Soundly, soundly [2/?]
anonymous
October 27 2011, 08:54:27 UTC
--
Arthur is walking down a dark stone corridor outside, it surrounds a secluded back part of the castle that is rarely used and otherwise forbidden to anyone aside from royalty.
The back portion of the castle however is also used as a passage occasionally for servants to go about running errands in the market in the case of an emergency, a forgotten chicken, a lack of ale, some cotton that was needed urgently. Otherwise the various kinds of passages at the front and more populated portion of the castle were the more secure and proper means.
The back is far more run down than the newer part of the castle up front and near the dark woods not many liked to wander close to.
It is soon to be his 15th birthday so Arthur had wanted to pray in a place of his ancestors as a means to give him strength to accept becoming King. His father had passed away from grief not long after his mother’s passing. It’d been a miracle she’d borne him at all. While his father had loved his mother deeply, in pursuit of having an heir he had affairs with other woman. But, all offspring from these affairs had all been boys; added to that the women were not of royal status- these children were barred from the throne entirely.
So when Arthur had been conceived it’d been thought to be a message from the heavens, finally the daughter that’d been awaited would be born, since the mother has thought unlikely to produce in the first place. For to her to finally have a child in her surely meant fate!
Their future Queen!
Arthur reaches the iron bar door that leads into a place only he and his ancestor’s could enter.
He had a gold key around his neck that opened the door, but today it was not needed.
The door is already opened.
Arthur steps in cautiously in disbelief that the door was open. For the first time he sees the beautiful red roses under the bright light of the sun that was beaming down today.
His feet step over the dew heavy grass, last night it’d rain. But when morning had arrived the sky revealed to be clear and blue; the Spades which had had poor harvest, a long desolate winter was looking forward to spring and here the sky had turned into the vestige of summer in another land, perhaps like that in Hearts…
Arthur suspects magic, he suspects a curse but nothing attacks him. There is no threatening aura or presence, and so he proceeds, steps quiet except for the grass being crushed underfoot.
In the centre of the rose garden is a sword imbedded into a stone at the foot of a tree that perhaps had once borne fruit but does not any longer. To add to his amazement Arthur’s foot hits against something red and round in the grass. He bends to pick it up.
It is an apple, a shade lighter than that of the deep red of the roses.
Confusion trails about in his mind and stirs up a jittery faulty feeling in his breast.
It is impossible for the tree to bear fruit, and in this season no less if it did.
So it must be that this apple came from someone, and that someone had to be-
Soundly, soundly [3/?]
anonymous
October 27 2011, 08:56:41 UTC
A boy stands in front of him, before the tree and the sword in the stone. This boy whose hair shone like gold in the bright sun and whose eyes were as blue as this vast sky above them, a sky Arthur had not known could be such a colour, the description of which he’d only read about in story books.
The boy looks over at him, a mere glance at having heard not his steps but-
The crunch of the apple as Arthur takes a bite.
If is it a curse he will challenge it head on.
The boy is startled, his whole body gives a jolt as if what stands before him is not a real person but a ghost.
Arthur chews, swallows the bite he took.
It’s not poisoned, it’s not a trap construed with magic.
If it is not then-
“Why are you here in this garden?”
At hearing his voice, and it not sounding as one that came from beyond the grave (what sort of ghost would appear in this sort of daylight? And it feels in that case since never before had there been sun like this in the Spades in Arthur’s lifetime that he’d been dead before now-)
He must have been because merely the boy’s body moving, the whole of him turning to face and address Arthur sends through him a sensation of anticipation and giddiness. One he’d never had: to have the attention of another person is taken for granted because while he is not the hoped for princess he still is heir to this Kingdom’s throne.
No one could deny him their attention.
Yet this stranger.
It felt as if he were not from here…
(A whimsical nostalgic feel this-)
The boy holds up a hand and points to the apple Arthur is holding.
His laugh is exceedingly happy and warm.
“This is the first time I’ve been in a garden that didn’t grow something you can eat.”
With the boy turned entirely to face him Arthur sees in the boy’s hand is a rose, a few petals are missing but what alarms him is not that, but that instead of red the petals are blue.
“You can eat them.”
