FOCUS! *CLICK*’
“What are you doing O lion?” The queen was still in her night gown, bare feet cold upon the stone steps that led to the little office the stable hands kept to enjoy fresh air.
I had woken the horses with my entrance. The queen did not disturb them and even as one observed her. The healthy old mare closed its eyes and laid its head down to rest among the spacious stable.
The king’s horses afforded luxury by their service.
“We left the chessboard up on the mountain I need to make my move.”
I was serious.
I had saddled a horse, opened the stable horse gate and was ready to venture out. But I didn’t remember doing any of this.
The horse stepped forward one hoof, ready to venture into still dark dawn air and I stopped it to look at my wife in the twilight of our single candle stable.
Her frown hurt me.
Knives in my heart if she made a sound. It made me angry. A foreign voice I could not trust thanked the windows.
The tiny little window in this baroque stable.
This really was a civilized little world I inhabited. I had missed childhood.
I see sirens.
“You have no weapon, and the castle still sleeps O Lion.
“I am restless my Dove."
“You are sleep walking!”
“Nonsense!”
“Is this why you went to the library yesterday?”
“I wanted to learn of your magic!”
“That is not for you to know.”
“Why not?”
“I fear I have injured you.”
“You have injured nothing but your servants.”
“Why do you identify as one? You are a King!”
That was a good question and I had no answers.
“Well if I am a king I’m going to go get that chessboard before the dew and morning sun warps it.”
“This one?” The queen held one in her hand.
Night turns day…
She had conjured the thing from the mountain, it dripped with the moisture I had imagined.
I did invent the wheel in a previous generation.
Is it sad I had to focus to assert myself?
“O Dove I did crave fresh air, I think I shall enjoy a dawn ride at sunrise!”
“But I have not the time to get ready!”
There was a tension the horse perceived and it trotted back and forward under reigns.
“No matter, I had thought to enjoy it alone pleasant as you are.”
“Why?”
“Is it not normal for a man to be aloof in his mind for some small part of the long day?
The queen made no comment.
I shouldn’t think about how she felt about this, I should focus on myself in this matter. Dogs had trained me in such ways.
A lion trained by dogs.
I had met a dog trained by cats before.
Polite dog, very awkward, very territorial. Sweet as could be around people. It hated other dogs. It ran well for fourteen years and died unable to walk. Maybe it was the cats, but I had worried the creature was never content.
Call me in twenty when those bubbles explode.
Was that years or minutes?
I hate thinking in code.
Which is why I had planned to try to focus on riding a horse around outside.
Basement apartment in the same building she grew up in…
Was that right? Was I remembering correctly? I couldn’t check anymore… No connection to the outside world. No cell towers, I was free, sort of.
Did you know bagworm females live their entire life in the bag? Only the males become moths and fly outside. The females don’t grow wings, and are difficult to identify when next to larva.
Not that normal people would try to log the bagworms in their yards. But such extreme sexual dimorphism isn’t common in nature. I almost want to call them Queens.
Does that make you uncomfortable to think about?
If you ever want to get people around you to shut up you can hit them with that science fact. Bagworms don’t really live egalitarian lives. Being able to fly, to us humans, seems like the obviously better existence. I wonder if it’s because we are naturally nomads. Maybe I don’t belong in a nice castle like this.
In those old pokemon games of my youth I couldn’t play as a bug catcher.
Not that I like bugs, they are pretty gross.
And I was on a white horse outside my castle gates looking down at a still dim and twilight morning. The two royal guards who stood outside the gate house that worked just to let the king out waved as I looked back.
A wave? No salute?
“Good Morning O lion!”
I waved back. “To you as well!”
And set out to trot around the castle in the dim soft light of a fading moon and the rising sun.
I should be a villain, not a hero.
Gosh how can I get this useless brain to quiet down and quit aching…?
Without wine…
I guess the other option was adrenaline, that was more satisfying anyway.
But still was that all I could be? The meathead?
I guess it could be way worse.
Suddenly I wished I was back in bed.
“No no..” I told myself out-loud “Focus focus…”
My eyes turned to the clean quartzite shell of stone that surrounded the walls of my castle.
The castle walls were strong, healthy, thick.
Full under the hard casing outside a soft core filled with gravel and so I had been told odd pressure towers of stone at random intervals among the gravel.
That was an interesting rumor, I wondered if the point was to frighten sappers.
It almost didn’t matter if such a thing was true. Could you even believe any documentation if you had not been there?
Perhaps everyone had who had documented the truth had died. Perhaps at the hand of the thing driving the Dove.
I suppose that was the Dove, it was driving my… unofficial wife?
Not to draw a rude parallel but this castle was new and thick and could take a pounding.
Much like my wife.
But I’m trying not to think about her.
The horse grumpily stamped around when I stalled to look at the folds of the earth, the color and cracks of stones.
Few cracks, less color, or I suppose an excess of color that bled to white quartzite. Flat land.
Thus I reasoned that if the castle was not new, it was fabulously maintained.
I was a king with quite the castle.
Suppose I win this war for the throne, what would I do?
Toothbrushes first…
I passed under a dim glow of my queen’s tower, no doubt that strange orb was the source.
Then women?
What had my queen done to me? I cannot stop thinking about the cozy bed.
I felt like a delusional teenager, but this time with the lethal and legal power to enforce my cringe upon others.
I suppose this was the rush my queen had enjoyed within the last few days.
My horse gently hopped, I suppose it was a hop, perhaps just a long gait and balance maneuver, over a little culvert that ran out of the castle.
A whiff of sewage.
Water out… where did it come in?
Every dog had its day, perhaps this was my day to indulge in the wild fantasies I had accumulated in the past life.
Most of them were possible with middle aged resources.
Suppose that was why fantasy was popular.
But a kingdom…
No that was propaganda for peasants, so they didn’t make their own.
Kingdoms could theoretically do good,
But in reality good was a fantasy sold to the lowest bidder. Either the king or people. And if a king bid below the people the people would never forgive him, his children, his friends, everything he touched would turn to ash.
I thought about it a little,
“Nonsense”
Something seemed wrong with that analogy but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“Your Majesty!”
A voice at the far corner beyond the rear corner of the castle.
“Haruuuwuuwuuuwuuwuu!”
And a little dog white as cream…
That little dog that sounded bigger than she was.