Prompt: tell us of a part of your daily routine in the form of an epic tale
The weary man awoke to a chamber full of shadows. Blue twilight filled the land beyond his window near his bed. His hound barked at the doorway, its tail wagging frantically.
He grumbled as he wrenched the sheets from him, his muscles moaning and joints aching with movement. He stomped passed the hound to the doorway, thrusting open the closed door. The hound took off down the stairwell. The man followed, slowly.
As he passed the machine, he flicked it on, heard the hiss of steam and gurgling of some monstrosity with which his mind could not comprehend, and continued to the doorway leading to the land beyond.
The hound was tied, allowed to run free in the dew covered grass. The man waited for the machine to fill the glass with a black, strong liquid that only the strong and brave could consume. His ancestors before him spoke that it put hair on a man’s chest, but despite the years of consumption, his chest lay bare.
The hound barked at the open doorway. The man hunched over, his joints snapping like twigs underfoot, and unleashed the beast and let it scurry back into his domain.
The machine became silent.
He took his porcelain chalice in hand, and poured the dark, strong liquid into it.
“Dear, are you up?” his maiden called from his chamber upstairs.
He groaned.
They also spoke of war, of battle, of merciless killings in the name of one’s own land — but they never spoke of the battle of love, the war of being domesticated like his hounds.
His maiden called again, “Dear?”
Presently, his battle, his war, had begun.
Read my previous prompt, “A Widow and Her Bartender.”
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Micah Castle 