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SUBMISSION ENTRY:
USERNAME: Moon_Moon
CHARACTERS INVOLVED: Frost in the Storm (Narrator), Shehk (Unnamed subject)
BRIEF SUMMARY OF FEARFICTION: A ruler reflects on his kingdom, and the price he had to pay to obtain it.
ENTRY HERE:

If you could see me now, would you mourn?

I ask this as I look back at what is now the past. It was once 'our' past yet I fear it has become simply the past. Unattached, unassociated, unwanted, unneeded- the past is left behind in favor of the future. Yet now I look at us, at what we have become and I ask what is this future we have made? This world of chrome and silicone? A world free of warmth, only a constant cold that is artificial surrounding us and what we are. What I am, what I have become.

I look from where I stand and see the world below. Green and lush, a sky palace for gods, for elite, for upper class, for old money, old blood. The lucky few who live in these polished metals walls show nothing to each other, emotions hidden behind lavish parties, a contest of one-upmanship, of greed and corruption and pride. Pride, which is my folly, my reason for living in this floating prison of the heart. This temple I have begun to construct outside of myself for my own protection from the outside world. Inside, to protect myself from you and all you can do. Could do. Will do. Have done to me already.

This is my world now, a world above the one I left behind. Left behind for the sake of others I told myself, for the sake of knowledge, of power, a move of courage. I would rise up, lay claim to what would gather my people, what would bring them to the loftiest of heights on the wings of my will and my skill. I would be their hero. I would become their king. I am King of White. King of the cold. King of my world, my temple, my palace. A king with no queen. No prince. No princess. No knights or lords or ladies, just followers. Blind, deaf and mute to what I have done for them, to them. All because of my pride. My arrogance.

The lush green world I left behind seems so small from this floating kingdom. This space seperate from it yet so precariously connected still to those places below. To where spring flowers bloom in various hues, where autumn's crisp leaves change and fall into mounds of decay, nourishing the earth upon from where they began their lives as but seeds. As part of great old trees who's rings show the years, the generations having long since past. You remain in that world below. Warm, you detest this cold around me. The ice, the way it takes your breath in a rush, the way it steals apart of you until nothing is left but a husk. I fear for you. That so long ago I stole what I could never return. That I hid it with myself in this fortress I created. This island of iron and steel. My will keeps it moving, yet my heart?

It's beat slows each day as I look down upon what I have left behind.

I look back, and I weep bitterly over what we could have been. What we could have had. You were cold then, distant on your own island. Yet every so often you'd let me visit you. Let me lay beside you under the stars on the warm sand while I ran fingers through your hair. You did not smile easily. You hardly smiled at all. Then, like a shooting star, a rare chance that happens for just a second within the infinite context of time itself I saw you smile. Your smile was so full of a life and warmth that I had never seen from you before. It was a beautiful gift, for what else could it have been but a gift? I was a visitor. Transient and destined to one day leave, never to return. Yet there you were, eyes fixed on the horizon, a smile pulling the corners of your lips upward. Small wrinkles in the corners of your eyes as light and hope filled them.

What made you smile? Was it the oncoming breeze of summer? Or was it what I could see? A future of us. Of warmth. Of springtime under the shade of willow and sycamore trees. Of hot summers, abuzz with the sound of cicadas while the rivers ran warm down from mountains, and the islands we traveled seemed less desolate, less alone. A future where you didn't live on your island. Where you might be with me. Surrounded by tall fir trees, green past the heat of the summer, the cool of autumn when we might harvest a pumpkin or two. Maybe three even. Trees that would be green, even when winter was it's coldest, when it seemed like spring would never come.

But our spring never did come. Our summer on your little island, if it was even but a single summer at all gave way to fall, to loss. There was nothing left when you came from your island, nothing you brought with you. You left it behind, cold and distant and lost to the ocean's waves. You gave it up, I asked, yet you never replied. You were warm, yet not as you once were. Your smile was different, pulling at your lips roughly, the wrinkles on the sides of your eyes deeper and harder. You made yourself warm. You bottled your warmth, held it close and wouldn't let anyone see it if you could. Yet I knew you did not do so on purpose. You were so much afraid of what had been left behind, what had been lost. What had been taken from you without you even knowing what had been taken in the first place.

Winter came, and it has never left us. This has become our winter. My winter. As you once floated on your island at sea, now I live in my kingdom in the sky. I have lived in winter since that light faded from your eyes. Since your laugh didn't fill the air with a sound that made my heart beat within my chest. Since we said goodbye, our wants and needs not matching to our dreams. To each other.
I saw a future with you, and you with I, yet now as I stand here in a place of my own design, my own creation of chrome and cold, in this future, my future, with everything but you missing I look down. I look down at the world below. Green, alive, and I wonder.

If you could see me now, would you mourn?

USERNAME: AllHelBrokeLoose
REVIEW HERE: THE RULER MUST NOT GIVE UP! HE MUST KEEP TRYING! HIS HAPPINESS WITH HER CAN BE OBTAINED IF KEEPS FIGHTING FOR IT!

USERNAME: passyouby123
REVIEW HERE: Well-written. I hope he will find that which he is looking for.

USERNAME: 2ghoul4skool
REVIEW HERE: Jackdamn you should publish this