Tonight's Episode...

...was inspired by an AFI song.  I have been listening to it for hours nonstop, because I was at work when it struck me and I had to keep the mood.  I think it's my best post yet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oqDujfyEMk

~~~

Times were hard.  There was nothing else anyone could say about them.  It was a time for desperate measures by desperate people.

Headlines remained littered with terrifying stories of death, theft, and rape.  Everyone tried to change the world, through right or wrong, which spawned the next great bank robbery.  Too many people considered modern times a time for radical change, a time to create a throwback to those great eras before.

Mila and Ahsten were mere creations of society.  The greatest celebrities of their times were known for their public scandals; sex tapes, careless nipple shots, drunken outbursts.  There was no greatness for the sake of greatness.  No one challenged the rules enough for them.

So they decided to show the world how it was done.

They spent several weeks around café tables, the kitchen peninsula, on the living room floor, in drunkard’s bars and pool halls; always plotting.  Mila had a friend who worked for the bank, before moving to Alaska and losing touch.  She always had stories of crazy customers, and they lent knowledge of basic bank workings.

Their local bank kept the panic buttons under the clerk counters, under the management tables, and one on the wall by the safe deposit boxes.  No shadow could escape the view of the cameras, no corner left unwatched.  A police station sat up the street, less than five minutes away, just on the other side of the local deli and beyond the stream that long since dried up.

Mila took extra visits to the bank, asking questions, depositing money, withdrawing money.  She kept her eyes up sometimes, scanning for the cameras, or studying the layout of the building.

The entrance consisted of a windowed wall and glass doors.  They were easy to open; simple push or pull.  The locks were large, but not as easy as a twist of the wrist; they would need keys, which they had no way of getting.  The wooded floor pathway lead customers to the line, roped off like an imitation path of a PacMan game.  There were five windows for tellers, which Mila noticed only ever housed two tellers; and new faces replaced the old quite frequently.

To the left were office rooms, with more glass walls and doors.  To the right, a swinging door that lead to safe deposit boxes and restrooms.  It was also the only way to get behind the counter, a thing Ahsten had no interest in doing; the tellers could give them the money.

He rarely stepped foot in the bank.  Instead, he sat across the street at the deli, watching and keeping track of peak hours in the bank.  Every day he wrote the amount of cars, the weather, and the time.  He made note of when a deli employee would walk across the street to the bank for business purposes.   If a police officer came to eat, or stopped at the bank, he kept that information; the car number, the type of vehicle, and how long they stayed.

They’d meet at home again, their small studio apartment that their combined unemployment checks barely covered.  Mila would heat up whatever they could afford to eat and Ahsten would compare his information, review hers, and then put one of their few DVDs in the player.  They had no cable, no phones, no internet or computers.

The times caused them to sell all their luxuries and spread the venom of bitterness through their veins.  They watched as their friends became desperate like them.  A few died from drugs, one became a streetwalker, two went to jail for murder and one for rape, and more than they could count served too many years for attempted robbery.  It became a time of the rich, who hoarded their money, and the poor, desperate sinners without choice. 

Ahsten long swore he would never turn to crime, but school left him in a beginner’s job, and when depression hits the economy, it was the new guy’s that got kicked to the curb first.  No one would hire him and he all too soon found the interest on his student loans choking the morality out of him.  He turned to his girlfriend, who took him in and supported him the best she could.

But even Mila got struck with the economy when her father’s business crashed, leaving her jobless.  She figured with her years of experience, she could easily sweet talk her way into another company, but with only her father as her employer, no one trusted her.  And when she got the call from her mother that her father shot himself, she could no longer cling to her Catholic upbringing.

They did what they could, but what they could was just not enough.

So the plotted and planned and finally ended up outside the bank, throwing open the beat up white doors of a stolen 1970 Chevy Camaro.  They rolled the top down to keep from having to open the doors and Mila pushed the gas down as far as it could go.  Tires squealed on black top and they were away, headed straight passed the police station and laughing when the cops couldn’t get over the median dividing the two sides of the road.

Ahsten tossed the hand gun in the glove box and glanced to the bag of cash Mila threw at his feet. “I can’t believe we did it,” she stated, a grin spreading open her lips.  She let out a laugh, feeling freedom for the first time as wind swept her auburn hair.

“Me either,” he responded.  He rested his head back and closed his eyes, letting one arm rest where the window should have been.  The cool mountain air rushed over him and he felt the scent of pine trees release his guilt.  After all, it was all behind them. “Do you know where we’re headed?” he asked, lifting his head and opening his eyes.

“Nope,” she answered with a small shake of her head.  They never planned for after the robbery, just up until it, and she didn’t care at this moment.  It felt oddly exhilarating, freeing.  There she was with the man she loved, speeding off into the distance to an unknown destination where they could start a new life, a good life.  They wouldn’t have to screw over the little guys of the word by hoarding their money and stealing from the less fortunate.  Maybe they could start a family, or just live the two of them into old age with a dog at their side.

