Lost Tales 1: The Knight

Once there was a mighty knight who wanted nothing but to find his one true love
Though he was famed for his strength and valor, his lonely heart could not be
quieted; so he set out in search of the one whom he was destined to love
It was his one and only quest
He scoured the remotest villages at the edge of the Olpine and the Distant
Kingdom
He conquered the Farujian desert and the four forests of Promm
He battled hail, snow, and the white heat of the naked sun
Still the promise of his true love burned faithfully inside his heart
One day he came upon a maiden in a grassy meadow
She was seated pleasantly on a lavender quilt and she wore nothing
Golden braids fell across her breasts like the first few rays of the morning
light
Her bare skin glowed like a full moon and her features were soft and delicate
as the wind
The knight stood paralyzed, unable to speak but for her beauty
She turned her head to him and said, «my love, you have found me at last
Have you longed for me as I have you?
Come to me, for my heart cannot endure another moment without your embrace»
He did as she said, but as the great knight marched towards the maiden,
a horrible curse befell him
With each step, his great legs grew thin and frail like a pair of dead trees
His youthful face began to wrinkle like fruit left to rot in the sun
His proud chest began to sink, his shoulders collapsed, his back began to bend
and break as if pulled down to the earth by some invisible rope
Soon he found cowering in his place an unfamiliar man, aged and broken
He fell to his knees and cried out to the maiden but she did not move,
her gaze cold and impenetrable as a lake in the dead of winter
He did not understand
Suddenly, tears of longing and tears of sadness filled the knight’s eyes and
they poured out of him like a million dreams
With each tear the maiden’s silhouette flickered before him like a ghost caught
in a storm
He wiped these tears from his eyes and the maiden vanished
The knight, alone once again, felt an impossible heaviness come over him
He laid his body down, heaved a great sigh and closed his eyes and his world
was covered in darkness
In this darkness he still roams, blind and fumbling, reaching out in vain for a
mere flicker of the light he once held in his heart and then lost