bedtime story for luce, pars terminus
2008-09-06 - 12:44 a.m.

Once upon a time, a Dumbass mused as he rode on the king�s highway. More than anything, this was an office with a view. The horse belonged to a local lord, to whom he was employed. A white horse with hideously oval eyes and a flat, wide snout, but nonetheless comforatble to ride. It hadnt been too long ago, when he was a squire, that he thought being a knight simply meant that one owned a horse. How foolish he had been. And before he knew of the existence of the lords, barons, dukes, and other nobles, he thought that knights ruled the land, wherever they chose to walk on it. A knight is not in his horse, his armor or his weapon, but in the wording of his promises, and in his determination to keep those promises. The childlike fantasy is that since knights bear as their standard the name of their country (and so everything they do is blessed, if it serves that standard) they cannot logically have any opposition, since the country is the highest form of rule. The reality, however, is that knights are people, and cannot feed their bellies with oaths and simple truths. Each knight then, serves as the employ of noble, and serves his country in any free time that may cross his path, in the dank caves of servitude. He had given up his last horse, when he swore allegience to his country, and joined the Order of the Tin Cross. There had been an accident in the snow, she had slipped and fallen over an enbankment, breaking one of her legs. The man he sold her to, insited he would take would take care of the horse, and give it a good home while it sruggled to recover from the injury. In all likelyhood, the man�s true intent was to feed the horse to his family, the �good home� he intended for her was none other than his belly. Such is life, and even a Dumbass undestood that the needs of a wounded horse were overshadowed by the needs of a hungy family. As for the Order of the Tin Cross, it could have just as well been called the Order of the Tin Cup. It was known to be a place of making boys and girls into the finest knights the world had ever seen. The �training� wasn�t much more than learning a productive routine, of waking early and training late, and cleaning throughout. Not unlike the boy�s schoolhouse or the wizard�s library, it was what you made of it, and nothing more. There were, of course, memorable moments. The first day, when they were assigning bunks, the head instructor told Dumbass to go to his bunk (in the middle of the barracks), to which Dumbass attempted to reply �yes sir!�. Instead, he slipped on some soap spilled by some clumsy squire, and ended up saying �yes, �shiiiiiit!�. There was a lot of physical training for Dumbass on that first day, whereapon he received the title �DumDum� (which was later used to reference any squire that showed signs of retardation, but Dumbass took pride in being the original). On one night, they played with magical glasses that allowed you to see in the dark, and Dumbass was chastised for using them to look at the stars, when he should have been shooting arrows at the dummy targets. Another time, they were marching in formation to the chow hall and rain began to pour. The rain rekindled their childish moods and they danced and ran and stomped in the puddles, a tiny break from the lectures of discipline, a candle in the night. Dumbass smiled as he rode past fields of the-other-side-of-the-fence green, where drunk men were common to riding goats while chasing oversized marbles, ludely complaining about traps made of sand. A silly game. There was a time when Dumbass was a child, that he was fond of saying to his father �I remember when you were my age�. If anything, this period of time was the refernce point to that memory. Both men had gone to the same fort to serve the Order of the Tin Cross, with exactly 28 years between them. In hindsight, Dumbass wonders where he found the inner strength he used at the Tin Cross, or if it was even his. After 10 weeks, Dumbass continued his training at the Order of the Red Cross, which was the speciffication of all knights wanting to become paladins, to heal the wounded and cure the sick. Of this time, there isnt much to tell. There was a great deal of standing around in formations, and the final training exersize, the test that measured the culmination of his new medical knowledge, was waived, in the intrest of time. And of course, there was a woman, though Dumbass didn�t allow himself to reveal his feelings for her until after they had both been knighted, because it would have been impossible for him to complete his training, with only half a heart. Though I doubt there will be any future refernce to her, this woman of one day (and a relaxed horseride into the mountains) will be known as Ash. I am such a Dumbass.

it's a different game every time you play!