As Winter melts to Spring

Like a flickering wick, the kingdom fell.  It was not with some great battle, or threat, but with the quiet change that had flooded the nation in the years leading up to the last full moon of winter.  It was quiet besides the muffled thump of leather on rug as the soldiers patrolled the halls of the castle, keeping their nightly watch, purportedly against intruders.

Really, they kept their vigil for the king, latest in a long line stretching back to the time when history became legend.  Where the tradition he held was once revered, passed down through the lineage from father to son, from son to daughter, from mother to son, and so on, the kingdom now thronged with suspicion and loathing.  He was king, and nothing would keep him from that.  Even the riled up populace with their opinions would not change that.

However, instead of finding solace in his guard's watch, he was slinking through the shadows in his nightgown, wincing as he heard leather boots slow as they passed the alcove he hid in.  No eye saw him, and this was one form of blessing from his lineage, a sympathy with the shadows so that they clung to him like black robes.  In the past, his grandfather had foiled an assassination attempt from a foreign country with this mystery.  Now he only hoped that the guards had forgotten that part of the royal mythos, or at least we not so keen of sense as to figure out the reason the hairs of their neck prickled as they walked past his hiding places.  Luck favored him on his way to the garden; not a soul found his trail, and not even the guards at the gates noticed his presence.

The wrought iron fence stretched high up, vines grasping and twirling up the black poles, blocking out any sight inside with their girth.  The main gate was guarded, padlocked, wrapped with chain, and lit with fierce torches that shone globes of illumination over the path.  This was not a problem for the king, though he scowled at the presence of such a watch.  No, he did not need that gate for any but the royal line knew nothing of the secret entrance further on along the side.  The first queen of the land was said to have forged the garden and its gates herself, taking the time to become a master craftsman to put a more physical barrier up around the sacred place.  The king pushed through the vines, letting them prick him and nettle him, drawing out a few drops of his blood as a toll for his entrance.

Inside, even the tramping of the guards subsided to silence, the flickering the the torches at the gate a low mumble.  All the leaves and branches of the gnarled old trees were painted silver with the moon's cold light.  He shivered, perhaps from a draft of air as his breath fogged out in front of him.  He had spent the past month resolving himself, and now he took his time, wandering through the place to touch the rough bark and smile at the pale flowers that pressed in waves against the stone pathway's border.  There was not a tree for each member of his family, not even for each monarch.  Some monarchs claimed the same tree as their ancestor while others found seeds waiting for them on their coronation, brought forth by some fey spirit to plant amidst the oaks and ashes and willows that marked the history of the kingdom to the gardener-kings and queens that had taken the time to hear the history of the place.

It was many minutes as the pathway circled before he came to the center of the garden where the tall tree grew.  It was the first and largest, planted by the first king and nurtured by three more kings and two queens before the current time.  The king who faced it as the sky twirled, it's great silver eye staring down at the garden, he was the seventh to call it his, the thirty-ninth to call the garden itself his sanctuary.  Heavy steps brought him off the path to approach, climbing the small hill to its roots before sinking to his knees.  In the shade once more, the dark tendrils reached out to embrace him once more, but he brushed them aside.  One hand reached out to the trunk, bracing himself, while the other felt the cool ground beneath him.  In the darkness, his tears didn't glisten at all.  Past his hanging hair, he mumbled three words, old words.  None else alive would have understood him, none but the trees and the fey.  They understood him, and answered in their own wild way.

Outside the garden, the guards raised a shout as it seemed that the very stars of the heaven descended to earth, pulled down to the garden.  Bright and hot the lights came down, cries of alarm spreading like ripples first through the castle and then out into the city that surrounded it.  For an hour they rained down, one or two at a time.  Even before this, the people never dreamed of entering the garden, now none dared enter the castle halls with the heat billowing out, melting the snow on roofs and streets in a mile around.  When the moon had set, and the sun once again rose upon what had been the kingdom of Vel, there was no garden.  It was not burned down, nor was it cratered out.  Bare of all decoration, a large square courtyard was set in the castle's grounds.  No king, and no garden for the king.  The flame ember dulled to ash and all that rose was the smoke from its remains.