Soft golden light accompanied the voice

  A luxury, a comfort then to wake

  Despite the foggy remnants of his choice

  “Unlike you and a foolish thing to break

  The hours, son, what can I do to make

  The heights of your new station manifest?

  One chance today, to see how we are blessed.”

  In racing, brushing ash, and rushing out

  The evanescent recollections fell

  Rokhem! The tunic! Scythe! Beyond a doubt

  True life was in the flaxen meadow-dell

  True life among the stems and shoots to dwell

  How true, another day to blithely miss

  How true, to suffer blindly, highest bliss

  Those eyes like burning embers just ahead

  But death lay still beyond, the falling sun

  Horizon struck across with pink and red

  As Merrasir demanded what he’d done

  And Khazemil was reeling overrun

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “It happened just the same, and just the same

  Rokhem yet gently justified its claim.”

  “I watched behind the trees at field’s edge;

  You worked as one whose life in work was spent.

  Last night, my plan, you raced towards the sedge;

  I saw slight intimations as you went—

  I caught both fear and violence in your scent.”

  “And Merrasir, what of the grain you took?”

  “All buried, so that you might never look.”

  The fox, in his brown tunic, cast his eyes

  From Merrasir’s bright copper robe to dirt

  The pair in silence, tremulous but wise

  In walking understood the other’s hurt

  The vague condemning duty to desert

  “I hear it in your steps, the fatal word;

  It cannot pass my lips, but I have heard.”

  Rokhem selected words more carefully

  Than Khazemil himself had hoped to try

  His body wished to stay, his spirit flee

  And once again the dreaming time grew nigh

  “They cannot hear us here. I’ll whisper why:

  Rokhem wraps chains around the farmer’s mind

  Unkilling poisons in the roots entwined.

  “Your fur stands up at this, but see how old

  And tired foxes far more eager race

  To shelter frosted seedlings in the cold

  To die, defying fire’s warmth and grace.”

  “Nobility! Which you should not debase!”

  “Is sacrifice so noble without will?

  Then sleep, and find your comfort lying still.”