Arthur replies and steadily walks a few steps closer so there is but five feet between them, the boy still smiles at him and Arthur feels if he does not say anything of exceeding interest or fascination soon this boy’s attention will leave him.
That thought is suddenly so unbearable- Arthur is desperate, he must, yes he must as soon as possible-
The boy continues, a little amused.
“I ate some of it but I didn’t think it was very appetizing. Surely not as much as-”
No matter the season these roses are forever in bloom.
They cannot die and had been here with their thorns and deceit protecting this sword that laid in the stone once its King could no longer wield it. The boy is suddenly by Arthur’s face, who’d brought the apple up for another bite again, but instead of he taking the bite the boy does. The satisfied curl of the boy’s lips matches the loud satisfied crunch that preceded it. Arthur watches.
His palms are sweating.
Is he hallucinating?
Was this some fairy, some creature of lore that his ancestors had placed here in anticipation of his existence to punish him? The first successor to the Kingdom of Spades who’d not been born a girl… what use was a Knight who had no Queen to protect?
Was the apple really poisoned after all and this boy the deliverer of his real fate?
Soundly, soundly [4/?]
anonymous
October 27 2011, 08:59:19 UTC
It is Arthur’s turn to give a jolt, as those words had left his mouth instead of staying enshrouded in his thoughts. The young boy before him, is much shorter than he. Perhaps up a little past Arthur’s elbow. He is looking up at him curiously and intently before drawing back into a pensive, innocent look. His gaze causes a shudder to run through Arthur’s entire being, whose hand slips on the apple, but the boy catches it and grins. Arthur’s body feels hot when the boy leans in, his upper body pushed forward as if to say “is that so?”
But instead he replies with, “Do you not want to be King?”
As if it may be a shame.
Arthur looks away from him, ashamed. Defeated.
And says what he’d only dare say in his heart, in the tiniest, quietest voice on a stormy night where no one could hear, covered in every blanket imaginable on his bed, over his head, a head he should lose he thinks, a traitor unto his own Kingdom to even think-
“I do not.”
The boy leans back again and looks over to the sword that lays embedded into the stone. The tree is tall and centuries old. Really, it had once borne fruit.
Arthur closes his eyes and sighs, deeply, deeply.
“However I am the successor to the Kingdom of Spades. It is my duty. In a few days it will be my 15th day of birth, and I must pull this sword forth from its stone and become King!”
A moment of silence.
“But that’s not what you really want.”
The boy kicks off, in a bit of dirt, the grass in patches more by the tree- he stumbles, a boy’s playful and free walk- quickly he goes to the foot of the tree so that he is captured within the shade of its branches, fingers splayed out to touch the bark of the trunk.
This alarms Arthur who starts, heart falling at the sight of the boy being under anything other than sunlight. In the shade, though it is not pitch and dark like night but the slightest tone of grey, despite this- it still sends a panic through him, a message- what he is seeing is unnatural. And his feet drive him forward quick as well, his hand shooting out to grab at that boy’s arm don’t go any further but he misses and grabs air.
The boy heeds the wordless distress in his mind and proceeds no further, stepping once more into the sunlight, a circle of movement. The fist around Arthur’s heart unclenches and then-
“Why don’t you become Queen instead?”
Arthur’s eyes widen, there are apples a shade brighter than the green of his eyes- that is one of the thoughts this boy is thinking. On the farmland he was raised upon. The apple he’d carried with him he had because he was a farmer’s son, and his father had come from a far off land to Spades to sell his apples. The land of Spades had had a poor harvest, they had had no apples.
The purpose of a King in Spades was to become a Knight unto the Queen. He would serve the Queen as her strongest protector; the Queen who’d rule the land into prosperity.
Soundly, soundly [5/?]
anonymous
October 27 2011, 09:06:10 UTC
The boy points to the sword behind Arthur.
“I will be your King.”
Arthur turns, slight and sluggish to place a hand at the handle of the sword, it is cold. There is a small presence there but not a strong enough one for him to make a connection. This sword then-
“But,”
Arthur turns at this, his dark cloak askew.
The boy is looking shyly at his feet now, hands clasped behind him and Arthur waits for that gaze to be back on him, sweat gathered along the dark collar of his shirt as he waits, waits what seems forever and then the sky-
He can see the sky again when this boy looks at him.
