Folktale: A Story of Little Import (Patreon)

The next two updates will be mini-folktales from the fully edited version of Book 1 that didn't make the initial RoyalRoad run. We shall launch into Book 2 immediately after. 

This chapter goes right after the assassination attempt on Rose. RIP Gwen.

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There once was a bat. A lovely bat that fit snug in a little girl's hands, and made her feel so very warm. A bat with black wings and a soft silver mane. This bat flew high and higher: from below the castle that slept in the heart, up past Fourth Down, Third, Second, First—

And then it was up and out into the moonlight on a frosted silver night, the air alight with fire and good cheer. Old things were ending, and new just beginning. The people down there had friends. She had friends, too: friends who needed her, friends who were part of her in the same way as the wind.

It was a magical night. Tonight she would walk through walls, and meet a princess.

She waited many hours, so very patient.

The princess came in with rumpled cloak and dust on her dress and an ill omen spilled down her face, and the bat thought, That is not how a princess should look. Maybe that was the thought that killed her; the heartbeat that she moved too slow, because the princess was not as she had expected, not at all.

The rest went as one might expect. A woman stood where a bat had been; a water pitcher was thrown, steel was crossed, and she thought she saw a friend at the end.

Maybe she would have lived, if—

But children who wonder what it is like to fly soon learn that their lives are forfeit.

She hoped her other friends were safe. She had tried. She had almost, almost—

She hoped, and then she died, and only her Death was surprised by the occasion.

A story of little import