Chapter 30

It was a tranquil afternoon as thenoon-day sun shone its rays across the rolling hills and upon the lucent surface of the estuary that moved along languidly. Tawny Legette’s above soared from the eaves of tall white Sendal trees. They grew just below the misty pelmet of the lonely mountain.

The mountains name was a romantic one and in keeping with the character of Kalithia. Its name was Lifrin.

And Life was good.

It was abundantly observable everywhere.
Down by the river bank and towards the millers’ manor, beyond the proud structure of the Tesla tower and the wild prairies of Fireflowers, where hind foxes frolicked in amongst the Casper thicket.
Critters that lived on the riverbank moved lively between the rushes.

The fields of lavender wheat stood uncut and were softly shaken by the whispering breeze that seemed to March from the mountain till the eyrie.

The peaceful village breathed as its residents went about country life, enjoying life’s rich gifts given up in plentiful bounties from the Moonflower orchards.

It was a dream… a waking dream, explained by science and celebrated by art.

A coven of ladies nestled together on the balconies that were encrusted by leafy vines that crept gently upon the fascia’s and along the columns of the charming villa.
Li Min was dressed in a handsome gown and was aided by Ash Vani, who in turn wore her pleasing best as the women attended to Una, who stood on a small step table as the hand maiden of the villa Lootie assisted.
“you’ve had this coming, for a long time,” snarled Min as she stared at Una as they were dressing her figure in the latest fashions “hold still,” Ash Vani protestated “Lootie, do you think we can work some magic of our own, and transform this one into a lady?”
“Aye, that we may yet, mistress!” Declared the old corpulent woman who dressed in darker hues and had a mature shape determined by the rigors of decrepity.

“You are such a hopeless fidget,” said Min “I don’t understand the reason for any of this… I am a warrior not a lady,” Protested una as Lootie lifted a finger as if she were about to scold the young Pa’ minas curtness. “If a man wished a woman to do everything that a man could, why would they choose the woman at all, ” she added as she opened her eyes wide like dinner plates. Una gazed into them. They seemed Owlishly wise. Whilst
Ash Vani and Min giggled and found it wildly amusing as the old woman continued the lesson “No, no child …. women! Are supposed to do what men cannot do! Like the more sophisticated arts of hand combat, it’s the soft that overcomes the hard!”

“Tis’ no different!” Agreed Vani, Una glanced at her and thought to herself yeah like you’d know.
“Well my Vee likes me just how I am,”
And she nodded with a sardonic glint in her eye accompanied by a look of smugness.
“Trust me …. like is not the same as love!” Uttered Min
“O.K. but why have I, got to be your project?”

“Hold your tongue and be grateful whelp!” She said slapping the back of her head.

“Wow!!!” She replied in contempt

“Now,”
“Tis’ finished!” Declared the old Governess Lootie
“You look like somebody owns you, see yourself my understudy daughter!” said Min as she smiled sweetly and gestured at her to look at her reflection in a specific mirror which was kept behind a fine velvet curtain.
“Daughter,” Repeated una as it stopped her cold in her tracks “if you’ll have me as your mother” silence descended for a moment as uncertainty raised its ugly head until the response came crashing like an unstoppable tsunami “I’d be honored! To call You Mother!”

As she buried her head in her generous bosom and was embraced collectively in a ring.
As the small circle smiled and laughed as new legacies were brought into the spheres of possibilities.

“Lootie, fetch the dandelion wine, Kay keeps in his cellar, and if Ourianne slights you …. tell it I said so,”
“Yes mistress!” The old women walked away hurriedly.

Una studied herself in the mirror; she looked stunning in a light-blue dress with fine white gold flowers interwoven into her winette hair. Her face was painted expertly, and no sign of the vertical stripes could be traced it was if her shame had been lifted.
“You look beautiful!” she Uttered
“Min!” Asked una
“why do they call these gatherings Endingsong?”
Min looked at her with eyes that were as deep as the abyss itself “it’s the last supper, before we are at war, we may forget what peace is like, we may need to remember what we cherish,
Make good memories for those that fall, and those that must go on afterward,”
“But Li Kay will not be there?”
Declared Una, “someone has to mind the village, but a little birdie has notified me he may slip by for some company and a glass of Casper whiskey later,” she added with a wink and a half-smile as she didn’t believe in giving too much away.

