaded Pentulla’s pathway.

            “I have failed, Rawl,” she whispered gently, tears flooding hotly with an unexpected shock.  She lifted a finger to her cheek and brought its wetness to her lips.  “It is a wonder I can still cry.”

            Rawl snapped merrily at her hand and shoved his head happily against her shoulder.  He wagged his great plume of a tail and reared with a carelessness that caused a smarting twinge deep in Pentulla’s heart.