Prompt Fiction

PROMPT : SOBBING

Quiet, muffled sobs, as if he wasn’t supposed to hear them at all.

Wizard Clayburn slowed his steps by a slight fraction. He didn’t dare appear to be dallying outside the hallway of the youngest princess, but thinking of his own two daughters at home—he was loathe to pass by the mysterious sobbing.

They’d stopped, as he passed the door, almost as if a single, hitched breath had held them back for the space of time it’d taken for him to continue on.

He was at the end of the hallway before his father’s conscience weighed on him and he turned around with an agitated sigh. His step-brother, King Rameil, wouldn’t care in the least, if he were to visit his niece as an uncle and not as a wizard.

The entire court would care, seeing as the youngest daughter had been born out of wedlock, to the captive princess bride of Zalandria.

Wizard Clayburn tapped lightly on the door, right before he cast the usual charm he always did, before entering one of his children’s rooms. It was a simple spell, meant to soothe and protect.

The door shimmered, then vanished, when Princess Almira didn’t answer it herself.

Wizard Clayburn found her wrapped in blankets on the floor at the the foot of her bed, sobbing bitterly into a plump chair cushion.

He stared at her for a handful of seconds, before clearing his throat and approaching, beneath her teary-eyed gaze.

“Almira?” Seating himself on the floor, he stashed his wizard’s staff into a void-pocket and conjured a soft handkerchief to replace the damp cushion. “What’s the matter, loveling?”

“H-he hates me,” Almira sobbed. “He really, really hates me.”

“Come now, hate’s a strong word. I’m sure it was only a-“

“My arm!” Almira squeaked. “Look what he did to my arm!”

The shrunken, blackened limb left Wizard Clayburn silent for all of a mere second, before he was uttering oaths he had yet to forget from his youth.

“Shh. I’ll heal it. It’s fine. I can heal it,” he said, more to himself, than to her, because the tears on her face, were still streaming down her tanned cheeks.

She whimpered in answer, holding perfectly still as he called up the fiery green flames of his healing energy.

For the hundredth time since he’d acknowledged the little wisp of a fairy-girl as family, Wizard Clayburn sent a prayer up to the heavens.

So help him, but any family that didn’t want such a precious, innocent child—deserved every form of karma that he would call up for them tonight.

(c) Sara Harricharan