Every year past the summer solstice they met, it was something of a ritual. They had known each other for many a years now, too many years to care about counting anymore. In years past there were occasions when one would hear them heatedly debating things of grave importance, speaking over each other, each trying to be louder than the other, like a murder of crows. But as the years had passed, leaving wrinkles in their wake, these occasions had turned more somber. Little left to debate about, comfortably silent in the company of a known other, they sat savouring the dragon flame.
“I am in love with broken things!”, declared the cripple to the bastard.
The bastard did not look up from his drink. He seemed engrossed in his contemplation of the dragon flame contained in a finely crafted cut glass. Given it’s odd concave shape, it should have qualified as a goblet but it did not have a stem. At any rate, a funny glass to be drinking whiskey out of, thought the cripple. While the bastard continued to slowly rotate the glass, silently marking the passage of time, who knows what went on in his head.
Looking for more of a reaction, the cripple raised his voice a notch, “I am in love with broken things!”
The bastard looked up, deep into the cripple’s eyes, perhaps his soul. Like the sweat that dripped from the glass, like the sound of ice cubes crumbling into the shimmering dragon flame, he spoke in a whisper dark.
“Old chap, you do realize, broken things often come with sharp edges.”
And the stemless goblet, it just kept rotating.
~
SHOUT OUTS:
Game of Thrones ~ Game of Thrones
The Great Gatsby (2013 Film) ~ The Great Gatsby (2013 – Film)