“Even better.” The two passed each other a glance before leaning in and giving the other a quick kiss on the lips.  Ahsten stretched his arm over her seat and glanced to the other side.  They’d go down in history, even if no one ever knew it was them, though he wished they’d know.  He always thought of the great excitement it would hold, to be one of those famous criminals of the twenties.  It made him wonder if they ever thought of their own fame, or did they merely focus on the tasks at hand?

Mila stretched a hand away from the wheel, finally removing her cut up sock from her head then turning on the radio.  Static crackled over the radio and Ahsten unmasked himself.  The road steepened, twisting and curving around the mountain as they headed further on, expecting no trouble from that moment.  They’d already sped passed the cops and who knew how much time had passed.

Their hearts were only just beginning to slow down from the excitement of it all, their minds steadily wandering from the bank and the money to possible future outcomes.  Fugitives or new neighbors? Ahsten closed his eyes again, taking in the progressive temperature drop, his fingers dancing to silent tune on the top of the car door.

Mila focused on her driving, trying to keep up her high speed while still guiding the car seamlessly through the turns.  Her attention shifted from the yellow solid lines in the center to her rearview mirror and her heart stopped.  In the reflection rose a sea of red and blue lights, flashing behind them.  Ahsten turned, eyes now open, at the sound of the sirens.  He glanced to Mila, gauging her reaction as she cursed under her breath and attempted to push the car harder.

He glanced back again, smirking at the glint of sun on the black paint of the new cop cars.  An odd calmness washed over him, as if the air itself fed it to his mind.  A part of him wanted to be caught, to give his testimony, leave an unease in the rich man’s mind.  They weren’t safe, so long as they kept sitting on the unemployed, the disabled, the poor.

“They’re gaining,” he muttered.

“I know!” Mila snapped back.  She jerked the wheel through the turns.  The rear wheels struggled to keep their bite on the road, the front wheels keeping no consideration for them.  Her boyfriend looked back to her, still partially turned toward the sight behind them.

“I could shoot at them,” he added.  She passed him an almost panicked look, causing her to enter a turn late.  The tires squealed and nearly lost their traction.

“Are you crazy?!” She couldn’t believe he would make a joke now; now that everything was ruined.  If they couldn’t dodge the black and white, there’d be no home for them, no vows to death, no children or dog.  They’d be separated by iron bars and heavy walls and guards and miles upon miles between prisons.

All of their dreams would be shattered.

But Ahsten just chuckled.  He remembered all those internet posts about making names for themselves, about becoming famous and going down in history.  All the grumblings of dissatisfied Republicans, and then the dissatisfied Democrats.  Everyone groaned and complained about something; welfare, teenage pregnancy, the economy, unemployment, the government, the laws, the system, their freedoms being taken away.

At last now he could say he did something.

He didn’t just sit at home, on his computer, and whine, talking of revolution but do nothing.  His gaze shifted back.  A cop nudged their tail.  Mila gasped and gripped the wheel hard.  The cop nudged again, sending them toward the mountain face.  Mila grit her teeth and overcorrected.  Their front end spun toward guard rail on the other side.  She overcorrected again.  The back end lost its grip and clipped the end of the guard rail, sliding over the edge.

Ahsten leaned over, brushing his lips to her ear. “We’ll be famous,” he whispered.  She screamed as the car began its roll.  The ground crunched upward.  He leaned forward, trying to hold his head toward his knees, trapping the bag still at his feet.  The world cracked and crunched and shattered until finally the car landed upright.

Mila sat in her seat, flopped to one side, her neck looking extended too far.  Her nose bled a stream of red over her slightly parted lips; her eyes couldn’t decide whether they wanted to be open or closed and compromised halfway; leaves and debris tangled in her hair that steadily became red from some deep cut.

Ahsten gasped for breath and straightened in his seat.  Something had hit his back, hard enough to make him lose feeling in the center.  He glanced to Mila, studying her lifeless body before looking to the still running engine.  The hood of the car had come off, the engine looked damaged.  He could see one of the spark plugs pulled out of the engine and wagered several others were loose.

A punctured line sent the smell of gas into the air and the fumes close to the plug.  A spark lit it and Ahsten chuckled, coughing a bit as well.  His shakey hand reached for glove box.  It fell open when he let it, the gun almost sliding to the floor.

He wrapped his fingers around it and turned his head toward the road.  The cop cars swarmed the place they’d fallen, their owners staring down.  His lips turned upward into a smirk. “We’ll be famous…” he whispered.  And the world went out with a bang.

Blaaaaah

This has taken me who knows how long to write.  I'm still in the process of writing it as I write this even, hahaha.  I'm just abnormally exhausted from work tonight.  So the prompt this time was something like 'your character switches bodies with his greatest foe but as long as they are switched, they cannot kill each other.  What does your character do to his foe?' and I decided I need more mythology for my world so I made it into a myth, for practice.