He’d be unable to see it should he try to peer through the thick branches of the tree.
“You’ll have to wait a little while until I turn fifteen okay? Unlike you it’s much more than a few days…”
These words will be a distant, a far away echo, a glimpse of hope and a dream that in the future haunts Arthur like a continuous nightmare. Even in his memories it is vivid, the blue rose falling from that boy’s hand as he held the apple between them, a whispered in five years alright? as if he were asking Arthur’s permission. After that moment Arthur started to guess it must have been magic that day after all. How else could it be but a spell, a curse, for what other reason did his heart beat so fast when the boy came close, that apple between them, an indirect kiss as they ate it together to the core, a contract new and foreign binding them together then and there.
On his 15th birthday Arthur went to pull the sword from the stone and could not.
He went each year after for the next five and could not.
His fate had changed.
(Or had this been what was meant to be all along?)
And so he announced throughout all the Kingdom, and the Kingdoms beyond his. To even Club, and Diamond, and Heart.
Upon his 20th birthday.
And that boy’s 15th.
“Whoever shall pull this sword from the stone shall be my King!”
Re: Soundly, soundly [5/?]
anonymous
October 28 2011, 02:08:27 UTC
Your phrasing is somewhat awkward (all sentences should have a subject (the noun performing the action) and verb at least... you tend to skip on the subject a couple times) at points but I do sense a fairy-tale aspect that I find refreshing. Also, I love the mixture of Arthurian legend along with the king of spades, as well as the chess reference.
My only suggestion is to get a beta. For now, I'll mention that you can't start a sentence with "Was" unless it's a question. Also, keep anything like "he replied" in the same paragraph as the dialogue. Finally, don't end a sentence with a comma like: "But," and then have a new paragraph. Because I suspect it, dialogue works like this (please forgive my random examples):
"But," he started.
"Wait!" he said.
"But."
"Why?" he asked.
"Wait." He bent down.
He shouted, "Wait!" (or He shouted: "Wait!")
(So note that they end in a comma when the sentence after the dialogue relates to the dialogue being said, but when it's an action unrelated to the dialogue like "bending", you need to end the dialogue with a period. Also, note how you keep things uncapitalized ("he said" not "He said" after dialogue because it's a continuation of the sentence.)
Soundly, soundly [6/?]
anonymous
October 28 2011, 07:29:17 UTC
thank you for your feedback!
--
Though that proclamation was sent far across the vast lands of the four Kingdoms, very few took up its offer. A prince would become Queen? Many did not know what to make of it, those who knew of Spades’ customs either snickered or pitied the place.
Many who did appear would lose courage- at the gates, within that dark corridor. This went on for quite a while that it seemed none would reach past the iron doors to where Arthur stood waiting.
Who was he waiting for?
The first to make it past the iron doors was a young girl from the Kingdom of Diamonds, she was to be wed soon to the King of Diamonds, which meant in reality her destiny was to be the Queen of Diamonds.
As she entered shyly in the rose garden, she paused, hesitant and nervous before the sword.
“Oh?”
Arthur had softly said, amused at her weak entrance despite being the first to make it here.
The girl’s eyes are wide and wavering, but snap with a faulty resolve once she sees the waiting sword. As if she knew not what else to do, as if this were her only option besides. Arthur is hidden within the shadow of the tree and observes.
A long braid trails down to almost her knees, her hair is a soft yellow like dandelions. The clouds are overcast, and truly should there have been sun her gentle beauty would have been more distinct. Under the sudden rain it struck of despair and tragedy.
She did not want to marry the King of Diamonds- that was the problem entirely. Because she did not wish to marry him that was why such weakness lay in her heart…
But if she did not wish to marry the King of Diamonds that was specific to him was it not? Would it mean she’d be willing to marry people aside from him? So if she pulled this sword from this stone she would become King of Spades, and marry the Queen of-
Her feeble hand is suddenly sure and strong as it reaches for the handle of the sword but that strength vanishes just as quickly as it’d came and without even touching it, that hand drops in defeat.
“I can’t.”
She whispers to herself.
