Tensions

Her reverie was a sad looking one, as she paced around in the little room,

The drawing room, in the western wing of the palace.

Straight from one wall to the other and back,

Her back bent and her eyes fixed on the shiny, reflective checker ground.

Ignoring the white velvet couch to the side of the room, or the painting of a sword above it.

Her long black hair drooping in front of her leaned body, her long white coat dragging across the floor.

What if they come?

A voice greeted her, “Are you alright?” floating in from the doorway.

She jumped up high, higher than she should have,

And when she landed, she stared towards the door, hand on her heart.

A knight. Armour stocky, reflective and nearly pitch white, ornamented in deep blue cape and tunic,

His faceplate up, revealing short, trimmed sideburns and whiskers the colour of the sun.

“What are you doing?” he asked, yet again.

The rook shook her head. “I'm worried. About the world.

The rose spires to the west, the red spires in the north,

Both far away yet the only others in this place.

They have no reason to, but what if they do?

What if they strike? We can't fight, not for long. What will we do? Die?”

She wanted to explain her feelings better, but her mouth choked up in tears.

She wasn't worried. She was afraid. She was terrified.

“What's your name?” he ventured. “I call myself Malladion.”

“Roleen,” she said.

The man grinned. “Roleen. And this is how you pace, when you have to think?

Back and forth, back and forth, in a straight line?

When I long to walk, I always find myself running in circles.”

She giggled, hearing him. “That sounds off. Show me.”

He took a lap around the room, clockwise, gaze high and proud,

Gait quick, as if he was coming to tell you the last words in the universe.

She said “I don't see why you’d pace like that.”

“I could say the same thing,” he replied.

“Here, I'll take you into mine,” the two of them said in unison without meaning to.

Stepping back for a second, to look at each other,

Weighing the likenesses of their minds,

Until he came closer, and took her palm.

Her hand held in his, held up high, eyes intertwined,

They begin their dance, the girl walking to and fro as before;

Him in a slow orbit around her, like a pendulum, that only moves one way.

Forming a perfect, perpetual flow, cease-less as life,

As the two of them slowly pulled each other off their paths,

Until she was the one, revolved around him,

And he, was the moving ever forward in a straight line.

And their muscles were not strained. They were free, loose, falling to the ground.

Into two heaps, laughing, rolling across the clean, courtly floor, without a sound.

“Is this the song of love?” Asked one of them, the answer to which, the other knew.

And it didn't matter if bishops walked in, and if about it, anybody else knew,

And it didn't matter, as long as they had at least one, if happy days were few.

She asked, “And what of the tensions? What will we do?”

The knight blinked. “We will just get up and walk on through.”