~~~

In the days before the five territories of Ohqhansu, the youngest of At’s daughters and the goddess of mischief and chaos, Ain, often found herself restless and bored.  To compete with these feelings, she often played pranks on the other gods.  They were always innocent, though not always met with decent feelings.

The most famous of her pranks, involved Kep, the god of the dead, and Banai, the goddess of life.  The two had been at odds since the gods first appeared, but the tension between the two rose after the birth of Asenat, goddess of birth and reproduction.

On the day Kep decided to finally destroy his adversary, Ain found herself rather bored and switched the bodies of the god of death and the goddess of life.  She waited for the two to see her about the prank, and made sure to keep an eye on them for her own amusement.  Kep found her first, threatening and demanding she undo what she did.

She claimed she couldn’t and told him to deal with his problems on his own, but that he himself could not kill Banai in order to obtain his body back.  Knowing this, Kep set out to find an ally.  First he petitioned with Qhanf, the god of the underworld, but he was refused.  Next, he went to Lun, god of the water, but he was refused again.  Then he went to Ishak, the god of the passage of souls.

Ishak agreed, holding a grudge against Banai for her ability to keep him from guiding souls.  Kep called Banai to meet him, in order to come up with a plan to switch their bodies back.  While waiting for her, he devised a plan with Ishak, to guarantee the death of his body would not keep him trapped in this woman’s.

Ishak hid when Banai entered the room, and waited.  Kep kept his polite manner until Ishak struck, running his spear through Banai’s back.  He waited, until her soul disappeared from the body.  While Kep’s body was still warm, he separated Kep’s soul from Banai’s body and placed it in his own, injured one.

Ishak picked Kep up, taking him down to the underworld to Qhanf.  Only the dead, or the divine, are allowed to cross into the underworld, and for this, the food created must be able to sustain the dead.  And so Kep remained in the underworld, eating of the food until his wounds could be healed.

My sincerest apologies

There is no writing tonight.  Normally it will be Wednesdays that I will merely blog, rather than post a story, due to writer's night and working on my actual story, but today I was highly unmotivated to work on a writer's prompt.  I got three paragraphs on it and then did a little of Ret's bio and read my friend's story's prologue (try saying that ten times fast) and decided I needed to restart mine.

Now, as much as I don't like introductions and prologues, I have decided to do a prologue on mine, merely summarizing the... something.  I'm thinking possibly Ret's story, without saying it's his story, but I'm not sure. It might just turn out to be an exercise to get myself into the story and the world but we shall see.

So that is why there will be a lack of a piece of writing today.  I did one last night since writer's night got cancelled, so consider this my 'day off' hahahah.  But I did write, I swear, just nothing yet to show for it.  Maybe when I get back from my walk.

