I'm not very confident with storytelling (at least stories I didn't directly experience), so I had hoped to try and tack this on to some kind of poetic structure... but it just keeps coming out as prose... (EDIT: I have no idea how the line spacing is going to turn out after it's been processed by the mailing list, so apologies if it's impossible to follow.)<br>
<br>---------\|/---------<br><br>Once upon a time there lay a king, dying on a battlefield. Around him lay his men and enemies, dead or nearly so, but for one person: the lady who knelt at his side.<br>She is the one who loves him most, has been by his side longer than any other.<br>
She kisses his brow, as she has done many times before, and her touch brings him peace in a place where no peace is thought to exist. Her soothing voice reaches him in the depths of his agony, and it as though they are back home and he merely sick in bed, while she carefully nurses him back to health. Softly she croons a child's lullaby, while she silently prays over his noble soul. His grip on her arm tells her he hears the prayer and is grateful.<br>
This is the woman who stood beside him at his coronation and wept for joy... and not long before, held him as he cried for his own father's death, together mourning that which would bring him the crown. It was she who sat quietly through many a desperate meeting, and offered her sage advice only when asked, and whose mere presence cooled the head of many a bad tempered knight.<br>
As the king's grip weakens and his breath grows more ragged, she dabs his face with a cloth. She watches him bleed, and his pain is her own, as it always has been. This lady who bandaged the scraped knees and bruised skin of the boy she would watch grow in strength and honour - grow until he too would wear the white belt which now turns reddish-brown with his blood... pain and blood she knows well, for it was from her womb this man came so long ago, born in a bath of blood and agony and delivered into her arms. Even then he was her wonderful, beautiful son, and even now she tells him so.<br>
His hand grows slack, his heart beats slower, and finally it ends. His soul goes to meet his father in heaven, carried by the love of his mother on earth.<br><br>[insert speech/toast to mother's appropriate to setting here]<br>
<br>---------/|\---------<br><br><br>This is something I hope to perform at Namron's Beltane come May (if I can swing it), for Mother's Day. It is of course dedicated to all mother's, especially the mother's of Ansteorra, but naturally I had a special few particular mothers in mind when I started trying to write it.<br>
<br>It always feel like you could say more, but whenever I tried to add to this much, it just gets awkward. Is two minutes enough time to praise mother's? I suppose it depends on what you do with the two minutes.<br><br>
Anyway, any kind of feedback would be much appreciated, and I'm especially warm to anyone who can improve it, especially if you can help turn it into a poem.<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>In service to The Dream and Dreamers all, <br>
Cuillioc /|\ "Quill"<br>Titled Bard of the Barony of Bonwicke<br><br>"It is said that the Devil never crossed the Tamar into Cornwall on account of the well-known habit of Cornish women of putting everything into a pasty, and that he was not sufficiently courageous to risk such a fate!"<br>
<br>-From the cookbook _Cornish Recipes Ancient and Modern_