Lily Of The Mountain

Vita Nuova

"'Alas!' I cried, 'my life is full of pain, and who can garner fruit or golden grain, from these waste fields?"

Oscar Wilde

All stories have a beginning, and this one, well it began with a very tired man staring out of a dark window. The Lord, for that, was the title all knew him by. Was not looking at anything in particular. The nether swirled, miasmic and purple around the mountainous peaks that framed his territory. From so high up it should have instilled a sense of great awe, this endless world of dancing sky.

The Lord was not feeling anything resembling awe. His fingers were clenched on the marble sill, digging furrows into the hard stone.

This night, and the many nights that had preceded it, he had stood at the ornate, glassless pane. Half-watching the swirling of the gaseous sky, all smoke and dying starlight. He knew he should have felt something as he looked out over it all, it burned in him. A sense of displacement, a dull and throbbing emptiness.

All the world was laid out before him and he was just so tired of looking at it.

Sometimes he just wanted to burn it all and warm his hands on the dying embers. More often though, he wished to be somewhere entirely new.

"You summoned me, My Lord?" Broken from his thoughts, The Lord turned swiftly, his golden earrings chiming. Though his vassal's address was formal, Baysel was never any good at concealing his irritation. His long silver hair was slightly mussed with sleep, his pale eyes glowered as his tail twitched unhappily. "May I be so bold as to ask, what was so important that it warranted summoning me in the middle of the night?" He continued briskly, stifling a yawn.

The Lord gave a slightly too-wide grin, which made his vassal's eyes narrow with suspicion.

"I have decided something, Baysel." The Lord gestured emphatically at nothing in particular, as his many rings caught the fading light. "I must leave The Abyss, today."

Baysel blinked, pushed up his spectacles and raised his brows slightly. The Lord continued, his hands still moving enthusiastically through the air as he paced. "You, of course, will be coming with me."

Surprised, Baysel nodded woodenly. This was not the theatrics he had come to know, there was a note in The Lord's voice that was, utterly serious. Baysel's voice was wary and slightly quiet when he spoke, his eyes followed his pacing master. "May I at least ask where it is we are going?"

That grin returned, gleeful and catlike. Baysel's brow furrowed harder.

"Gather what you need, I have arranged a suitable residence for us." He did not answer the question, but still, Baysel hastened to follow the command. For truly it did not matter, The Lord was taking him too and that was enough. That had always been enough. A change of locale mattered very little to Baysel.

His vassal departed, The Lord resumed staring out the window, idly, he threw a large gem (once fastened, in an ornate display of wealth, to the windowsill.) into the quiet beyond. It landed with a satisfying plunk in the courtyard below, and The Lord turned away, bored. He idly cast his eyes over the colourful silks on his walls, the amassed wealth of his (tediously long) lineage. The mosaic on the ceiling depicted the holy journey of the martyred first Queen in delicate swirls of precious stone. He had spent many long nights following its details with tired eyes. The sinuous flow of her dark robes, the torch she held up, cast in shades of amber that radiated warmly against her liquid-dark eyes. It was a bleak work, especially cast as it was against the gildings of his family home. Yet it was full of soul, of emotion. The artist had outdone themselves, the piece was exquisite.

It made him uncomfortable, but that was how art was meant to be. It was meant to challenge you, to make you feel, something. How hopeless she looked, small between the dunes of dark sand and the great ocean of golden eyes that filled the sky. How brave. To leave the only home she had ever known and face the dark beyond.

He wondered about this new world of his, with its true sky and its stars the size of whole worlds. He wondered if his story might go happily there, a sliver of peace, a taste of freedom like sweet wine. He was choking, in this place, in this silk brocade. He wanted to taste it, to revel in its strangeness. He wanted to feel again.

Make no mistake, he intended only to retreat. To the furthest place he could, without looking back.

He did not intend for what happened next. In the world above, where the industrial revolution had raked muddy claws across the green face of the planet. Where chaos thrived and change was abound. He did not intend to find a home there. Nor, indeed a family.

He most certainly did not expect how he was about to change a thousand stories, with the simple flick of his overlong fingers. It began with a mountain, peaked by bright snow, still held firmly in the thrall of winter.

It began on that mountain.