Power outage 0, me 1

I can't believe it worked! I wrote this all on an app called iA Writer (unbelievably amazing app) and it actually copied it and i can paste it here. Yay for technology! I just beat this power outage muahahahah. On that note, however, please forgive grammatical and spelling errors due to having types it on my phone.

~~~

The trees looked like sinister monsters with holes in their twisted trunks. Moss hung over the holes, creating snakelike pupils that stared at any intruders that dared disturb the serene swamp waters. Floating above the houses that crept their way up the tree trunks were long rowboats with sails and wooden mermaids or dragons keeping watch at the front.

Three of them floated around in circles, scouts sitting high up in wooden baskets on the masts. They lengthened their looking glasses and scanned over the waters far below them, waiting for a brave--or rather foolish--soul to attempt to steal their dragon egg.

The egg, larger than an ostrich's but sky blue in color, lay nestled in heated blankets until the time of hatching. Many bones of hopeful thieves lay scattered on the ground at the base of the tree in which it had been stowed away. Many others lay scattered on the edges of the small town, being examined thoroughly by a lone thief hiding in a small bush.

She had the choice, when starting out, to bring a group with her, but decided a group was harder to conceal and, when it came to sneaking into the heart of a city built upward with eyes in the sky, it was best to go solo. So she set out without word before the sun began to color the sky. Her outfit she kept earthy but dark and once she gained ground on the swampy city, she smeared mud on her clothes and her pale white face.

She army crawled for half of the day, being careful to keep her eyes on the sky. It was slow, as she knew it would be, and slower still having to pause when an airship came closer, but she finally managed to bury herself away in one of the rare shrubs that skirted the dirty water.

There, she rested the night and half the next day, drawing sketches in the soft earth like sports coaches draw to the team. She spent the latter half of that day and the following night watching the wooden building with the thatched roof.

Today, the third day, was her day to make her move. She crept from her trusted bush, walking in a squat until she was a few feet from one of the tree trunks. She rolled under it, hitting something that fell with a splash and a yelp.

Instantly, she straddled the thing and put a hand where she suspected the mouth was. Her blue eyes met with the murky hazel eyes of a man, a man like her, not like hunch backed, half sized people that inhabited this swamp city, their noses peeking out from the cloaks that covered their heads. A town of inbreeding, or so outsiders called it, despite the residents' intelligence.

"Who are you?" She hissed in a hush tone to her victim. He held their gaze before looking to her arms and letting his look travel up them. Half of her hands moved off his lips as if to make a cup around them.

"An owner of these people," he answered, his voice deep and thick, reminding her of the grease they used in vehicles.

"Owner?" She asked. Few knew the truth of the swamp people; no one knew where they came from or why they looked like rejects of normal society. She always assumed they were the rejects, actually, that some of the more conceited cities sent them to this swamp and they happened to do well for themselves and also passed on genetics effectively.

The man nodded and suddenly snatched her wrists. He sat up with speed and force, pushing her to the ground with her legs still around his waist. "And my assumption is you plan to steal the egg, yes?" He smirked and chuckled before she could answer and went to stand. "Have at it, but you've been misinformed," he remarked. He turned, a hand sliding into a pocket as he began to work.

She merely glared after him. Why should she believe him? She picked herself up from the water and went to the other end of the trunk, or rather the exposed roots. In all reality, the trunk was a roof above her. She peered out and made a quick dash for the other tree.

Her next move would be the building with the egg. She slid under the other trunk and peered out once more, pausing as she saw her friend from before. He calmly headed up the stairs to the building.

Just outside the door, he shed his blue cloak, tinged gray from being slammed into the dirty water, and passed a glance over his shoulder. She watched his pink lips move as he said something to the little humpback he handed his cloak to.

His gaze, she noticed, was misdirected from her current spot. She smirked. His fancy clothes seemed to be the only smart thing about him, or so she sang in her head as she glanced to where shed bumped into him.

And then it hit her. He probably just told the guard she was there, lurking around to steal the dragon egg. Her gloating gaze turned into a glare that she redirected back at the man, only he had disappeared into the building.

Damn him. How was she to get in now? Surely the guards wouldn’t follow the shift change she witnessed the last day. She sighed and sat down in the water, keeping an eye on where her prize resided, brainstorming ways in.

After several minutes of watching motionless men stare out at the swamp, she decided her only chance was to take them on and pray for the best, so she stood, crept toward the large platform on which the building resided, moved around to the steps, and made her presence known.

She pulled her two long knives from their sheaths on her hips and readied herself. But the guards merely stared down at her. Still she waited, and several moments passed before she straightened and took a few timid steps up. They merely watched, turning to face her once she arrived at the door.

"Master Jax says we are allow you to see what he spoke of," one of the men stated. Her brows furrowed and she reached out, pushing aside the fabric that hung as a door and stepped inside.

A blazing fire set in the middle of the room and pushed heat her way. Around the fire were several men; one sitting near it and paying no mind to her, another leaning against a wall, his back to her as he faced a man pouring liquids together, and standing opposite her was the man from before, Jax. He cocked his head to one side and smirked.

"Disappointed?" He purred. She glanced around, obviously searching for any place they could have hidden the egg. "I told you, you were misinformed." Her attention snapped back to him.

"If there is no egg, why guard the town as you do?" She asked. The other men all stopped what they were doing and looked to her as Jax chuckled again.

"Who said we were guarding anything?" He asked.

"But all the bones, and the airships..." Her brows furrowed and the man with his back to her turned to face her. He shook his head.

"We scout for sacrifices. Those poor, unfortunate travelers that come here, or those following rumors like you, are perfect." She paled under her mask of mud. Sacrifices? Rumors? She took a few steps back.

"You’re joking..." She retorted, but she didn’t wait to hear his response. Instead, she turned and threw open the fabric. Two of the guards stepped in her way and pushed her back.

"You’re the next," Jax spoke as he and the other three began to move toward her, the guards blocking her way out. She was outnumbered and doubted they were unarmed. Even so, she pulled out her long knives and rose to her feet, but she was just too late. Two of the men grabbed her wrists.

"You’re next," they echoed Jax.

Full swing this morning

Not really.  I kind of cheated.  Most of this was written last night before I went to bed.   And I say read this with caution.  There aren't any graphic details, but it does deal with killing.  I changed it up a bit as I rewrote it in here (can't copy and paste properly lol).

