snoo2

Prince Puddlemarsh lived in the Canterbury wastelands. Beyond the hove of the crest he was wrestling with his imagination. His imagination was puny compared to some � he couldn�t think big.

Puddlemarsh was a romantic. All the romance dripped from him like a steady downpour of emotion. Straight down the drain and flooding nowhere. Puddlemarsh gave into his enemy and stood on the bank. His clothes tail flickered in the wind and he thought long deep thoughts that rhythmically were like deep breathing. He shook hands with his imagination and they both sat by the lake watching the ponderous life of the marrow. The creatures that stood still and moved but never at the same moment.

All continued in the pool of life. Swans shuttled around, their paddling claws that digest nothing, but swim quite well. Glide through the water like waste down the tube to a skip. He listened intensely. He heard something once, but it was his imagination.
�Sh� he said and then it stopped.

He was waiting. His father called him. He rose reluctantly as a caveman being called from the sanctuary of his home to a waiting sabre tooth tiger.

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Force Bergstein held aloft a magnificent cup. It shone strange saturated colours under the briskly moving candlelight. Its surface was a mixture of their colours � it imprinted no real essence of its own. The liquid slurped. Some of it bidded farewell and spilled over the edge. Force laughed a roar of spine-tingling laughter. It bellowed from him and his body convulsed. The surrounding people, all in medieval dress but of a slightly scruffier nature all joined some and it formed a tide � from a trickle of the leader � the classic sign of complete obedience.

Some looked nervously at each other. Their faces grained into dimness by the lantern glow. They all raised their drinks and laughed. The braver ones at first. A Jester dressed as a goat looked into the distant corner of the room. He smiled in a hesitant fashion. The room shook with laughter and then, bravely they drunk some of the liquid that has been provided. They sloshed it down their throats. Some attacked. One man in Tudor uniform holds his chest as if he�s been shot. He falls to the ground like a stone. A thud and the room applauds. More follow in their decent. The goat/entertainer looks into a face of horror and he draws his sword, but in the confusion of his outfit he slips over it in a knot and ends on a pile on the floor.

Force�s voice boomed out. Like a volcano being broadcast over a loudspeaker it forces eardrums nearer to brains and stabs lethal sounds of triumph (?) into almost every breath. If men were made of paper they would have been blown away, or if they�d been holding kites. Two people holding kites (a rough percentage of the population of Wilbury that carry Kites) were blown back 15 yards. Someone decided to close the window. Then their King spoke. Timidly. Shallow sound tones that reduce it.
�I didn�t say drink it�.
It looks rotten. I can�t prowl any longer.

So then the chamber froze. Half suited, dreaming, romantic eyes sipped the room from the back of the curtain. They flickered. Some guy tangled in a chandelier with a kite and at the head of the table, his father. He took a deep breath. His lunges were a useful part of him.

Then he made a slow advance towards the centre of the room. His head slumped forward. He mangled his feet one infront of the other. People froze as they saw him. Some just didn�t. The effect was easily dismissed as coincidence.

Puddlemarsh the Prince stepped towards the King and the Kings eyes gleamed firey red when they locked onto him. Puddlemarsh bowed.
�Do?� Father asked.
�Did� Puddlemarsh admitted and he had to walk back.
By now all the eyes on him. His body a shamed wreck. If it stood tall and strong it was handsome. Pride was sapped from it. It was like a slowly moving sack of wheat heading, walking, slowly towards a combine.

Someone threw the mysterious drink at him and it rained a hidden power � hissing as it dissolved the fabric it touched. Prince ribbed away with his hand and knew the guy dressed as a goat (the unfunny jester who�s encore was never required) seemed to spit shame at him. A tub of which he would forever have one foot in. It would drench him. Not be like a blanket that could be coiled away from � more a mutated extra limb that would hang limply wherever he walked. Whatever he did.

He made his way to the mouth of the room. Then took one look back. His tear filled eyes overflowing their load down his face. Force lead him back (no got distracted) looked back and the stare was rung a final chord of defeat in his son. The one he had harboured high hopes with, even if the dawn of reality sent shivers down to him.

He stared bleakly and Puddlemarsh finally left. His feet seemed stuck to the edge of the floor for a brief moment. He knew once he left the room, he would be stripped of his title. His life would mutate into an unknown form and he would have to move on to an unknown place.

He unstuck himself and with one hesitant wave his hand flapped. No one responded. He turned inwards and faced a new life. One which uncertainty was the clouds that cover the sun and it looked set to rain for a long time.

When he left the room he was no longer a prince and in the eyes of the social people � no longer a man. He felt tears well inside him and he cried. They come bubbling to the surface and he collapsed outside the great hall. Slumped in a puddle of tears he looked a pathetic heap of nothing in a world that hated blanks. He wept. Streams.