The Warrior Makes His Choice...

Chehas assigned a wizened man--
these days butler more in title than function--
to escort the Warrior to the palace gates.

But with each step he took, a certainty swelled
in his breast
that he left prematurely.
And even as he thought it,
the old man before him said,
"So you'd leave her then?"

And the warrior heard in the man a voice
he'd heard before,
the same old man
who made him apostle years before,
made him as one sent to find that queen of the forest
many years before.
"Old man, do you never age and die?"
His words might bristle rude,
were they not rife with incredulity,
making the old man chuckle.

"Aye, a person can do that but once," he said sagely,
"But what of this question of a maiden?"

The Warrior shook his head.
"She's the daughter of a king, no doubt.
Who am I to drag her into warfare?
I'd keep her far from me,
lest my enemies become hers."

"Ye'd do better in that protecting if ye'd finish with this training first,"
the old man advised.
The man looked long over his shoulder.
Decisively, he said, "No.
It would not be good
to drag her life alongside the life
I am called to live."

"Ah, but is this not truth:
that sometimes the point is not so much
to make a show of goodness as
to make a show
of faithfulness?"

The Warrior paused fully, considering these last words.
Entertaining a hope of joy as bedfellow to the strain of war.
The old man spoke one last time.
"Don't turn away from her. She'll yet preserve ye."

So the warrior retraced his steps,
faster and faster across the plaza,
until he came to the place where her footprint
trod the garden grasses flat.
Running now, he caught her,
twirled her around
and embraced her.
"Stay here,"
he said, even as she had.
She smiled.
"Alright," and folding her arms
she leaned her back against a sturdy oak tree.

He stepped away a bit, muttering as one does
when scavenging for some certain item.

Soon he returned, a garland of his own in his hands.
She laughed.
"Some would say you offer me a garland of weeds!"

He grinned, "Indeed, the gardener had pulled them.
Cast them off to be burned.
They'll wilt soon, but for now know this:
in my land these weeds represent a love returned
and immortality.
Fitting gift from the hand of a warrior:
a life of weeds but that speaks of eternal love."

Her smile turned soft
as the deepest petal of a full-blown rose.
She took the garland and put it gently on her own head.
"It is time you met my father."