“And death shall have no dominion, and silence shall have no sting. For I shall sail to thee on clouds of lather from a stout ship leaving from the pure shores of limitless possibility, so cut my tether away and shift my sails to the breeze, so I might fly, scatter my heart into tiny stars, to show the way and
make all the world in love with night. Then moonbeam’s chaperone me from the harbor till the distant shore, up the jagged path that leads me once more, back home to your door,
The crowd applauded as the young attaché finished his recital.

He soaked up the applause but restrained himself from getting too carried away.

As he mingled with the other party goers, he moved through the crowds in their masks and festival attire. He found himself standing at the balcony taking in the night air. A night treasure caught his eye a beauty in the rarest sense, wrapped up in a pale blue dress, she covered her face with a wooden fan as she stood before him eyes without a face, yet deep within his heart, he felt he knew her.
“Cut your heart into tiny stars so all the world can be in love with night,” said the feminine tones of paschelle una.
He chuckled “indeed fair lady,”

he heard a familiar snigger returned
as he too smiled and surveyed her new look with smitten eyes, “is that you sweet bird?” he inquired with a great longing in his voice
“you look divine,” as he took her arm and walked with her a time.
The two of them peered out across the garden and the statuettes that surrounded the grounds, “seems so perfect; it’s hard to believe tomorrow we’ll be at war,”
“Una,” he said as he erred towards a point of pertinence it seemed he wanted to tell her something, but he could not orate it incase his words did not come out right.
“I can’t imagine or picture how life was before, it seems so long ago!”
Una glanced towards him and let him speak “my life, even the pampered life of service to the mayor seems hollow now,”
“yes, like words written in the sand that the torrent washed away,” agreed una he looked at her with a glint of sadness in his face “if anything should happen to me, I’d want you to, find someone else,
Someone good, don’t be alone…. promise me oon,”
“I can’t make that promise,” she said as his heart sank like a heavy stone “Vee, I think you, and I… want different things!” “Different things,” he said as he felt the knot slipping.
“yeah! You seem to think I want,”
“But But,” he stuttered as she carried on “some hero, like a magical prince…. look Vee let me make this precise,” all the blood drained out of his face “I don’t want a hero, just somebody I can turn too, somebody I can kiss, I want you!”
“me,” he said as if he had repeated a completely different sentence “Vee Vee… now do me one favor,” he looked at her “kiss me “she said as they embraced “I love you. You are my rock, no you are my mountain” as she pointed at his heart.
“and if you go, I go!”
He held both her tender hands as their fingers entwined “if I am the mountain, then you are surely the sky above, and the stars, and I shall have to look up long and be in love with the night, they embraced passionately and kissed.

The people enjoyed their festivities, but alas, there were 2 among them, that were outsiders, and although appeared to be making merry, they stuck out like square pegs in round holes.

They knew fullwell the significance and magnitude of what was coming.

It wasn’t that they were made to feel unwelcome!

Tum Jai’s presence was striking because he was jet black, however, the Moor, accustomed as he was to personal prejudice thrived despite it. It was a sad fact of life for anyone. He also appreciated the fascination it gave, often he found it gave him voice, and he enjoyed winning people over to his way of thinking; he sat drinking as the lofty white-haired paled skinned Georgian Wi Sako stood by him garish in the moonlight almost like a monster in the skin. They were alike in more ways than each had given credit for.

Tum Jai won people over with his charm and stories and his fantastic articulative abilities, which he called “his charisma,” the other one used the same strategy but with music.

Later, Kay arrived. He greeted the attendees as he

found the hostess and prostrated himself, “mistress it is nice to see you again,” she grinned a sign that wasn’t lost on either of them as they thought about their liaisons, that breathed fresh life into old spent things And made the best out of two old curmudgeons, that were growing old disgracefully.

“Do you remember when we first met,”” asked Min
“How could I forget?”
“Was at the fields of Churchill,”
“I wasn’t sure if you were the Queen in waiting, but I remember thinking you were something from a beautiful dream; I made it my mission to know you better,” he said with a glazed look in his eyes
“Whitebirds,” said Min in a very Catalunian lilt “I’d never seen them before, we don’t have them in Catalunia, so I remember hiding in the lavender, in anticipation of seeing some. No one could find me except for one sneaky little aristocrats’ son,” Her voice descended into a drawl almost as if she were thinking aloud “it was the freeest times of our lives, before!” Her voice stopped as if something was in the way, that was unscalable, unmovable and impassable. The loss of li Elkie hung over them like a mill stone around their necks.

