the keys to the kingdom rested in the palm of a mere mortal, so silent and still he had no breath to stand. he was weak with waiting for his heir to wake from sleep - a thousand nights and dawns spent kneeling on the marble steps, as flesh fell to dust and his son's bones were bare with time and white from his father's careful polishing.
muscle connects to bone, bone to blood and marrow...but his son refused to wake - he was incomplete, wrist severed at the base, flung aside after the fighting was done, to gently rot in a lonely gully beside the bare dirt track that ran through a meadow, long ago, when the species that had, so recently become Mankind was still young. the man stayed by his son's side, the keys clinking with every movement, suspended on their chain.
all too soon the rains of winter came to wash the ashes from his mausoleum and chase the spiders from their webs.
the devotion of the man far outweighed his shivering flesh, the fire within warming him as a city began to be built close by. two years passed thus, until the man quite lost his will to live, refusing the small meal his daylight-scented daughter brought him each day. in its stead he asked his locksmith's tools be brought, and sat there upon the steps, slowly crafting the most delicate final hope he possessed: a hand of shining golden keys, the kingdom's keys that would open the seven locks of the great chamber of clockwork that lay deep within the earth. days passed, and the hand was soon finished, tiny nerve-like wires threaded through the smallest gears and most graceful keys.
the final day, the man called his sun-drenched daughter to his side and weakly, shakily, tremblingly arose from the dessicated cushion on the marble steps, to fit the hand to the severed wrist of his son.
completed. finished. rain fell about them as the ashes rose to form flesh once more, and the torch was passed from father to son.
(c) 2013
muscle connects to bone, bone to blood and marrow...but his son refused to wake - he was incomplete, wrist severed at the base, flung aside after the fighting was done, to gently rot in a lonely gully beside the bare dirt track that ran through a meadow, long ago, when the species that had, so recently become Mankind was still young. the man stayed by his son's side, the keys clinking with every movement, suspended on their chain.
all too soon the rains of winter came to wash the ashes from his mausoleum and chase the spiders from their webs.
the devotion of the man far outweighed his shivering flesh, the fire within warming him as a city began to be built close by. two years passed thus, until the man quite lost his will to live, refusing the small meal his daylight-scented daughter brought him each day. in its stead he asked his locksmith's tools be brought, and sat there upon the steps, slowly crafting the most delicate final hope he possessed: a hand of shining golden keys, the kingdom's keys that would open the seven locks of the great chamber of clockwork that lay deep within the earth. days passed, and the hand was soon finished, tiny nerve-like wires threaded through the smallest gears and most graceful keys.
the final day, the man called his sun-drenched daughter to his side and weakly, shakily, tremblingly arose from the dessicated cushion on the marble steps, to fit the hand to the severed wrist of his son.
completed. finished. rain fell about them as the ashes rose to form flesh once more, and the torch was passed from father to son.
(c) 2013
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