In truth she did not want to marry the King of Diamonds because she wanted to marry her brother. And there lay her sin and despair. He was not actually her blood brother, but he had saved her from the streets, a life of misery. Another story of a nobleman who’d lost his fortune was the story of her family, but her brother a distant cousin (all nobility were distant relatives), had taken her in to save her of her original fate.
If fate could be changed once, it could be changed again surely?
However returning into that wealthy world had given her an opportunity to meet with the King of Diamonds, a King long known for his large sexual appetite, a man who loved beautiful things and loved himself, was finally for the good of the Kingdom looking for a Queen and then she-
She did not make another move to pull the blade from the stone, instead her hands clasped together at her breast, to her rapidly beating heart she prayed.
That whoever capable of pulling this sword from this stone, such a person, i she could have but an ounce of their strength!
With that she let, tearfully but surely. The future Queen of Diamonds!
Arthur is walking down a dark stone corridor outside, it surrounds a secluded back part of the castle that is rarely used and otherwise forbidden to anyone aside from royalty.
The back portion of the castle however is also used as a passage occasionally for servants to go about running errands in the market in the case of an emergency, a forgotten chicken, a lack of ale, some cotton that was needed urgently. Otherwise the various kinds of passages at the front and more populated portion of the castle were the more secure and proper means.
The back is far more run down than the newer part of the castle up front and near the dark woods not many liked to wander close to.
It is soon to be his 15th birthday so Arthur had wanted to pray in a place of his ancestors as a means to give him strength to accept becoming King. His father had passed away from grief not long after his mother’s passing. It’d been a miracle she’d borne him at all. While his father had loved his mother deeply, in pursuit of having an heir he had affairs with other woman. But, all offspring from these affairs had all been boys; added to that the women were not of royal status- these children were barred from the throne entirely.
So when Arthur had been conceived it’d been thought to be a message from the heavens, finally the daughter that’d been awaited would be born, since the mother has thought unlikely to produce in the first place. For to her to finally have a child in her surely meant fate!
Their future Queen!
Arthur reaches the iron bar door that leads into a place only he and his ancestor’s could enter.
He had a gold key around his neck that opened the door, but today it was not needed.
The door is already opened.
Arthur steps in cautiously in disbelief that the door was open. For the first time he sees the beautiful red roses under the bright light of the sun that was beaming down today.
His feet step over the dew heavy grass, last night it’d rain. But when morning had arrived the sky revealed to be clear and blue; the Spades which had had poor harvest, a long desolate winter was looking forward to spring and here the sky had turned into the vestige of summer in another land, perhaps like that in Hearts…
Arthur suspects magic, he suspects a curse but nothing attacks him. There is no threatening aura or presence, and so he proceeds, steps quiet except for the grass being crushed underfoot.
In the centre of the rose garden is a sword imbedded into a stone at the foot of a tree that perhaps had once borne fruit but does not any longer. To add to his amazement Arthur’s foot hits against something red and round in the grass. He bends to pick it up.
It is an apple, a shade lighter than that of the deep red of the roses.
Confusion trails about in his mind and stirs up a jittery faulty feeling in his breast.
It is impossible for the tree to bear fruit, and in this season no less if it did.
So it must be that this apple came from someone, and that someone had to be-
A boy.
Reply
The boy looks over at him, a mere glance at having heard not his steps but-
The crunch of the apple as Arthur takes a bite.
If is it a curse he will challenge it head on.
The boy is startled, his whole body gives a jolt as if what stands before him is not a real person but a ghost.
Arthur chews, swallows the bite he took.
It’s not poisoned, it’s not a trap construed with magic.
If it is not then-
“Why are you here in this garden?”
At hearing his voice, and it not sounding as one that came from beyond the grave (what sort of ghost would appear in this sort of daylight? And it feels in that case since never before had there been sun like this in the Spades in Arthur’s lifetime that he’d been dead before now-)
He must have been because merely the boy’s body moving, the whole of him turning to face and address Arthur sends through him a sensation of anticipation and giddiness. One he’d never had: to have the attention of another person is taken for granted because while he is not the hoped for princess he still is heir to this Kingdom’s throne.
No one could deny him their attention.
Yet this stranger.
It felt as if he were not from here…
(A whimsical nostalgic feel this-)
The boy holds up a hand and points to the apple Arthur is holding.
His laugh is exceedingly happy and warm.
