"Girls? What is it?" the king asked, and Arthur was startled to hear the voice coming from what he had begun to think of as his own throat. The voice was warm and gentle, filled with the kind of paternal affection that spoke of deep, unconditional love.
The two girls pulled their faces away from his armor and looked up at him with eyes that glistened with excitent and hope. Their expressions were identical, from the slight upturn of their lips to the way their eyebrows raised expectantly.
"Read to us!" they exclaid in perfect unison, their voices harmonizing like a well-practiced choir.
Arthur felt the king’s body sigh, a sound that carried both exhaustion and resignation. For a mont, there was silence as the king seed to contemplate their request. Then, unexpectedly, a shallow giggle escaped his lips—a sound that was both genuine and tinged with sothing Arthur couldn’t quite identify. Perhaps it was sadness, or maybe just the weight of responsibilities that seed to press down upon the monarch’s shoulders.
Reaching up, the king carefully removed the sun mask from his face, setting it down gently on an ornate dresser that stood nearby. The piece of furniture was crafted from dark mahogany and inlaid with precious stones that caught the light like captured stars.
"Sure," he said simply, and the effect on the two girls was imdiate and dramatic.
They looked at each other with expressions of pure delight, their faces lighting up as if they had just received the greatest gift imaginable. "Yay!" they shouted together, jumping up and down with excitent that was both infectious and heartwarming.
Arthur watched through the king’s eyes in complete shock and bewildernt. ’Am I experiencing his mories? But how? And why?’
The questions continued to plague his thoughts, but before he could explore them further, the king blinked once again. When his vision cleared, the scene had shifted dramatically. They were now in what appeared to be a bedroom, richly appointed with furnishings fit for royalty. The bed was enormous, easily large enough to accommodate several people, and covered with blankets and pillows of the finest materials.
Arthur found himself—or rather, found the king—sitting in the middle of this magnificent bed with a daughter positioned on each side of him. Both girls were leaning against him comfortably, their attention focused entirely on the book he held in his hands. It was a book that Arthur recognized imdiately, and the sight of it sent a jolt of recognition through his consciousness.
The book on the nightstand of the twins’ room!
The mory ca flooding back to him with startling clarity. During their exploration of the castle, before the final confrontation with the corrupted king, inside of the twins room where they fought the final sheepman. On the nightstand beside the small beds had been this very book, its cover adorned with a simple but charming illustration of a white sheep and a black sheep standing side by side.
As the king opened the book to begin reading, Arthur felt a strange sensation wash over him. Suddenly, he could understand the words on the pages before him—words that had been incomprehensible when he had first encountered this book.
’Wait, how co I can understand the words all of a sudden? How can I even understand the king and his daughters? This is... odd.’
The questions bubbled up in his consciousness like water from a spring, each one more perplexing than the last. But before Arthur could explore these mysteries further, the king began to read aloud, and Arthur found himself drawn into the story just as completely as the two young girls beside him.
The tale that unfolded was both simple and profound, told in the kind of language that children could easily understand but that carried deeper anings for adult listeners. It spoke of a house where many white-furred sheep lived together in harmony, sharing their space and resources with the contentnt that cos from true community.
But in this house lived one sheep that was different from all the others—a sheep with fur as black as night, who stood out starkly among his white-furred companions. For reasons the story didn’t imdiately explain, this black sheep grew dissatisfied with the arrangent they had all shared for so long.
One day, driven by motivations that seed to spring from so deep well of discontent, the black sheep decided that he no longer wanted to share the house with the others. What had once been a peaceful coexistence erupted into conflict as the black sheep started a house-wide fight, determined to claim the entire dwelling for himself alone.
The battle that followed was described in terms that children could understand, but Arthur could see deeper aning in the words. The fight raged on and on, with neither side able to claim complete victory, until finally, to everyone’s disappointnt and sorrow, all the sheep found themselves living in separate houses, their once-unified community fractured and divided.
But even this separation wasn’t enough to satisfy the black sheep’s growing hunger for more. His desires had expanded beyond simply wanting his own space—now he wanted everything that the white sheep possessed. He wanted all their houses, all their belongings, everything they had built and cherished. So he began a campaign of conquest, going from house to house, taking each one for himself through force and cunning, leaving the white sheep holess and scattered...
’What the?’
Arthur stared in confusion and growing alarm as the pages of the book suddenly went blank. Where there should have been more text, more story, more resolution to the tale they had been following so intently, there was nothing but empty white pages stretching on for what appeared to be many more Chapters.
The king’s voice interrupted Arthur’s confused observations. "Alright girls, that’s it. Ti for dad to go to work."
But Arthur’s mind was reeling with questions and confusion. ’That can’t be the end of the book? Look how many empty pages there are—the book isn’t over! What happened to the rest of the story?’
Reviews
All reviews (0)