Now I've got started again with my Saturday posts, I realised that I actually have created a nightmare posting schedule. And my intense need for things to be in the right order means that for this week, I need a short story. I am starting to love Title Generators.
THE STORY
When I was little, I spent a lot of time outside. I would run about in a garden of overgrown grass, weeds and rubbish, pretending I was battling dragons with a stick that I had found. The stick was my staff, and, with my invisible army behind me, I would fight the dragons that wanted to tear down the kingdom I ruled over.
I grew older, and the thought of fighting dragons lost it's charm. Still, as a ruler, you cannot escape your duties. The longer I ignored them, the more my kingdom fell. The dragons infiltrated my home, the roaring arguments sending me running to the garden. Whereas I had once fought, my army was no more, and while the dragons used to be only imaginary, they had become real, disguising themselves in those I loved.
I would sit in the garden, holding the stick that was once my mighty weapon. What had been a staff was now barely a sword, and to kill a dragon with a sword, you had to get a lot closer to it and the risk was much greater.
Sometimes, although I was much too old for make-believe, I would pretend that the dragons had caused the peeling wallpaper, that their careless steps had worn down the furniture and that the swishing of their tails had knocked the cupboard doors loose of the hinges. I pretended that the smell of rotting food was because the dragons didn't like to eat things fresh, and that the reason I didn't like leaving my room was because the dragons were dangerous.
After all, dragons are dangerous, and you wouldn't want to fight them without an army or a staff.
My kingdom crumbled under my reign, and more than once I found myself wondering whether, if I had been brave enough to stand up to the dragons, to fight them away from my kingdom and to keep them out, I would be a good and wise ruler, rather than a failed king.
But then again, I was not the king of this kingdom. I was the prince, I wasn't the one to rule, but the one to inherit. I may have been fighting the dragons, but I should've had the king by my side, leading the army, not hiding in the castle and letting me risk my life and the lives of my invisible men.
As the prince, I was a traitor to ride away from the kingdom the first chance I got. Stealing away in the dead of night, my steed of steel, not flesh, and my bag tossed on the backseat, rather than tied carefully to a saddle. As a prince, I was banished from the kingdom when my treachery was discovered, and all of my invisible men, the army that had once been so loyal to me, was abandoned within the castle grounds. Why drag them along with me when it would only bring them to ruin as well?
There is always a time in everyone's lives, that the inevitable happens. As a prince, it is supposed to be a big event. The kingdom mourns and the prince is celebrated as everything is passed over to him. He must try to live up to the reign of the one before him, to prove himself as a leader to the kingdom.
I had no ceremony, and there was no kingdom to mourn the losses. As I walked into my kingdom for the first time since I ran from it, I saw not the shining grandeur of a castle, but the crumbling walls and scattered rubbish that was the only proof there had been anyone inhabiting the castle.
I grabbed a bag and started to pick up the rubbish. I did not inherit a flourishing kingdom, for all the inhabitants were gone. After all this time, the dragons were gone too, and the silence was deafening as I walked through the ruins of my childhood.
I accidentally kicked a can, and it rolled across the floor to join a pile of them. They were everywhere, filling any surface available. I did not inherit gold, but a Metal Crown.
La fin.
I don't know French, I googled that.
Apparently, anytime I write a story based on a randomly generated title, they have intense metaphorical themes. The other being The Wall and the Flower (read it, it's very good, if I do say so myself!)
Also, my stories all seem to be very emotionally intense. I apparently do not like writing characters that have a good time.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed!
Bye!
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