1
The wise old man got out of the boat which had just touched the edge of the landing point. He climbed onto the steps of stone, with the boat wobblingly insecure for a brief second. He shook his long staff. Alas! No magic left in the land of Azperfruyl.
“Azkamelas” he shouted. But nothing happened. His mojo was nowhere to be seen. No snakes turning from sticks into wild hissing ferocious beasts of death. No fireballs. No ice bolts. Nothing.
Although magic did exist in Azperfruyl, it was never the magic of dragons and it was actually one of the greatest feats of the “wizards” to construct The Golden Henge. They had been able to do this using their staves and some kind of one-off alchemy which transmuted the solid rock in the middle of a field into a unified stone circle, made not exactly of solid gold but a crystalline composite material that gleamed like gold in the Sun but at night returned to a stone brilliance.
Yorb, was out hunting and came across the Henge. The Sun was just gleaming over the horizon and it was just beginning to glow in its golden hue. Yes, magic had created the Henge, but what of magic now? Yorb had only his five senses, two hands, and two feet, and his weapon. “What shall I catch today?” he thought. “Perhaps a rabbit, perhaps a deer”. It was too much meat though and those deer were nowhere to be seen, hiding like ghosts around the forests.
2
A girl grieves in a garden. The book she reads is poetry. Conifers and pines surround her, roses and tiny delicate flowers dew drops in the afternoon warmth. She reads the poetry in silent whispers.
“Lament for the lost city, where song and dance and arrogant chants,
Rocked through its streets, now silent. The lute, strings broken and torn,
The flute, broken on the ground, not a sound, not a sound.
The city that looked over the seas and conquered all,
The city of mind, or clarity and of order,
Now no more looks out, but only in.”
A tear rolls down the girl’s cheek. She is beautiful, delicate, sensitive, she spends her days locking herself away, in flights of imagination, of things that could have been. Another tear slowly moves to the edge of her other eye, it stops there, waits then breaks through and falls to the ground. The emotion is so great. Her grief is so strong. The death of all that she loved. The idea of what was and what could have been. She has this thought.
“The beauty of this garden, I cannot appreciate, its sunny warmth makes me feel even colder. I should appreciate what I have, but the music is gone. The music is gone.”