#they THINK of him. kian stone who gave up on his dream and is playing pretend? he couldnt.

[gilliontidestriderchampionoftheu]

grand finale ! BITB!! rand is the spiral. kian is the corruption. rolan is the stranger.

[essays-for-breakfast]

Tales of the Past

Kiane Week Day Three: Innocence

Note: Since the identity of King’s and Diane’s child is still a mystery, I simply incorporated Ivy from my other story, Conquest of the Past, into this. You don’t have to read that one to understand this one shot. Please enjoy.

Doesn’t time fly?

One day the Holy War scourged the lands of Britannia, a threat to all life and all light, and the next King kissed Diane and sealed their unending bond through the marriage he had dreamed of for so long.

One day he held his newborn daughter in his arms, mesmerized by every breath she took, and the next she talked in full sentences and outran him in a race to the silver springs and back home.

Life hurried past so quickly, it never stopped for King to catch up, and before he knew, his daughter would grow up to go her own way. Even his increased life span as Fairy King didn’t allow for enough time to appreciate all these precious moments, to savor all the talks and all the embraces and all the kisses before time placed the veil of forgetfulness over them. But life always had a new gift in store to repay the bittersweet taste on King’s tongue when his mind drifted to the inevitable end. A simple walk, a simple conversation, a simple smile – he never needed more.

Few things these days filled King with the same warmth as when he watched his daughter play. Ivy hopped across the root-infested earth of the Fairy King’s Forest, in pursuit of a butterfly. Unlike her mother, she took a liking to bugs and critters of all kind, maybe more so than to the Fairies around her.

His thoughts circled around her in lazy turns, like ponderous bees in the summer heat, and so he nearly missed the low-hanging sycamore branch in Ivy’s path.

“Ivy, be careful or you will…” She craned her neck towards King but didn’t bother to slow her steps. Her temple crashed against the branch, and she went down. “… or you will bump your head!”

King pushed his wings to their limits and raced to where Ivy lay in the grass. But she sat herself back up before he reached her, and a sigh slipped his lips.

Ivy rubbed her head. “That branch wasn’t there last week. Do I have to die now?”

“Don’t say such silly things, you won’t die. Not on my watch.”

King flicked his fingers, and Chastifol manifested by his side, enwrapped by a golden aura. Another turn of his hand later, the Spirit Spear transformed into the translucent dome of its eight form. Ivy gaped and giggled as the pollen of the Sacred Tree healed her wound and replenished her energy. The cramp between King’s shoulders disappeared, and he allowed himself three additional breaths surrounded by the scent of flowers and the transient sound of windchimes. But, although he had plenty of magical energy to spare, the excessive use of Pollen Garden remained a lavish act.

“Everything alright now?” King asked as the gold-patterned walls disintegrated.

Ivy nodded. “It doesn’t hurt one bit! I thought I was done for.”

“I won’t let anything happen to you. I promised you that, don’t you remember? But I’m afraid that the branch above us was there last week as well. You are growing too fast.”

“And soon I will be twice as tall as you! Do you think I will be as tall as mommy one day?”

“Maybe. But I hope you take your time with growing up. Just a little bit, for my sake.”

“I don’t like being so tall anyway. Every time Lance comes over to visit, I feel like he is getting smaller. Hitting his head with a ball becomes so much harder when the target’s so tiny.”

King opted for a serious expression, but the round violet eyes of his daughter melted any steel in his voice. “Ivy, you’re not supposed to hit him.”

“Why? He always gets back to his feet the next second. He’s a sore loser, it’s not my fault he can’t admit that I’m the better thrower.”

“I just don’t want you to do something you will regret later on. You are incredibly strong, and looking at your mother, I think you will become even stronger. But strength can be used for the wrong reasons. In a moment of carelessness, strength can become a weapon to hurt others, including people you care about. I fought your uncle once because I was blinded by loss and thoughts of betrayal. I wanted to hurt him. And I did. And he wasn’t the only one I hurt. I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did.”

Ivy crossed her arms. “But you’re not a fighter. I’ve never seen you so much as argue with someone. Not even with uncle Ban, even though he tells terrible jokes and talks too much when he is drinking that weird stuff in the glass bottles with the unseemly pictures.”

“You’d be surprised by how many battles your mother and I have fought. Come on. Let me show you something.”