“Please Kay can you promise me one thing!” She asked in a whisper
Kay looked at her “you’ll just defend the village and not, and not go all out for vengeance,”

She saw the look upon his face as she reiterated her position,
“don’t get drunk on blood. As if nothing else matters, I know you! you’ll go on this crusade, and you won’t care about the cost, or how many hearts are broken, or lives shattered!”

They hugged “oh Starflower,” he pressed his cheek into the crown of her hair “I miss Elkie too, every waking hour of the day…. it’s ok,” he said as if all the breath had been wrung out of him.

“You don’t understand,” he hissed
“Me, I don’t understand,” she said as the very notion was, frankly absurd.
“I think you’ll find I’m changed,”
“My mind isn’t how it was, Min. I can barely stray away from what happened; I’m different,”

“They broke me, there were moments I could hear screaming I could hear a wish for a swift merciful end, then there were moments. I realised it was me, the one who was doing the screaming,”
He stood as tears brimmed in his golden eyes “you see I’m not as strong as you all think,”
“Just give me your word,”

“I promise I’ll keep the village safe and nothing more,”
“I saw it in the Queen, but it consumed her in the end, like cancer. I have to know there’s a way back for both of us,”

He nodded as they shared liquor from a single glass.
“I … I never stopped loving you Kay,’” Min continued
“I know I said and did awful things, and for that I can’t forgive myself,”

Kay looked at her; it was a look she’d never seen upon his face before it was beyond the politics and power-plays. As he looked out of his eyes like windows from the houses of the holy “I forgive you,”
“What?”
“I forgive you,” he said lucid and shaking with sentiment. It was as if a great burden had been lifted from her heart, with just 3 little words.
As she smiled and felt renewed.
“I have to know Starflower, I have to know too, there’s a way back,”
They embraced passionately “when this is all over, let’s become farmers,” he put his head and her head together “farmers,”she said amused and tearful
“yeah, I always fancied it,”
“I will,” she said overwhelmed by emotion
“we can take up other hobbies also,”
“you never cease to amaze me,”
“I still want you Min, despite how you snore some times,”
“I do not!” She said mortified
“you so do!” He said,
“Get back to the watch,”
He moaned “the watch,”
He looked at her one last time he was about to tell her he loved her when she smiled and said, “I know. I’ve always known”
Before he left, he kissed her one final time and saluted her as his equal.

Later at the watch at the old fort of Aranmore, a man approached it was a delegate from neighboring Karmarthen province. He approached on a mantilla, he was a middle-aged man with a sullen face, or Okota couldn’t tell if that was his natural demeanor or if it were just the weight of the grim news, he had brought he looked important as He met Vir Okota who stood at the checkpoint. “I bring news from the southern border,”
The man was wearing a Karmarthen uniform.

“The shae have amassed themselves into an army, they are coming this way and will be here before daybreak.”
“We know” said Vir stoically and with a hint pathos
“But they are many,” pleaded the messenger
“Please, please save yourselves, and your women and children -Karmarthen will give you refugee status!”
Vir looked at him “and then they will come there!”
“But it will be a massacre!”
“Yes it will be,” he replied stubbornly as if it were a good thing.
The messenger began to walk away dejected as Vir called back his attention “there’s a rumor doing the rounds, that the old knights of the Republic are coming, Mercia’s elite guard if anyone from any neighboring state wants to join they are more than welcome to do so,”
The man nodded and departed.

The fields stood empty as the morning mist hung over them in a sepia hue
A silhouette of a lonely figure stood on the field alone and in a blink of an eye appeared in a different place until finally the strange omen personified appeared before the jar. that was Emrys’s
Standing in the grounds of Li Kays villa the girl was barely visible in the sepia mist that let itself into the yard.

“When shall we next meet?”
Asked the Emrys
“The figure stood there silent and nonchalant
“when the wrath and ruins done, after the battle is lost or won,”
And in an instant more it was no longer there.

Now the Glenn was silent, the fields were quiet, and the mountain still. the lonely ancient stones observed history in the making as the sound of drums quietly carried on the morning breeze. They were carried from afar, across the slopes of mount Lifrin, till the prairies amongst the banks of the river Ylla the sound of war drums. In Mārin village the guard suited up in amour hefted their weapons drew their plans and made ready.

The drums grew ever louder as the small band of warriors that were perhaps too few in numbers stood defiant.