| General Fiction posted July 5, 2024 | Chapters: |
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Ohmie and May and the dragon
A chapter in the book Ol' Silver and Red
Ol' Silver and Red
by Wayne Fowler
A shiny silver and red, mostly red, prime-of-his-life dragon swooped through the open castle windows. He crashed and smashed his way inside through the holes in the castle walls that looked like windows, but were actually simple openings made for looking out and onto the landscape below. What the dragon passed through could never be closed like a regular window. It was just an opening in the rock and brick castle wall.
The area that the dragon flew into had, indeed, the appearance of a room, a very large room, however: four walls, a floor, and a roof. But the roof was added a century after the castle was built, only after masons learned how to cover such an expanse without using pillars every two inches. They left the open holes in the walls because the area was not meant to be heated, but only covered from rain and snow, which fell once every five or six hundred years.
A large portion of the wall around this opening smashed out, or in, rather, because all that fit nicely was the dragon’s head. His body and wings saw-toothed the square-ness of the opening, making it look like a dragon had flown through a wall instead of through a window.
He caused a terrific ruckus, the dragon did. Since guards did not actually guard that area, but were posted at gates and outside the king’s quarters, or off galloping around on their giant, war-horse steeds, or off-duty and at play or asleep, the dragon flew around the covered courtyard pretty much however he wanted. Only one person tried to do anything at all, except scream and run around like brainless ants that scatter and scramble when their sandy nest mound is scraped clean.
The person who tried to do something was Ohmie, the Crown Prince Shauconnery’s tutor and the great friend of Princess May, Shauconnery’s older sister by several years. Ohmie taught letters, numbers, and fighting. He became May’s extraordinary friend when she learned that he knew lots of letters, and how to put them together to a make soliloquy work with colloquialisms in romantic interlude. That, and the way he treated her, like a talk-mate, someone who made her laugh and feel like an equal, not an untouchable. No one liked to feel like an untouchable, from a pauper up, or the Princess down.
Princess May, without an education, and also without a strong desire toward domesticality, often felt lonely. She neither enjoyed the comforts in the social circles of needlework, embroidery, and such, nor the mental stimuli of groups more involved in higher thought. Disinterested in the one, and untrained in the other led her to a certain degree of self-imposed loneliness.
The two, May and Ohmie, came to know one another more intimately when, at the Princess’s begging insistence; he reluctantly agreed to teach her self-defense. Ohmie wanted to and would have gladly helped Princess May with basic moves designed to ward off over-aggressive suitors, but he would prefer she learn to run, to run very fast, when confronted with those more intent on her ruin than their own pleasure. They reached conciliation with a combination of the two – a fighting move only after breaking a sweat running a long distance, or running the castle stairs, of which there were hundreds, the castle being very large and very tall. Hallways and tunnels and stairways led to places even May had yet to discover.
Ohmie was nineteen years old, while Princess May was a tall and bosoming sixteen. With her auburn hair tossed and tussled, as was the present style, she was often mistaken for her prematurely deceased mother, the matron of the castle, sadly passing on during the delivery of the crown prince, Shauconnery.
As tall as May was with her hair tousled, her eyes only met Ohmie’s chin, a dominant, dimpled chin that would one day make Sparticus famous.
The burgeoning relationship was not one way only. Princess May taught Ohmie, as well. He learned to appreciate the subtle distinctions between roses, and the petunias, and the tones and songs of the hundreds of varieties of birds. So taken were they with the song of the beautiful yellow canary bird, that they caught and caged one for their listening pleasure. They fed and watered it, and sang back to it. The bird didn’t seem to mind its captivity as long as it could count on a daily ration of fruit seeds.
One day, as the two were about to feed the bird, they entered the room just as the castle cats had almost figured out how to kill it by reaching from all sides at once. One of them was just about to sink its claws into the shiny back feathers when Ohmie arrived – just in the nick of time. The canary’s squawking was hardly musical. Ever so gently, Ohmie hummed to the bird as he extracted it from the cage, carefully soothing it with voice and touch. Certain it hadn’t been injured; Ohmie released it from an open window with Princess May’s concurrence. She was not happy that the cats had distressed the pet bird but recognized that the cats were simply being cats. Had it been a wild bat they’d cornered, she’d be excited for them and their treat. As it was, she let them all live.
The King nearly skewered Ohmie as they ran the castle steps one rainy day. Not content to run up and down the steps to the top of the castle’s protecting walls, Princess May led the way throughout the castle proper. The King, naturally, mistakenly assumed Ohmie was inappropriately chasing the Princess, causing her father to run his sword through Ohmie’s collar. It would have been his neck had he not dodged and parried. Ohmie’s sword arm, led by his bare pointing finger deftly touché’d the King’s chest before he realized who was at the other end of the sword – the King.
Ohmie quickly knelt and bowed, withholding and retaining all words of explanation or defense. One simply did not touch a king. And to threaten his person, even with a bare finger, was to beg for the gallows, or worse – the axe. In their scramble up the spiraling stairway, completely unaware of the King’s descent, not even truly aware of their location within the castle, the worst of all possibilities had happened.
As the king’s drawn sword stung through Ohmie’s collar, he’d already reached to the king’s chest with his offending digit. Naught to be done now but to await his fate.
Presently Princess May turned back to the affair, having run around more of the curving stairs, not witnessing the calamitous event behind. Her father’s sword remained in Ohmie’s tunic collar as she approached. The scene, from her angle, appeared as if the King had bobbed an apple from a barrel, with it dangling at the sword’s end.
“Have you killed my Ohmie, Herb?” she panted. She stole a fast glance Ohmie-ward.
The King glared at her.
“King Herb,” the Princess corrected, chastised to add the title when others were present. “Have you … killed him? I … I was fairly attached to him. I do hope you haven’t stabbed his word box. He has the prettiest words.” With that she kneeled and investigated the puncture point, discovering that Ohmie hadn’t actually been stabbed, or killed.
Reluctantly the King extracted his sword, trading it for his belt dagger. “Your injudicious digit,” the King demanded.
Ohmie acquiesced, “Yes, my King.” He offered his king-touching finger without hesitation for the deserved penalty.
The King adroitly ringed it with blood. Niftily, he circumcised the finger at the hilt, up near the first knuckle. Princess May, for a moment, thought her father might skin it. “If there isn’t a ring scar on that finger as a reminder for you next week, I’ll make another with an axe,” the King warned.
Ohmie, nodded and bowed in submission.
This is the first installment of a 15K word, light-hearted story aimed toward YAs. (But it might be too tame for their tastes.) smiley face here
The art is from FanArtReview, Snaked Dragon Doodle by brendaartwork18.
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and 2 member cents. The art is from FanArtReview, Snaked Dragon Doodle by brendaartwork18.
Artwork by Brendaartwork18 at FanArtReview.com
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© Copyright 2024. Wayne Fowler All rights reserved.
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