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Short Story: "Hero" (Original Fiction)
Nov. 5th, 2021 11:20 pm(Originally posted October 15, 2019)
Hero | 289 words | Fantasy
When I slew the beast besieging my hometown, I found you huddled at its feet, sword chipped and stained, armor streaked with blood and soot. I lifted you gently and carried you home, tended your wounds and bid you to rest. As I turned to leave, you grasped my wrist, and, in a voice as frail as your body, asked of me the impossible.
“Can you stay?”
Stay. You know not the temptation you’ve offered! I would gladly tear out my own divine heart and bleed away the power coursing through my veins just for a chance to stay. To take your hand and lie beside you, to let the world — with all its armies and beasts and fires and floods — carry on outside, to slow down and truly live.
But your words are soon drowned out by other pleas, urgent cries that reach my mind from far-flung regions of the world. I free my wrist from your fingers, and shake my head slowly, sadly, for I am duty-bound, sworn from birth to save those who cannot save themselves, at the expense of my own heart and soul.
My footsteps are heavy as I leave my hometown, my heart weighed down further by the townsfolk’s adulation. For everyone wants a hero, needs a hero, loves a hero, but the hero has no freedom to want and need and love in return.
I am but a force, a vessel of strength, on loan to those most vulnerable, belonging to no one. Not even myself.
Not even you.
As I slay the army besieging the hinterlands, my wrist still burns from your touch.
No, I could not stay with you.
But it seems you have a way of staying with me.
When I slew the beast besieging my hometown, I found you huddled at its feet, sword chipped and stained, armor streaked with blood and soot. I lifted you gently and carried you home, tended your wounds and bid you to rest. As I turned to leave, you grasped my wrist, and, in a voice as frail as your body, asked of me the impossible.
“Can you stay?”
Stay. You know not the temptation you’ve offered! I would gladly tear out my own divine heart and bleed away the power coursing through my veins just for a chance to stay. To take your hand and lie beside you, to let the world — with all its armies and beasts and fires and floods — carry on outside, to slow down and truly live.
But your words are soon drowned out by other pleas, urgent cries that reach my mind from far-flung regions of the world. I free my wrist from your fingers, and shake my head slowly, sadly, for I am duty-bound, sworn from birth to save those who cannot save themselves, at the expense of my own heart and soul.
My footsteps are heavy as I leave my hometown, my heart weighed down further by the townsfolk’s adulation. For everyone wants a hero, needs a hero, loves a hero, but the hero has no freedom to want and need and love in return.
I am but a force, a vessel of strength, on loan to those most vulnerable, belonging to no one. Not even myself.
Not even you.
As I slay the army besieging the hinterlands, my wrist still burns from your touch.
No, I could not stay with you.
But it seems you have a way of staying with me.