~~~

A cool New Mexican breeze wafted by me, reminding me of the lovely autumns passed.  Actually, not so much.  During the fall season in this state, the winds like to pound into people and try to push them across the street in front of a car.  This year, the season had been tame.  Or maybe it was waiting with baited breath like everyone else in this hell hole.  Waiting to hear the verdict of a certain Scott Ryans; serial killer of the great village of Tijeras.

Or so the headlines read.

No one stopped to think that maybe he was innocent, which I knew he was, and they didn't really have any solid evidence against him.  No fingerprints, no murder weapons, no DNA of his at the scene, no DNA of a victim on him, no tracks, no witnesses, so on and so forth.  They had testimony of a large shadow at night, of lights going on in houses next door when neighbors were away on vacation and then suddenly someone disappeared.

We actually moved to this state to get away from all of this, believe it or not.  It was three years ago we'd decided that where we lived, Colorado, just got too cold and snowy for us and we figured if we lived in the mountains of New Mexico, this little village of Tijeras, we could get away from the big city bustle.  It's not like Albuquerque is a big city or anything to anyone that hails from a different state.

So we packed up and moved from our apartment into a small rental home.  It was actually more expensive, but with Scott being a doctor, we didn't see much concern.  We just didn't feel like up and buying a house and dealing with all of that on top of everything else.  Sure, rental homes don't really pay off in the end.  It's never your home and you pay monthly anyway, but it was what we wanted.  So we got it.

It's a nice little home off of New Mexico Highway 337, or more commonly known in this area as South-14.  Thirty minutes from the freeway, a church, a Wells Fargo, and a Subway; five minutes from a few local grocery stores and national forests.  It's a large acred yard, or so we think without a fence and the landlord refuses to put one up.  I guess people in this area are just relaxed about that.  Most of our neighbors are far away anyway, it's kind of creepy if you think about it.

Nothing but a long dirt driveway with too many potholes to count and large wooded area just slowly moving in to suffocate the house.  But we like it.  It's got a porch just long enough to put up some chairs and one of those plastic picnic table type things.  Two bedrooms, one of which we made a study, a living room with a split dining room and kitchen on the other side of a wall.  A bathroom in the master bedroom, a large walk in closet and another bathroom on the other side of the house.

Nothing fancy.  Cheap.

There are a few more developed neighborhoods nearby, which is where the disappearances happened.  It started with one girl, as they always do.  She went missing, no one ever found her.  A week later, a shoe was mailed in a box to the police with a letter, and it said, typed nicely on the computer, that the criminal wanted to play a game.  They would give them two weeks to figure out each disappearance, and if they didn't solve it withint those two weeks, they'd take another person.

