Prompt: Time. For the kuroxfai Autumn Challenge (community . livejournal . com / kuroxfai / 704406 . html).
Edit 11/11/07: Slight stylistic edits.
For He Comes, the Stolen Child
The castle of Celes has been since forever; the home of kings, the stronghold of magic and sorcery. It floats weightless and steady above the snowdrifts in perpetual cold and protects the people who call Le Val their home. So it was. So it will be.
But as one knows not dreams until waking, so Le Val did not truly know life and warmth until the presence of a foreign magic and a spirit raw and unconfined. A child clamors about the library walls.
Fay Fluorite, the king calls him. Fay Fluorite breathes life and attends to the dead. And watching him through the lens of a dream the gentle king feels his heart bruise with each beat. Then the boy smiles, a heart-warming smile (a heart-breaking smile, for he cannot heal) and there is a promise. There are silent wishes. (Fate locks her course and etches it into the walls.) The wind wails mournfully and the castle wraps the child in a lullaby as he falls asleep by the pool where his brother lay.
The child grows tall and fair and lively. The king grows desperate. The castle grows dark with the blood of corpses seeping into its walls...
There is betrayal and hurt and echoes of a broken heart—
-
And then Fay is gone.
-
It is quiet, but promises of yesterday and wishes reaching beyond future-present haunt the empty halls: The child will return.
So the castle waits.
Days turn to months turn to years in cold tranquility, the king and the corpse forever young beneath the clear waters within the castle's heart. They lie tragic and beautiful, preserved and displayed as proof of a gentler and crueler time forgotten. They lie waiting. Waiting.
Waiting.
And time passes by as if Time herself had forgotten the castle of Celes (was it ever there?) and all is still.
There is a ripple.
There is a breath.
There is a frosty cloud against the cool glass and the king wakes.
A gentle voice is sharp in the icy air, too long still and silent.
Fay, can you hear me?
The pendulum creaks.
The cavernous chamber echoes emptily with the footfall of regal boots and the king smiles gently, sad and resigned as his long locks are tossed by a sudden rush of magic. A body (a girl). An outsider—a reminder of now—marring the forever-crystal facade of the castle with harsh black and dark blood. She catches Time's attention, (she, with the power to turn Time's head) and the pendulum swings in earnest.
Days pass. Weeks. Months. The castle anticipates, the long dormant wards pulsing gently around its walls. The man inside is patient, the children lost to dreams and memories tangled in thorns.
And then there is a tickle of warm, foreign magic in the air and just as suddenly there is the presence of a familiar and anxious heartbeat. Fay has come home.
Still a child, still as young as the day he abandoned Celes and aged as if he had never left, Fay moves heavily but resolutely past the frost-preserved dead, statues commemorating a terrible past and heralding a crueler future. The wards guard swiftly against the boy's magical companions, and around the third the air hangs cautiously. This moment exists for a promise, for a wish, and the castle wakes fully to bear witness to destiny, though forced or fixed, not even Time would tell.
They meet: Past and present. Memories too steeped in deceit finally shatter into shards of ice and glass. Truth fall fragmented and the little mage finally fills the jagged gaps of his existence. And then a whirlwind of chaos shake the castle's core.
The ice-sheeted walls crack and splinter into snowflakes and spider webs from the sudden heat and hums with the rising din. Perspiring columns gleam translucent and flicker blue-white-gold. The castle struggles against the cackling energy of magic and memories. Of desperation. Of kindness laced with burning ice.
The ground is warm with blood.
And then it is quiet. The agitated air settles into an ethereal calm as if it was but a fleeting dream if not for the evidence of battle: scattered debris and the king's corpse, slowly stiffening in cold and death.
Palm down, Fay sends a silent prayer into the hollow heavens and grants his king sleep once more. He is the only one left...
And then it's as if all the life and energy that Time forgot gathered and anchored itself on the last remnant of the living past—and burst. Magic howls and chokes Celes and Le Val, as steadfast and patient as a lover, finally crumbles under the weight of the curse. Gone are the drifts and floating foundations. Gone are the windows and the walls. All that is is Fay, watching resolutely as the last of his companions disappears beyond the void. The castle weeps ice and debris as it turns a cage for the lonely child.
A severed limb.
A sword dripping with the blood of its master.
A coat, still warm, collapses emptily onto the floor.
Three more mementos for the castle Fate had long marked a mausoleum.
Yet somehow Fay defied her steady pen.
He is gone, and, with a final flurry of magic, there is the sound of laughter.
-'-
Author's Note: This piece played off of the idea that time passes quickly in Celes compared to the other dimensions. Thanks for reading and I'd love to hear your comments!