Ivy straightened and climbed back to her feet – the last time King had offered her a hand, the attempt had ended in a dislocated shoulder on his part and a stream of sobs and apologies on Ivy’s part. After throwing the branch in her path a final death glare, Ivy caught up with King, and together they navigated the maze of tree trunks and broom bushes. The pathless forest allowed for uncounted places to hide and get lost beneath the dense canopy. But King knew every stone and every plant, could differentiate sections of the vast woodland by the sound of its leaves and the unique scents of morels or honey agarics. The energy of the forest was an ever-changing pattern that gave him a better understanding of where his wings carried him than any map. And so, he found the clearing overgrown with sweet woodruff in a matter of minutes.

Ivy pulled in a sharp breath. Amidst the greenery lay a war hammer of thirty feet length. The sun reflected from the bronze head. Despite a lack of recent polish, neither weather nor plant life had touched the Sacred Treasure; Gideon looked the same as on the day Diane had placed it here.

Ivy ran over and put her hands around the hilt. But she only managed to nudge the pommel from the ground. The head remained glued to its resting spot.

“What is this?” she asked and puffed when her next battle against Gideon’s weight proved fruitless. “It must weigh more than you and me combined!”

King smiled. “A lot more. This is your mother’s Sacred Treasure. She wielded it in the New Holy War.”

“No way. Mom fought in a war? And you were with her? Did you win?”

“Yes, we won. We won battles against knights and Demons, and even the foulest creature of all them all, the Demon King himself.”

Ivy abandoned her assault on Gideon long enough to gawk at King. “You mean you and mom were heroes? You took responsibility for all the many people out there and protected them?”

“Not us two alone, no. We had friends to rely on. Your uncle Ban, the Captain, and Gowther among many more. You remember them, don’t you? It’s important to have friends you can trust. So, next time you play catch with Lancelot, maybe try to be a little more careful. If you’re both nice to each other, your bond will eventually reward you, maybe in a way you never expected.”

“Yeah, sure, as long as he admits that I’m the better thrower. What else happened during the war? The people must admire you very much for saving them.”

“I believe they did. Some still do. But I never fought to gain their favor. If anything, I felt a little uncomfortable with all the parties they threw to honor the Seven Deadly Sins. There was a lot of gratefulness, some of these people gained a freedom they never knew before the war. And without the war on the horizon, the Seven Deadly Sins might have never been assembled, and Diane and I might have never reunited. Most likely she would have found someone else, maybe not the Captain, but someone who would have been willing and eager to give her the love she deserves. It’s easy to say that all fighting is bad, and I will be the first to admit that the Holy War claimed far more victims because we as a group of knights did not always stand united. But at the same time, I’m glad I can’t turn back the clock. Because otherwise, we wouldn’t have had you.”

King stroked Ivy’s soft, reddish-brown locks. She leaned into the touch, even went so far as to wrap her arms around him.

No, King would never want to turn back time and risk the life he had now, the happy ending he and Diane had fought for. But if the Sacred Tree or another god had offered him the chance to stop the clocks and hold onto today forevermore, he might have accepted.

One day, before he knew it, Ivy would be grown up, and the sweet innocence of her childhood would run through his fingers no matter how desperately he begged the flow to stop. Another war might plague the lands. Another tyrant might escape the ashes, another creature sent from Purgatory or a realm beyond the world he knew. Ivy might have to take up arms to protect what she loved, just like her parents before her.

King listened to the soft breaths of his daughter and blinked away the veil of tears. “Try not to grow up too fast. Will you do that for me?”

“Okay, dad. But I will first have to ask mom if she agrees.”

A chuckle rocked King’s torso, and the grey clouds of the future backed away to gift him with another day in the sun. “Please do that. I wouldn’t want to enrage her with another one of my selfish ideas. She could drop a mountain on top of me. And I’m afraid she doesn’t need Gideon for that. How about we go back to her right away? I miss her, don’t you?”

“Very. I wanna ask her more about the war. I bet she was a super-amazing fighter if she could lift this hammer. And while we go back, I could catch another butterfly as a gift for her!”

King made a face and produced a series of undefinable sounds. “Maybe… we could look for – er – something else to surprise her with? Flowers for example. Everyone likes flowers.”

“But they’re so boring to catch! They can’t even run away!”

“Okay, okay, I’ll try to come up with something on the way home. How about some wild berries?”

“That’s not very creative. And once mom has eaten them, she’ll have nothing left to remember the gift.”

“A mushroom that looks like a face maybe?”

“How boring!”

Side by side and engrossed in a discussion loud enough to scare away swarms of song birds, father and daughter walked back home, to Diane. By the end of their journey, they had found not a single idea they could agree upon. Diane nevertheless embraced both of them with a smile and a remark of how heavy Ivy was getting.

And as she gave King a casual kiss, he stopped the clocks and held onto this moment forevermore.