Fable: Of Gura and Sakee

Sakee and Gura met at the Cliff at the Edge of the World every afternoon, where sitting under a copse of trees by a rocky outcrop, they would, till evening fall, talk of things of love. They would speak of a past when they weren’t best of friends and laugh at it – Gura loud and boastfully, and Sakee in a shy timorousness, as if made of bells, a melody, echoed from far away on a breeze caressed day.

Every day, they met, for many unchanging years They spoke of many futures, in which they both got old, in a hut they would make on a solitary hill.

“But we will have visitors now and then, will we not,” Sakee asked faintly, for it would be lonely when Gura went off for days on his hunting parties, chasing the Darkness that had wandered into the world of man aeons ago, to corrupt the hearts of men, who were once good. For that Gura would not give up that burden of his fate, till he breathed his last breath into the mountain air. Gura of Ayarlord blood, and all of such blood were hunters born, who swore to rest not till the Darkness was slain and the hearts of men were free to be good once more.

Sakee would watch how Gura caressed his bow, watched the sun glint on his silver sword, and how his buckled shield was always polished black, its leather oiled every night so lovingly. For Gura was a warrior born, would as warrior live, and as warrior breathe his last – as he stared into the eye of the Daemon.

“I am an Lord of Light, dear Paree, don’t fear me now,” were the words he had said when he glimpsed her that day. The day they had met and fallen in love.

For hours they would talk of their hut on the hill, and hopes for a future which would never come.

For Sakee was a wisp, a fragment of a dream, that would vanish when Gura, the shepherd boy would wake from his sweet dream filled nap, nestled in the warmth of the summer’s sun, caressing the soft grass of the meadow at the edge of his village home.

And now it was time to wake.

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