The Wounded Moon
I.
Once, he was a king and she his someday queen.
She was a princess waiting in her tower, waiting for a star to rise, a breath to fall, a pledge to be made.
He was a prince, waiting in the meadows beyond for a sunset that would not come.
To her, they have always been a fairytale, the stuff of someday myths.
They knew porcelain and promise, towers of marble and a future filled with like the distant promise of autumn leaves. She was almost Helen as she was almost beautiful and almost what it was to be perfection. Almost, almost, almost.
She remembers them as she remembers the worn insides of tomes long forgotten – filled with the whimsies of a childhood spent in idleness. She remembers them as fields of flowers and silk roses. She was a woman made of conquest and raw power, metal and the promise of blood. Oceans parted at her breath and her dreams made a thousand generations.
She awaited the day she would learn how to breathe.
He awaited the day he would have her, at last, the princess caught in the war between the past and the distant future.
She waited in her tower, a figure carved in lemons and wilted flowers and icy loveliness, her features caught in the eternal crossfire between time and beauty.
One day, she looked across her tower and the sea of flowers across, fanning in the gentle twilight. She pulled herself down and broke walls and marble and the dreams of a hundred other princes and ran alone into the night. She threw her crown at her feet and ran and ran, her hour of victory at hand. The erudite structures of his being crashed as he saw her run into the thousand tints of a bleeding sun. In her knowledge’s victory, he finally knew defeat. And so, he followed her.
II.
The moon was there tonight, a small relief etched in the ebony charcoal of midnight.
She had known neither stars nor starlight in either life, but she had come close enough to understand. The grounds were at an eerie quiet – at an interlude of neither noise nor movement that only night can bring. She felt the wind pass through her, relishing the taste of emptiness.
There was a staccato of sound – insects fluttering, birds forgetting to whisper, and leaves flying past trees, one by one twirling into the sense of eternity that she could never touch. The grasses rippled at the breath of a sudden wind and she closed her eyes, enjoying the touch of darkness on her skin.
Her orchestra reached a deep, bowing note and she felt nothing more than the weight of the past – the weight of a thousand years and two lifetimes – on her.
At last, she lay defeated.
III.
Her one day prince, now but a ghost of his former self, fell with the harbingers of victory that her defeat brought. He was the ground before seeds, books before knowledge.
What he had or is or was lay in shambles. His being corrupted both time and the future that he could have had.
Once, she was a dagger and he the stilt of the blade; she gave him the rusting sting of blood. But now, both he and she know this all too well – this mark of her final disgrace. She was almost Helen, and she in her distance left him barren as sunlight to the cracked grounds of a desert.
And she had fallen. She had fallen like flowers had bloomed and words had slipped and even in her fall, she fell in beauty. He flies among the heavens but with no promise of such an end. He sees her, lost somewhere in the folds of the rolling landscapes, head aloft even in demise.
He says her name once, twice. It is all she was and could have been and all he has. In a life where there is no time and only eternity he knows only what she is. She is corrupted marble and tainted promises and the someday queen that he should have had. Her name is the shadow of a star, the shedding of a petal, the perfection of ice.
Helena, Helena.
A/N: This was written for the Emily Dickinson Quote Challenge. My quote was "Dying is a wild night and a new road". My thanks go to Miranda (FannyPrice), who suggested the character. This is my first foray into this era. I hope you liked it and please don't forget to review! ^___^
- Celeste
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