Torches crackled in their sconces, their vivid yellow flames the only living thing in the silent wide corridor they lit up and those windows...dirty and useless as usual, and even if they were to be cleaned, no light would have gone through. I turned around a corner and, in the distance, saw a metal gate, two knights stationed on either side of it, their red crimson armours glinted against the light emitted by the peculiar torches placed there, which instead of a flame had luminous oval orange crystals, vastly better as they didn’t release that burning smell into the air. Those guards immediately bowed once I was close to them, only moment their hands weren’t near the hilt of those dreadful swords.
I always feared them when I was a child. No matter how kind or protective they tried to be with me, who devoted themselves to protecting someone at the cost of someone else’s life or even their own was crazy to my young eyes; the whole concept of spilling blood was disgusting.
The gate’s door creaked as the guards’ strong arms opened it with ease, white light from inside the room flooded into the corridor, better revealing its black walls and flooring, its blinding effect before slowly letting me look at the inside. It was surely a fitting presentation for what was the throne room, with its unrealistic dimensions. Four dark columns, as wide as the largest tree trunks, towered everything in the room, even the dusty arched windows, the chandeliers and walls lamps with the same crystals; everything made me feel like a ridiculous ant. I run on the soft carpet leading towards the occupied golden throne, the gate behind me slamming with thunderous clang that made the floor tremble.
“Dad!!” I hugged the man’s leg, diverting his attention away from the book he was reading. A warm wide smile tugged his cheeks; even his ever-young, fire-red eyes seemed to be grinning. He rested the closed book on his legs, placed a gentle hand on my head and ruffled my hair. “It’s not like you to come out of the studio.” I pouted, feigning annoyance from being treated like the child I was, but inside I was happy. His voice was soft and warm; it didn’t show at all his old, fossil-like, age. Everything of him was full of life (including those horns he always wore!), like the flames of those torches, illuminating my segregated life.
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“I want you to continue that story you were telling me the other day…” I showed off my puppy eyes, a tactic that always worked. Or so I thought.
He furrowed his brows, perplexed.
“Did you forget it already? Really?” I asked, seriously bothered this time as it wasn’t the first we went through that same exact conversation; maybe the memory was the only thing being corroded by his hundred of years.
He chuckled embarrassed, “Maybe this body is getting old after all. What was the name of the story?”
“You never told me, but it was about two guys you knew…”
A shadow, something distant from the past, had obscured that light in his eyes for a split second. I always had the impression he was hiding something, something that my young mind at the time could have never understood. He picked me up from under the arms and made me sit on his laps, like he had done the first time he tried to narrate that story. I looked at him in the eyes and the smile I had known for so long had returned.
“Let’s see if we can finally finish this long story then. Ready?”
“Mh mh!” I hummed while nodding gleefully, hoping that was going to be the case, just like only a kid could do.