THE HIGH TABLE

The desert is the shroud of lost kingdoms; wind moves where banners once hung. For Callen and Roland, loss has become a shared language — one forged by fire, the other by disillusion.

Their path through the wastes brings them to a dry basin strewn with stones, like an arena. There, talk of tactics turns to remembrance. Callen speaks of tournaments once held beneath the Citadels’ crimson walls, where youth and elder crossed arms not for conquest but for balance — contests of skill, rites that bound generations together.

In the desert quiet, an embrace seals their purpose. Roland feels he has returned from exile; Callen sees in him both a mentor and the living echo of his fallen comrades. Together they conceive a renewal — a sparring of bow, spear, and fighting pole — a ceremony to let motion remember what history forgot, so that, for a moment, the Citadels might awaken again.

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The elder stands for that which cannot be avoided; the youth, for that which still strives.

 

(As prescribed, Roland lays aside his kilt to stand bare, simulacrum of fierce and naked Death. He reaches for the youth’s belt.)

 

(A silence. The desert holds its breath.)

Declaration of Contest

Three contests, as in the old days: bow, spear, and pole. Each for skill, not dominion.

 

 

(They part. The dust settles. The first arrow is loosed — and the past stirs.)

The Contests Continue

 

 

(Next, we take up the poles — lengths of polished desert wood. The wind stills. I gesture for the youth to ready himself.)

 

(I advance—not in dance, but in controlled aggression. The polished poles crack together with the sound of dry thunder. Callen moves swiftly, circling, striking high and low. My counter is brutal in its economy: a feint, a sweep, a pivot that sends a gust of dust spinning between them. The elder’s pole catches the boy squarely across the ribs and then hooks behind his knee. Callen drops hard into the sand, breath gone in a single gasp.)

 

 

(We rest, breathing hard. The sun sinks lower. Callen retrieves two javelins and plants them upright in the sand.)

The Spears

 

“This skull is Death’s token, bound over the place of life, that the living may remember their end.
Let the chain fall, and the flesh breathe; let the young stand naked before the dust, and the old bear the weight of the skull once more.”

(I cast my spear — a clean arc, the weapon quivering in the target mound at a distance.)

 

 

(Callen steps forward, lifts his javelin, breathes, and releases. It sails farther, vanishing in the shimmer beyond Roland’s mark.)

 

Youth triumphs, as the rite decrees — not to shame the elder, but to remind him that life persists where Death once stood.

(We approach one another, clasp forearms,. The wind rises again over the empty basin — and for a heartbeat, the Citadels breathe.)

 

Published: 2025-10-28, viewed 89 times.