Gilt, Lyre, Sun

Gilt

Once his golden girl had had a name, a name and a mother, and a father who sat upon a throne. She had had one, but he had forgotten it long ago, and now as he lay on his tacky sheets night after night, he pressed her still little body to his sternum and called her Gilt. There was a cold, ugly scar on his throat, and other near his heart—the parting gift of her mother, and they both ached and gleamed and scratched in sunlight and grew heavy and chill in the night. He rarely slept, and neither did she, her eyes cold and unblinking no matter the hour. Sometimes he wanted to cover her eyes, to lay her face down in some thicket and forget her, forget himself and what he had done, but that would be cruel. She had not asked for this. During the day, he walked, going nowhere. He needed to bring little with him—whatever he needed he could buy and he had learned to stop wanting things long ago, so he strapped his little girl to his back and wandered until he could go no further. Sometimes little children would follow, laughing and cheering at first as they picked up the dust from his sandals. He dreamed of scorching, golden sands where he would leave no trace behind him. Maybe there, he would tell himself at night, he would find some cool oasis, and leave his Gilt behind.

Lyre

She haunts him now, in his own shadow, twisting and lengthening and always following loyally. It was impossible then to see her, and it is impossible now, not to, no matter how much he wishes and no matter how much he tries not to look back. She teases him in her absence, flickering ahead of him, beckoning from the corner of his eye. And worst of all, she is not truly there at all. He is but a shadow of himself, taunted by his own humanity. He will never sing again. They ask him what happened, and he is ashamed. At first he tells them he fought hell-hounds and faced the king of the cold himself, alone, for his love, but that she was nowhere to be found in those dark chasms—too pure, too sweet, she must never have been there. Later, he says that the king below had woven a cruel spell of shadows and soot and bound her mind to him forever, so no matter how much he sang for her, she would not leave with him. Later still, he says that the hell-hounds were too much for him and he fled. He never, never tells them that she had followed, silent and skittish and shadowy, and he had looked behind him. He throws his lyre in the sea.

Sun

Even the strangest are united in childhood. His father built a labyrinth for a monster, but the creature he played hide and seek with in that cocoon of a cage never tried to harm him. They say his father threw him to the ground when he was born, and cursed his mother for her madness, and some will tell you he grew huge and terrible and nibbled at the bones of unwilling prisoners. All the boy remembers is his raspy laugh and his sticky hands his own the day he learnt the boy with the bull’s head was not afraid of the dark. He himself  had always been afraid of the dark, and so when his father gave him wings, he never thought twice about flying towards the sun. They say he fell and shattered, like a beast brought down by a hero. Even the strangest are united in death.