“This is the first time I’ve been in a garden that didn’t grow something you can eat.”
With the boy turned entirely to face him Arthur sees in the boy’s hand is a rose, a few petals are missing but what alarms him is not that, but that instead of red the petals are blue.
“You can eat them.”
Arthur replies and steadily walks a few steps closer so there is but five feet between them, the boy still smiles at him and Arthur feels if he does not say anything of exceeding interest or fascination soon this boy’s attention will leave him.
That thought is suddenly so unbearable- Arthur is desperate, he must, yes he must as soon as possible-
The boy continues, a little amused.
“I ate some of it but I didn’t think it was very appetizing. Surely not as much as-”
No matter the season these roses are forever in bloom.
They cannot die and had been here with their thorns and deceit protecting this sword that laid in the stone once its King could no longer wield it.
The boy is suddenly by Arthur’s face, who’d brought the apple up for another bite again, but instead of he taking the bite the boy does. The satisfied curl of the boy’s lips matches the loud satisfied crunch that preceded it. Arthur watches.
His palms are sweating.
Is he hallucinating?
Was this some fairy, some creature of lore that his ancestors had placed here in anticipation of his existence to punish him? The first successor to the Kingdom of Spades who’d not been born a girl… what use was a Knight who had no Queen to protect?
Was the apple really poisoned after all and this boy the deliverer of his real fate?
“The Kingdom of Spades does not need a King.”
Reply
But instead he replies with, “Do you not want to be King?”
As if it may be a shame.
Arthur looks away from him, ashamed. Defeated.
And says what he’d only dare say in his heart, in the tiniest, quietest voice on a stormy night where no one could hear, covered in every blanket imaginable on his bed, over his head, a head he should lose he thinks, a traitor unto his own Kingdom to even think-
“I do not.”
The boy leans back again and looks over to the sword that lays embedded into the stone. The tree is tall and centuries old. Really, it had once borne fruit.
Arthur closes his eyes and sighs, deeply, deeply.
“However I am the successor to the Kingdom of Spades. It is my duty. In a few days it will be my 15th day of birth, and I must pull this sword forth from its stone and become King!”
A moment of silence.
“But that’s not what you really want.”
The boy kicks off, in a bit of dirt, the grass in patches more by the tree- he stumbles, a boy’s playful and free walk- quickly he goes to the foot of the tree so that he is captured within the shade of its branches, fingers splayed out to touch the bark of the trunk.
This alarms Arthur who starts, heart falling at the sight of the boy being under anything other than sunlight. In the shade, though it is not pitch and dark like night but the slightest tone of grey, despite this- it still sends a panic through him, a message- what he is seeing is unnatural.
And his feet drive him forward quick as well, his hand shooting out to grab at that boy’s arm don’t go any further but he misses and grabs air.
The boy heeds the wordless distress in his mind and proceeds no further, stepping once more into the sunlight, a circle of movement. The fist around Arthur’s heart unclenches and then-
“Why don’t you become Queen instead?”
Arthur’s eyes widen, there are apples a shade brighter than the green of his eyes- that is one of the thoughts this boy is thinking. On the farmland he was raised upon. The apple he’d carried with him he had because he was a farmer’s son, and his father had come from a far off land to Spades to sell his apples. The land of Spades had had a poor harvest, they had had no apples.
The purpose of a King in Spades was to become a Knight unto the Queen. He would serve the Queen as her strongest protector; the Queen who’d rule the land into prosperity.
In Spades chess is played a little differently.
Reply
“I will be your King.”
Arthur turns, slight and sluggish to place a hand at the handle of the sword, it is cold. There is a small presence there but not a strong enough one for him to make a connection. This sword then-
“But,”
Arthur turns at this, his dark cloak askew.
The boy is looking shyly at his feet now, hands clasped behind him and Arthur waits for that gaze to be back on him, sweat gathered along the dark collar of his shirt as he waits, waits what seems forever and then the sky-
He can see the sky again when this boy looks at him.
He’d be unable to see it should he try to peer through the thick branches of the tree.