They didn't solve that one and an older man went missing, around his late thirties.  His car was parked on the side of the road, a red Chevy Corvette, one of the classics.  There was no sign of foul play, nothing to give the cops a clue.  After a week, all of his teeth were mailed into the police with a note reminding them that they only had seven days to figure out this one.

The next victim was a highschool outcast with a suicide note.  It wasn't until seven days after his disappearance that they realized it was a murder.  Actually, they didn't even realize it.  They got another letter with the boy's hair in it.

The pattern continued on for two years.  I think they arrested my husband out of desperation; we are the perfect suspects after all.  We live in a rental home in the middle of practically nowhere, surrounded by forest.  No one can realy see our comings and goings.  They came three months ago to take him, then they got a warrant to search the house while I sat there, making my cloth bracelets and only half watching them.  Unfortunately, they weren't kind enough to put the house back together, so I spent several days cleaning afterward.

In that time, I remembered an old song about tying yellow ribbons to an old oak tree.  Many people nowadays use it for those captured in war time, but originally it was used when a loved one went to jail.  Now, I don't have any yellow ribbons, but I have my bracelets.  I don't know if you put one on the tree every day or every week or every month or just every year, but I've been doing it every week.

I started with a yellow and white one, and then I used a blue and yellow bracelet, using up the last of my yellow.  This month, I tied up a red and black ribbon.  They aren't on the pine trees around my house either. I drove to one of the national forests and hung them up on the trees with their leaves changing into a beautiful chorus of colors.  The same place the bodies are buried.

I guess it's time for me to take my next victim.

No title available

Well there's a picture that goes with this prompt but blogger seems unable to insert pictures for me.  So just know that it's a black and white picture of a wheat field.  And the prompt was that it's a very significant dream for a very significant character and what does the field mean? So here is my response (and yes I forgot to blog yesterday):

Tutanqh, the great ruler of the fifth territory, died in his sleep on the eve of a new day.  Servants scrambled to awake the royal doctors, rushing them into the ruler's chambers and to the man's bedside.  Just a whisper of sunlight drifted across the bottom of the adobe window, glinting off the cream drapes of the bed that hinted at a gold thread being interwoven.  The doctors muttered to themselves under their breaths, passing glances to the servants and whispering some more before rising up.  They declared the time of death and ushered the servants to notify the prince.

Prince Ret had only just woken up by the light of the sun streaming across his closed eyes.  He remained in bed, thinking over his vivid dream.  To the people of the fifth territory, dreams remembered in the morning were not something to take for granted; only dreams with deep meanings were remembered, and those forgotten were considered to have no substance.  He pushed himself up and pushed his legs over the edge to sit, his deep red blanket sliding down from his well-toned chest and gathering in his lap.

His mind was brought from the dream as his father's closest servants rushed into the room.  He straightened slightly, watching as they clumsily knelt before him.  A strange glow seemed to take over his amber eyes. "Speak," he ordered.

"Your father, sire... we found him passed.  The doctors have declared it," one of the servants explained.  Ret gave a small nod.  He knew of his father's failing condition.  Raising to his feet, the blanket fell to the floor and revealed his naked body.

"Clean his body, prepare him for the embalmer.  And tell Hatshep I require his presence at once." He paused. "And one of you prepare my bath." The servants nodded and went to do as requested.  He waited in his room until the bath was drawn and then made his way into the tiled room, slipping into the steaming water and relaxing back.  His gaze followed the servant before they slipped out and he rested his head back on the edge of his tub.

Things would be changing now that his father had passed, things he deemed necessary.  The war with Meir would be put to an end before they lost any more land.  He'd focus his efforts on Akorye, in effort to make up for lost money and resources.  A long breath of stress escaped his mouth and his eyes slid closed.  Everything was going to change.

"You summoned me, your majesty?" Ret smirked slightly; he liked the sound of that.  He lifted his head from his tub and looked at the man covered by a black robe.  Few had seen the face of Hatshep, and even fewer had ever seen his body.  The idea of demanding to see him played in Ret's mind; a ruler should be privy to things commoners could never be, but to make such a demand of a man who could interpret dreams and supposedly held magic powers normally denied a mortal seemed unwise.

"I had a dream this morning," he answered.

"As we all do, sire," the other man answered.  One of Ret's dark brows tugged upward on his forehead, a look of sheer boredom overtaking his face. "Ah, forgive me, sire.  Please, do explain your dream," the man responded, the tone of a smile in his voice.

