Work Text:
A knight sits by a fire.
At least, he has been told that he is a knight. He doesn’t quite believe it, though. He’d like to think of himself as a sensible person, and sensible people know that good knights don’t act like he does. Good knights know how to ride, how to parry a blade. All this knight knows is how to chance his way past whatever foes cross his path.
This knight doesn’t know much, but he’s learning. He’s trying to, at least. He knows how to cook, now, and that’s something. A stew is simmering, aromas of meat and herbs and carrot washing over his hunched form. The smells are familiar, and yet not—it is as if it is missing something.
He’d like to think that the one he served enjoyed his cooking. Somehow, it feels wrong to call her a princess—he doesn’t think that she was ever one for titles. He has heard that she is kind, and smart, and funny. He has heard that she had a passion for wind instruments, that her favourite flowers are lilacs, and that she spends the first fifteen minutes of her day doing her hair. She sounds pleasant enough. The knight thinks he’d like to meet her.
There is a contraption strapped to his belt. It is gray and glowing blue, and it carries images of what his lady has left behind. Mostly of landscapes. Rivers. A statue of a horse. None of herself, or of him. A woman he is supposed to remember thinks that they are places the knight and his lady have visited together.
An alien concept, that he should be anything other than alone. There are birds in the trees, the occasional deer. He has a horse, sometimes, but he imagines it would be less monotonous if there was something to break the silence. An instrument, perhaps. Yes, that’s it. At the next village he comes to, he decides, he will buy himself an instrument. That sounds like fun.
The knight turns to his map. Here is his destination, to the east. The stable, to the west. Here is the village, and here is the observatory. The lines may as well be tattooed onto his eyelids, but there is not much else to do when one does not sleep. He has tried before, the past few days. He has stayed at an inn. But no matter how comfortable the beds were, sleep never came. In fact, it appears that sleep has taken an extended vacation—but it is much more enjoyable to be an insomniac on a woollen bed than on the cold, hard earth. The knight supposes that he will remain awake for another century, to make up for the years he was asleep.
He has had a lot of time to think, during the night. Where there is dark, there is danger, so it is better to keep to the fire than to continue on his path. Here are some things the knight has thought about, in no particular order:
- His lady, and whether she is still alive
- His own lack of mortality
- How to make better stews
- Everyone he is supposed to remember
- The unending depth of the void
The list goes on. Mostly, he thinks about the first one, but the others are not to be ignored. For example, he is preoccupied with the stew right now, at least mildly so. He leans on his elbows and stirs the pot with his ladle, watching the vegetables float by. He stares at his murky reflection and realizes that he has made enough to serve two people.
At least there will be leftovers, he thinks.