“You’ll have to wait a little while until I turn fifteen okay? Unlike you it’s much more than a few days…”
These words will be a distant, a far away echo, a glimpse of hope and a dream that in the future haunts Arthur like a continuous nightmare. Even in his memories it is vivid, the blue rose falling from that boy’s hand as he held the apple between them, a whispered in five years alright? as if he were asking Arthur’s permission. After that moment Arthur started to guess it must have been magic that day after all. How else could it be but a spell, a curse, for what other reason did his heart beat so fast when the boy came close, that apple between them, an indirect kiss as they ate it together to the core, a contract new and foreign binding them together then and there.
On his 15th birthday Arthur went to pull the sword from the stone and could not.
He went each year after for the next five and could not.
His fate had changed.
(Or had this been what was meant to be all along?)
And so he announced throughout all the Kingdom, and the Kingdoms beyond his. To even Club, and Diamond, and Heart.
Upon his 20th birthday.
And that boy’s 15th.
“Whoever shall pull this sword from the stone shall be my King!”
--
TBC
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My only suggestion is to get a beta. For now, I'll mention that you can't start a sentence with "Was" unless it's a question. Also, keep anything like "he replied" in the same paragraph as the dialogue. Finally, don't end a sentence with a comma like: "But," and then have a new paragraph. Because I suspect it, dialogue works like this (please forgive my random examples):
"But," he started.
"Wait!" he said.
"But."
"Why?" he asked.
"Wait." He bent down.
He shouted, "Wait!" (or He shouted: "Wait!")
(So note that they end in a comma when the sentence after the dialogue relates to the dialogue being said, but when it's an action unrelated to the dialogue like "bending", you need to end the dialogue with a period. Also, note how you keep things uncapitalized ("he said" not "He said" after dialogue because it's a continuation of the sentence.)
Looking forward to future installments!
Reply
--
Though that proclamation was sent far across the vast lands of the four Kingdoms, very few took up its offer. A prince would become Queen? Many did not know what to make of it, those who knew of Spades’ customs either snickered or pitied the place.
Many who did appear would lose courage- at the gates, within that dark corridor. This went on for quite a while that it seemed none would reach past the iron doors to where Arthur stood waiting.
Who was he waiting for?
The first to make it past the iron doors was a young girl from the Kingdom of Diamonds, she was to be wed soon to the King of Diamonds, which meant in reality her destiny was to be the Queen of Diamonds.
As she entered shyly in the rose garden, she paused, hesitant and nervous before the sword.
“Oh?”
Arthur had softly said, amused at her weak entrance despite being the first to make it here.
The girl’s eyes are wide and wavering, but snap with a faulty resolve once she sees the waiting sword. As if she knew not what else to do, as if this were her only option besides. Arthur is hidden within the shadow of the tree and observes.
A long braid trails down to almost her knees, her hair is a soft yellow like dandelions. The clouds are overcast, and truly should there have been sun her gentle beauty would have been more distinct. Under the sudden rain it struck of despair and tragedy.
She did not want to marry the King of Diamonds- that was the problem entirely. Because she did not wish to marry him that was why such weakness lay in her heart…
But if she did not wish to marry the King of Diamonds that was specific to him was it not? Would it mean she’d be willing to marry people aside from him? So if she pulled this sword from this stone she would become King of Spades, and marry the Queen of-
Her feeble hand is suddenly sure and strong as it reaches for the handle of the sword but that strength vanishes just as quickly as it’d came and without even touching it, that hand drops in defeat.
“I can’t.”
She whispers to herself.
In truth she did not want to marry the King of Diamonds because she wanted to marry her brother. And there lay her sin and despair. He was not actually her blood brother, but he had saved her from the streets, a life of misery. Another story of a nobleman who’d lost his fortune was the story of her family, but her brother a distant cousin (all nobility were distant relatives), had taken her in to save her of her original fate.
If fate could be changed once, it could be changed again surely?
However returning into that wealthy world had given her an opportunity to meet with the King of Diamonds, a King long known for his large sexual appetite, a man who loved beautiful things and loved himself, was finally for the good of the Kingdom looking for a Queen and then she-
She did not make another move to pull the blade from the stone, instead her hands clasped together at her breast, to her rapidly beating heart she prayed.
That whoever capable of pulling this sword from this stone, such a person, i she could have but an ounce of their strength!
With that she let, tearfully but surely. The future Queen of Diamonds!
--
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