"I was walking through the desert of the second territory, why I was there I did not know, but I was there.  I was out of water and had no means of transportation.  The sun was high in the sky and as I wandered, I saw a field of wheat that rose up a steep hill.  The wheat was tall and in good health and above the hill, I heard a strange noise and went to investigate.  I used the wheat to help pull me up the hill, and at the top there was a brown rabbit.  I thought of trying to kill it for food when a wolf came and devoured it.  My next thought was of defense, but the wolf turned into the head general's daughter." Ret retold the dream, remembering it still as if it were a memory of just yesterday.

Hatshep remained silent through the story and waited for the silence that followed before speaking. "It is quite simple, sire.  Your father died this morning, I have heard.  The desert, I believe, represents the misfortune of having lost him, but in seeing the wheat field in the midst of it shows that you will be a great king because of this.  You will encounter success, as marked by finding the rabbit, and the wolf devouring it only emphasizes that.  As for it becoming Amit... have you felt any feelings for her, sire?"

Ret scoffed. "None of note." He frowned deeper at the sound of a small chuckled from the other man.

"Then perhaps you ought to look into it," he answered.  Ret's eyes narrowed.  The last thing he had on his mind was an affair with the general's daughter, with any woman really.  He'd just inherited the throne and had great plans for his territory, plans which were now prophesied for success.  No woman was needed at his side.

He raised a hand from the water and waved the man off. "That is all I required.  Send in Anouke." He stooed from the bath, the water gliding over his muscular body and dripping like an orchestra back into the water.  One of the royal blood never dressed themselves; only the servants did, as the servants prepared the baths and ran news from one resident to another in the royal palace.  And he was ready to get dressed; he had funeral arrangements to make.

If I have to...

...blog, than I will do writer's prompts... or random ideas.  So here it is, from http://ejkwritingspot.blogspot.com/2010/09/master-list-of-my-speculative-fiction.html :

"The evil black knight turns out to be the kingdom's beloved fair princess."

~~~

The deep reverberating sound of the old, iron church bell echoed through the empty streets of the town as the residents hid behind locked door and shut windows.  They held their breaths and counted the chimes, never knowing through which way the black knight trod into the city on his dark stead.  Many of them already forgot what he looked like and the stead on which he rode.  Few dared speak of him, and most who did were ignored due to their status of being drunks.

All that anyone took for fact was what they knew, which was that he arrived in town whenever the church bells tolled for the six o'clock prayer.  The sun always sank into a reddened ball behind his armored figure.  His horse could be heard from near-by houses walking steadily toward the town square, where he negotiated with the king for the ransom he held the town at.

The villagers never questioned the amount, they never argued with the raise in taxes.  They only cared for their safety, which the received in return for the payments.  And they trusted the king to keep the peace with the cursed man as they cowered in their homes, unaware that the princess, on this trip, had gone missing.  One of the messengers ran out of the palace, arriving at the town square the same moment the black knight's horse did. "Y-Your majesty... the princess... she's... missing," the man announced between gasps for breath.

The king turned on the instant to look at his servant while the black knight shifted in his saddle. "I have no time for delay," his raspy voice echoed through his helm and out into the chilling air. "Give me my gold or prepare for the consequences."

The king faced the man again, his eyes narrowing. "You shall have your gold," he answered, motioning the man to his side to deliver the money. "But until I am assured my daughter is not in your possession, you may not leave our city." The black knight shifted again.

"You cannot keep me here," he demanded, taking the bag of gold from the servant.  He kicked his horse, egging it to gallop away through the streets, but the servant took the moment to kick at the horse's leg.  The horse fell to the ground with the black knight atop it, who let out a rather feminine cry as the horse landed on his leg.  His helm tumbled off with a few metallic clanks as it rolled on the ground and blonde hair fanned out on the dusty street.

The servant gasped, her hands raising to her mouth and covering it as the king froze.  Laying unmasked on the ground was the princess, a figure the townsmen knew only as kind and gentle girl.  She always looked out for the people, working in the hospitals during time of war and giving food to those in need.  No one could ever have guessed she could be the one causing the raise in taxes and taking them to pocket herself.

Her father watched her a moment before turning his back to her and retreated toward the castle. "Treat her as any other threat to our city," he ordered, his tone full of disappointment and anguish.

~~~

And on that end, I'm off to bed finally!